by Matt Rej
SingleOps is one of the most widely used tools for businesses in the tree care industry. This arborist software is trusted by 50,000+ contractors in North America, managing $10 billion in revenue for these companies.
Integrated payment processing is included with every SingleOps plan. But this is probably the software’s most misunderstood feature, and it’s costing businesses much more than they realize.
Let me break down exactly what’s happening behind the scenes when you use SingleOps for credit card processing, and how this setup impacts your merchant fees.
SingleOps Payments is Powered by ProPay
First and foremost, you need to understand that SingleOps is not a payment processor.
While the feature is part of your SingleOps subscription, all of the actual payment processing is handled by ProPay. This distinction is important for several reasons:
- Your merchant agreement contract is directly with ProPay (not SingleOps).
- This is a PayFac (payment facilitator) setup as opposed to a traditional merchant account.
- ProPay is a subsidiary of Global Payments.
So even though the initial setup and onboarding happens within the SingleOps platform, the actual contract you sign comes from ProPay.
ProPay being part of the Global Payments umbrella is also important because Global doesn’t have the best reputation industry-wide. While they’re one of the largest payment processors in the world, we constantly Global and its subsidiaries apply aggressive billing tactics to accounts.
What the PayFac Model Means for Your Merchant Fees
As a PayFac, ProPay aggregates businesses using SingleOps under a master merchant account. You have a sub-merchant account under ProPay’s umbrella, which is inside a pooled account held in PNC Bank’s name on behalf of all ProPay merchants.
This relationship directly impacts your pricing.
- They advertise “competitive flat-rate pricing” + $0.20 per transaction (flat-rate is never a good thing).
- But ProPay’s credit card processing rates up to 3.50% per transaction (not competitive).
- ACH processing costs 1% per transaction (extremely high).
- You’re also responsible for network assessments (uncommon in flat-rate pricing).
Flat-rate processing is not a good deal for merchants, and ProPay’s rates are among the highest you’ll find offered by a PayFac. An even bigger issue here is that ProPay also charges card brand fees paid directly to Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and Amex.
The whole point of flat-rate pricing is that everything is supposed to be bundled into a single rate. Interchange, card brand fees, and the processor’s margin are all accounted for, and you just pay one number.
ProPay is double-dipping here by also passing through the card network fees on top of its already high flat-rate pricing.
If they want to charge you for network assessments, they should be offering you an interchange-plus contract structure instead of a flat rate.
Support Goes Through SingleOps, Not ProPay
Despite signing a merchant agreement directly with ProPay, SingleOps instructs businesses to contact SingleOps for any payment-related issues.The SingleOps help documentation explicitly says that their team will engage with ProPay on your behalf.
This deserves more attention than most businesses realize.
- Your payment contract is with ProPay.
- There is no mention of SingleOps in ProPay’s merchant agreement.
- ProPay is responsible for processing your payments, holding your money, and funding your account.
So, why would you contact SingleOps for payment issues?
It’s because SingleOps is obviously getting a cut here. They’re the software provider and the payment solution is branded using their name (SingleOps Payments). They rely on ProPay for the payment technology and backend infrastructure, while also handling all the financial side of the merchant relationships.
There are a lot of mouths to feed here, which is why your rates will likely be inflated. Each time you process a payment, SingleOps, ProPay, Global Payments, and the acquiring bank all need to take a cut while still paying the interchange to the issuer.
Processing Limits and Fund Holds
ProPay assigns every sub-merchant a pre-approved transaction volume limit during the onboarding process. These are described as “soft” limits, meaning they won’t block transactions outright.
But transfers to your account will be delayed if you exceed 300% of your approved volume. And if you exceed limits, you may be required to complete additional underwriting steps before transfers resume.
This is a real operational risk for arborists and tree care businesses. The default limits for new users are:
- $2,000 per credit card transaction
- $2,000 per ACH transaction
- $100,000 in credit card volume per month
- $50,000 in ACH volume per month
In other words, if you process a credit card transaction over $6,000 (300% of $2k), your funds will be delayed. And any transaction over $2,000 can require additional underwriting.
These amounts are extremely low for businesses in this industry, where a single tree removal could easily exceed $2,000.
