Most Popular Merchant Services Providers Ranked (2026)

I always get asked who the best payment processor is. And truthfully, there really isn’t a standout “best” or even top three that separate themselves from the crowd.

That’s because all merchant services providers can offer virtually the same capabilities.

Some providers are definitely better than others in the sense that they offer more transparent pricing, infrequent rate hikes, and fewer junk fees. But even those types of merchant accounts are getting harder to find.

Other processors are better for specific industries or use cases (ecommerce, restaurant, dental/orthodontics, veterinary, etc.). 

So while I can’t name the best merchant services provider, I can tell you the most popular solutions on the market and let you decide for yourself which one best fits the needs of your business.

Important Considerations Before We Continue

This page isn’t for everyone. So before we dive into the list, I need you to understand two things:

Don’t Switch Processors

Anyone reading this is obviously looking for a good merchant services provider for one of these two reasons:

1. You’re a brand new business accepting credit cards for the first time.
2. You’re already accepting payments and considering alternative options.

If you’re already accepting payments, the best merchant services provider for your business is your existing processor. 

Switching providers is almost never the right decision. So if you’re evaluating other providers, stop right now and re-consider. For 95% of businesses, you’re better off keeping your existing setup and negotiating better terms with your current provider. 

But if your business is new to accepting card payments, then read on to find the best payment processor for your situation. 

What Makes Our Rankings List Different

I promise you that this list of merchant services providers for 2026 is different from every other source on the web. 

Why? If you look closely at the sources ranking merchant services providers, they’re all either:

• Filled With Affiliate Links: These sites are paid to promote certain providers, so you can’t trust their rankings or anything they’re saying. Rankings are based on who pays the most to be first or who offers the highest commissions for signup referrals.
• Payment Processors Promoting Their Services: If you land on Helcim’s list of the best payment processors, guess who they’re going to say is #1? Themselves. Same goes for Stripe, Stax, Elavon, and the rest. It’s impossible for these pages to be objective because they want you to sign up for their services while making their competitors look bad.

This page is neither of those things.

• It’s NOT an affiliate blog.
• We do NOT get paid for adding processors to this list, and we’re NOT compensated if you sign up.
• We are NOT a payment processor or merchant services provider.

Plus, our experience here at Merchant Cost Consulting is unmatched compared to other sites covering this topic.

We analyze over 1,400+ merchant account statements every month from over 100+ different processors. I don’t think TechnologyAdvice, PCMag, or even Forbes can say the same (it’s just not what they do). 

Types of Merchant Services Providers

The type of processor your business uses is arguably more important than the actual provider. Within these categories you’re splitting hairs between capabilities.

Direct Merchant Acquirers

Acquiring banks provide merchant accounts and offer payment processing services directly to businesses. Examples include:

• Fiserv
• Elavon
• Global Payments

You can typically get access to the better rates by going directly to a merchant acquirer because there’s fewer middlemen involved. They handle all of the processing in-house instead of outsourcing to a third-party. 

ISOs

An Independent Sales Organization (ISO) is a merchant services provider that’s licensed to resell acquiring services. They provide businesses with the service and technology, but the actual processing is being handled by an acquiring bank on the backend.

Examples of ISOs:

• Wells Fargo Merchant Services (is a Fiserv reseller)
• CardConnect (also resells Fiserv)
• Bluefin (Elavon reseller)

Most banks that offer merchant services actually operate as ISOs. Rates from an ISO slightly inflated because they need to profit and so does the acquirer. 

PayFacs

Payment Facilitators (PayFacs) let businesses accept card payments without setting up a traditional merchant account. The PayFac has a master merchant account and issues sub-merchant accounts to businesses. 

Most popular PayFacs are:

• Stripe
• PayPal
• Square

The upside of using a PayFac is that you can get set up quickly without a lengthy underwriting process. But most payment facilitators try to sell flat-rate pricing (which is always more expensive). And these accounts are often subject to stricter funding rules with stipulations for holds and rolling reserves. 

Integrated Processors

An integrated processor is for businesses that want their payments system connected to a third-party software or tool used in their business. 

It’s common to see integrated processors used in CRMs, ERP software, practice management software, and other business tools where you want all payment data, customer data, and other information available in a single source of truth. 

Options here are limited based on the specific software you’re using, and we typically only see 2-5 processors that can integrate with a particular software.

