NetPay Merchant Services was founded in 2012 by Carl and Nicole Churchill, a couple of technology entrepreneurs who wanted to invigorate the payment service provider market with their passion for innovation.
Today, they process over £64 every second and a staggering 2.5 million transactions every month from over 7,000 customers. Sweeping up accolades like the Growing Business Award, Great British Entrepreneur Award, and National Business Award, they've taken the market by storm in just 5 short years.
But is NetPay the right payment service provider for your business? In this article, we are going to pick apart NetPay's offering, exploring their product and service portfolio, their fee structure, and customer reviews to help you decide whether they're the provider for you.
What is NetPay?
NetPay Merchant Services provide a wide range of payment services, both face-to-face and online, to business customers of all sizes and from all kinds of industries. As an Independent Sales Organisation (ISO), they are able to use the total buying power of all their merchant clients to bag the lowest deals possible from external card payment processor companies.
They've built themselves up to deliver easy payment solutions so that their customers don't have to go through the long-drawn process of signing up for many separate services from different providers.
Through NetPay, you can rent your physical terminal, set up online payment and virtual terminal capabilities, and secure a payment processor with some of the best possible rates for your needs.
NetPay pride themselves on providing more than just your bog-standard transaction processing capabilities. They've developed an additional piece of tech called the Revolution platform which allows NetPay customers to access their own unique reporting and insight data. We'll look at this more later on.
Overall, NetPay have built themselves up to deliver easy payment solutions so that you don't have to go through the long-drawn process of signing up for separate services from different providers. Everything can be done swiftly in one place.
NetPay Products, Features, and Services
NetPay has a great mix of payment solutions that cater to a wide set of business needs. Let's take a look at some of their main products and services:
Face-to-Face Payments
- Wired Terminals: Allows you to take Chip and PIN and contactless payments over the counter and print customer receipts from a fixed spot.
- Wireless Terminals: Perfect for restaurants and cafes, a wireless terminal can be used around your site up to 50m away from the base terminal.
- Mobile Payments: NetPay offer mobile phone payment services which can be used anywhere in the UK with a mobile connection.
NetPay also offer short-term terminal rental options which is great if you anticipate that your business will need this. You can rent the terminal anywhere between 1 day and 6 months, which is ideal if you know you have certain busy periods in the year but don't want fork out rental costs for an extra terminal all year round.
Online Payments
- Online Payment Solutions. Taking online payments is made easy with NetPay. You have a choice of platforms from a wide range of eCommerce carts (Including WooCommerce, Magento, Opencart etc), Hosted Form, API Integration, and Shopping Cart Plugins.
- Secure Payment Page. NetPay will set you up with a secure payment page for taking online payments. This will fill your customers with confidence when parting with their hard-earned cash.
Mail Order and Telephone Order Payments
- Virtual Terminals. If you provide mail order or over the phone payment services, NetPay allow you do so securely with a virtual terminal. It's easy to key in your customers' card details and process the transaction this way. All of your employees will have their own login details to access the portal to help you track your incoming cash flow distribution amongst employees better.
Appay Mobile App
The Appay mobile app, compatible with both Android and iOS, is perfect for businesses like taxi companies or market stall holders who don't have traditional POS systems set up. It gives you a secure way (it's Level 1 PCI compliant) to take card payments without actually having to sign up for a contract with NetPay. There is just a one-off fee at registration.
Revolution Platform
NetPay's flagship Revolution platform is an innovative piece of tech that really enhances the payment processing experience.
It's an analytics and reporting platform that gives merchants insight into their sales, allowing you to get right into the nitty-gritty of trend analysis and transaction geo-mapping. The platform provides you with invaluable information all in one place that allows you to build strategies and estimate future demand based on concrete data rather than a gut feeling. It will also save your business time poring over file after file of transaction data from all different sources!
Customer Service and Technical Support
NetPay's customer service lines are open during normal business hours, Monday to Friday, 9am-5:30pm. You can contact them via their general customer service email or the contact form on their website. They also have a Webchat feature on their page, running weekdays, 9am to 6:30pm.