You can request limit increases by contacting SingleOps support (again, having to go through SingleOps as a middleman instead of straight to ProPay who is actually handling the processing).
Other Important Contract Clauses to Be Aware Of
Most merchants enabling SingleOps Payments don’t realize they’re signing a 21-page merchant agreement from ProPay that comes with significant legal impacts.
Always have your attorney review contracts before singing. But there are a handful clauses I want to point out:
Three-Year Term With Auto-Renewal (Section 9.1)
Your initial contract with ProPay starts three years from the date you start processing. The term automatically renews for successive one-year periods, and most auto-renewal contracts that we see come with increased rates when your contract expires.
Liquidated Damages for Early Termination (Section 9.2.4)
Early termination fees are never a good thing, and liquidated damages are the worst type of damages. If you cancel your contract early, you owe ProPay the average monthly fees over the prior six months multiplied by the remaining number of months on your contract.
For example, if you pay an average of $5k in merchant fees every month and want to cancel after one year, this clause means you’d owe ProPay $120,000 to terminate the agreement ($5k x 24 months remaining on contract).
Fee Changes With Minimal Notice (Section 14.1)
ProPay can change fees with as little as five business days’ notice for non-third-party changes. For card brand fees, they can change fees immediately with no advance notice required at all.
Merchants can terminate their account penalty-free if ProPay changes rates. But you only have a five-day window from the change notice to do so. And card brand fee changes don’t apply to this clause (only fee changes directly from ProPay).
This is one of the strictest fee change clauses I’ve ever seen. Most agreements (while still favoring the processor) require at least 30 days’ notice before a fee change takes effect, giving merchants more time to evaluate. Five business days is nowhere near the industry standard.
Liability Caps (Section 17.2)
ProPay’s total liability to you is capped at the lesser of $10,000 or three months of net processing fees, whereas your obligations are completely uncapped. You’re on the hook for any claims, losses, fines, card brand penalties, legal costs, etc. related to your data security or the actions of third-party services connected to your account (which in this setup, includes SingleOps itself).
These types of unbalanced liability caps aren’t unique to ProPay, as merchant agreements always favor the processor. But the $10k cap here is unusually low. And the fact you’re on the hook for third-party liability when that can apply to SingleOps is ironic since SingleOps is facilitating the entire setup.
Transaction Holds (Section 3.2.2) and Reserve Accounts (Sections 10-11)
If ProPay suspects fraud, unusual volume, or violations they can freeze your funds, refuse transactions, or suspend processing entirely at their sole discretion.
Additionally, ProPay can require you to set up reserve accounts if they think there is a high level risk associated with your use of their merchant services. This means that a portion of your processing volume may be held indefinitely to account for chargebacks or other issues.
Is There a Better Option?
As of right now, ProPay is the only integrated processing option available for SingleOps.
The alternative is simply keeping your credit card processing separate (non-integrated) from your SingleOps setup. Just because payment processing is included with your plan, it’s not a requirement. So you can still use all of the other SingleOps features to manage your business.
If you’re already using SingleOps Payments powered by ProPay, you can likely negotiate better terms. Just reach out to our team here at MCC for a free audit, and we can help lower your rate without changing anything.
But if you already have a payment processor outside of SingleOps, switching to ProPay just for the sake of getting integrated payments probably isn’t worth it. Instead, I recommend using this need as leverage by negotiating better terms with your current provider. Since they can’t support a direct integration with SingleOps, they’re likely willing to make concessions to avoid losing your account.
Potential Changes to Keep an Eye On
It’s also worth noting that SingleOps is now part of Granium, the parent company that formed from the merger of SingleOps, LMN, and Greenius.
LMN software also offers integrated payment processing with a similar setup to SingleOps. Except LMN Pay is powered by Stripe instead of ProPay.
This is important because the new Stripe-powered version of LMN Pay just launched in March 2026. Which means Granium made a conscious choice post-merger to use a different payment processor for LMN instead of replicating what already exists with SingleOps/ProPay.
So while there’s no immediate change for SingleOps users, a new payment setup using a Stripe integration may become available down the road.
I’d rather see this option in addition to the ProPay setup as opposed to a replacement. Having multiple options naturally forces these backend providers to be more competitive in their pricing, which would be a good thing for businesses using the software.