For example, we have tons of clients in the dental/orthodontics space that want their payments integrated with their practice management solution. In this type of scenario:

• Stripe and Breeze integrate with OrthoFi
• TSYS and Fiserv integrate with WaveOrtho
• Bluefin, Global, and CurvePay integrate with Curve Dental

It’s also common for the software itself to have their own branded integrated payment solution (like the CurvePay example above that integrates with Curve Dental). But in the vast majority of these situations, there’s actually a third-party handling the payments on the backend (like Stripe).

Most Popular Merchant Services Providers

Here are the most popular payment processors on the market right now. Just be aware that popularity doesn’t mean their good. And in our experience, some of the largest processors are actually the worst.

Fiserv

Fiserv has over 6 million merchant accounts globally. This is largely due to the fact that over 10,000 financial institutions and banks resell Fiserv’s processing services. 

Overall, Fiserv can be solid. 

Rates can be competitive and don’t increase nearly as often as other providers. And their pricing is very transparent so you can see exactly how much you’re paying on every transaction at the interchange level, plus their markups. 

Fiserv also owns Clover which has quickly become one of the most popular POS solutions on the market, particularly for small businesses. 

Chase Merchant Solutions

Chase Merchant Services (formerly Chase Paymentech) is the largest bank merchant acquirer in the US. They’re used by 6+ million businesses and process a whopping $10 trillion per day. 

Unlike other banks offering merchant services under an ISO model where they’re just reselling from another provider, Chase doubles as an acquirer which means you can get access to lower rates.

The downside of Chase is that they’re a legacy provider and their technology just isn’t up to speed with the Stripes and Adyen’s of the world. 

But if you’re a small business using Chase for traditional bank services and want to get merchant services under the same roof, they’re fine to consider. 

Global Payments

Global Payments controls over 5 million merchant accounts, and they’ll be adding another million to that portfolio when they officially take over Worldpay this year.

What makes Global such a large powerhouse is the fact that they’re the parent company of other major processors that they’ve acquired over the years, including:

• TSYS
• OpenEdge
• Heartland
• Cayan
• EVO Payments

Despite Global’s massive size and worldwide presence, I could never recommend them to any business in good faith. Some of the highest rates, largest increases, and most egregious junk fees that we’ve uncovered over the years have all come from Global Payments.

So tread carefully if you’re considering Global or any of its subsidiaries. I’d personally look elsewhere first. 

Square

More than four million businesses rely on Square for payment processing.

Square’s popularity is largely tied to its simplicity, especially for small businesses accepting payments in person. They have exceptional POS software and hardware that has a low learning curve for both merchants and consumers alike.

And the fact that they operate as PayFac makes it easy for businesses to get started, especially smaller businesses. 

The drawback is that Square’s flat-rate pricing is too expensive, and those rates are on top of Square’s monthly subscription fees and other services. Merchants are only eligible for custom pricing if they do over $250k per month, and even at that rate, it’s nearly impossible to get interchange-plus pricing. 

Stripe

Stripe dominates the ecommerce space, processing over $1.4 trillion in annual payments. 

Despite being a popular PayFac (which normally means higher flat-rate pricing), Stripe is actually willing to offer competitive interchange-plus deals, especially to high-volume merchants.

They have incredible technology, and we’ve seen rates offered as low as 0.09% + $0.08 per transaction over interchange. Though you need to process millions of dollars monthly to access these rates. 

If you’re going to use Stripe, just don’t sign up for their advertised flat-rate structure. Negotiate an interchange-plus deal instead. Trust me, it will be much cheaper for your business. 

PayPal

PayPal is arguably the most trusted and well-recognized name globally in the payments space.

What initially started as a P2P payments company has evolved over time into a legitimate merchant services solution for businesses.

But like other PayFacs, PayPal is just too expensive if you’re going with the flat-rate model. IC+ pricing isn’t offered to every business. Though we’ve had clients sign contracts at 0.15% + $0.10 per transaction from PayPal, which is good. 

Rates aside, PayPal’s merchant agreements don’t always give you instant access to all of your money. Holds can be arbitrary, and we’ve seen some nightmare stories where accounts were frozen or funds were put on hold for no good reason. 

Other Top Merchant Services Options to Consider

As I said before, you can’t go solely based on a processor’s popularity to determine their quality. 

Of the six largest merchant services providers listed above, Fiserv is probably the only one I’d actually recommend (and they’re still far from perfect due to certain contract terms). Stripe’s technology is great, but they’re too expensive for most businesses.