They have a separate technical support line which is good news if you run into problems on shift. Their technical support team are working around the clock, every day of the year. So, if you're on the open shift and your card reader shuts off bright and early at 7:30am, they're on hand to help!
NetPay Costs, Fees, and Pricing
NetPay are more transparent than some about their pricing structure. They operate a quoting system which takes into account your business size and turnover to make sure you get the best bang for your buck, so you won't see concrete pricing on their website.
We found these fees published by NetPay which are essentially the best possible rates you can get with them, now bear in mind that your quote will depend on a wide range of factors and therefore may not mirror the example quote below:
Debit and Credit Card transactions Fees:
- Consumer and business debit cards: from 0.39% + 2.5p.
- Consumer credit cards: from 0.69% + 2.5p.
- Business/corporate credit cards: 2% + 2.5p.
Payment Terminal Fees:
- Corded terminal: from £8.99 + VAT/month.
- Wireless terminal: from £14.99 + VAT/month.
- GPRS Terminal: £16.99 + VAT/month.
- No set up fee for terminals.
Online/eCommerce fees:
- From £9.99 + VAT per month.
- One-off online set up fee: £29.99.
Other fees:
- Monthly minimum service charge: £15/month.
- PCI fees: £4.99/month with 6 months free.
- Paper statement fees: £4 month - or free if you opt for online statements.
- Chargebacks: £15.
- Refunds: Free.
NetPay have pretty long contract lengths when you pin them against their competitors. The minimum contract length is 36 months, which is quite a commitment for smaller businesses who aren't sure what their needs are going to be in the next 3 years.
First Data is the acquiring bank who powers the contracts for NetPay and their customers. If you decide to terminate your contract early, you'll be subject to exit fees determined by First Data. Usually this is calculated by combining your monthly minimum fee, customer service fee, and account fee, and multiplying it by the remaining number of months in your contract. There is no set exit fee as a result.
Whilst NetPay have flexible and competitive pricing, their services are not best suited to clients who deal with very low volumes of business because their minimum monthly charge may eat into the little turnover they have.
NetPay Reviews
It was difficult to find much in the way of customer reviews for NetPay, so we'll just be looking at their TrustPilot and Google Reviews accounts:
- TrustPilot: 4.5 / 5 (82 reviews)
- Google Reviews: 3.5 / 5 (40 reviews)
These reviews are promising for NetPay. Like other providers we've reviewed, their average score has been brought down by a minority of customers leaving angry 1 star reviews. There are rarely any mid-mark scores, which shows that, in general, NetPay customers are very pleased with their service, save for a few instances where the service hasn't met their expectations.
Here's a roundup of NetPay's positive points:
- Great customer service. Reviewers referred to NetPay customer support team members by name and raved about their service. Many noted that communication from team members was efficient and effective, keeping them informed on the progress of their application at all times.
- Quick approval rate. 93% of pre-approved customers are registered within 24 hours which is fantastic for businesses looking to get up off the ground quickly. Many reviewers praised NetPay for the swiftness of the set up process.
And what about the bad?
- Contracts not cancelled. It is likely that there has been some miscommunication and a genuine error has been made, but a few 1* commenters said that their contracts had been cancelled or expired, but they were still being charged.
- Terminal issues. Some merchants complained that the delivery of their terminals took longer than expected and others claimed they received damage or poorly refurbished models.
We can see that NetPay try their best to reply to every review, good or bad, and they've said that they investigate every complaint on these sites, so they are constantly looking for ways to improve. The reviews we found settled from one extreme to the other, leaning more to the positive, so you can use your own judgement to decide if you're swayed one way or the other.
Find Your Next Merchant Services
NetPay has made great strides in the past few years and they've firmly established themselves as a credible, reliable merchant service provider. They have a wide range of products and services which cover all your card processing needs, their fees are great for everyone expect low volume merchants, and they have loads of positive customer feedback. If you'd like to find out more about them, you can visit their website at www.netpay.co.uk.
If you're looking to cut costs with your business payment processing, our Cardswitcher's comparison engine will do all the hard work for you.