While I can’t say that any of these are the best payment processor, they’re still worth putting on your radar:

Adyen: Probably the best payment technology on the market right now. We’ve seen rates as low as 0.25% + $0.10 per transaction, with pricing is tiered based on monthly volume (you’d need to process $8 million monthly to access this). 

Braintree: This is PayPal’s enterprise processing division and is also known for its exceptional technology. Massive businesses (processing hundreds of millions annually) can access rates as low as 0.03% + $0.03 per transaction, which is the lowest we’ve ever seen.

Shift4: Used by over 200,000+ businesses across 75+ countries. While Shift4 isn’t quite at the same size or scale as the Fiserv’s of Chase Banks of the world, they support over 1,200+ integrations and over one hundred payment methods with robust technology for both in-person and online payments. 

Toast: Toast is one of the most popular and best restaurant merchant services solutions, and it’s trusted by over 156,000+ locations. They’re rivaling Square and Clover in terms of market share in this industry, and continuing to grow at a rapid rate. But this growth is also coming with higher fees for merchants to support Toast’s ambitious goals.

What’s the Cheapest Payment Processor?

The cheapest rate we’ve ever seen offered to a client is from Braintree, at 0.03% + $0.03 per transaction over interchange. But you need to process $250 million annually to access this rate, which most businesses obviously won’t qualify for.

But generally speaking, there’s no “cheapest” payment processor just like there is no single “best” merchant services provider. And for the same reason. 

The same processor might offer really cheap rates to one business and then charge 10x more to another account.

Look at a company like Global Payments, one of the largest processors in the world. We have some merchant accounts paying 0.10% + $0.10 per transaction, which is reasonable and can definitely be considered cheap. But we’ve also seen them charge as much as 2.9% + $2.21 per transaction over interchange, which is one of the highest prices we’ve ever seen. 

I can give you examples like this with basically every provider, which is why I can’t definitely name one as the cheapest. 

How to Evaluate the Best Merchant Services Providers for Your Business

If you’re looking for a payment processor or you have a few options narrowed down, use the following criteria to figure out which one best fits your needs:

Industry

Working with a niche-specific can be the fastest way to thin the herd and let you focus on a select few options. A good example would be Toast for businesses in the restaurant or food service space. 

There are specific processors for healthcare practices and others for ecommerce stores. The best merchant services provider for small businesses likely won’t be the best option for B2B services companies. 

Or if you’re a high-risk merchant, not every provider will even be willing to work with you. 

Business Size

Brand new businesses accepting card payments for the first time may be better off using a PayFac for simplicity. Though you should definitely consider your growth trajectory, as you won’t want to switch down the road.

High-volume businesses processing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars should be getting the lowest possible rates on the market. 

Not every provider will offer those rock-bottom rates. So you have to figure out which ones do when you’re getting a quote.

Pricing Structure

Interchange-plus pricing is the only setup I recommend. 

So if the processor you’re considering only offers flat-rate or tiered (qualified/mid-qualified/non-qualified), then avoid them. Or at least tell them you’ll only proceed if they’re willing to do an IC+ structure.

Other Fees

You also need to look beyond the rate per transaction to calculate how much you’re going to pay overall. 

Technically, you can’t calculate your effective rate until you’re actually processing cards and get your first statement. But it’s something you can estimate, and it’s often overlooked during this process. 

For example, I recently audited a Worldpay statement where the business was paying 0.10% + $0.50 per transaction, which is a decent rate. But once you factor in all of the other miscellaneous fees that Worldpay charges them, their markup was actually over 1%.

Integration Needs

If you want your merchant services integrated with a specific tool or software, then your options will definitely be limited.

In this case, you might have to choose the software first and then see their list of supported integrations second. Because not every processor will be supported. 

Final Thoughts

There’s no single best or cheapest merchant services provider.

Name any provider, and I’ll show you examples of them doing great things alongside examples of them doing terrible things for businesses. Literally the exact same processors could be on my list of the best merchant services and worst merchant services depending on the specific business I’m using as an example.

I know I covered a lot here, so if you only take away a couple of things, let it be this:

• If you currently accept payments, stick with your existing merchant services provider.
• They’re likely the best processor for your business you’re already set up.
• That processor likely has access to the exact same rates and capabilities as other providers.
• You just need to negotiate with them to eliminate junk fees and lower your rates.

And if you’re brand new to accepting card payments, don’t just haphazardly pick a provider based on what’s fast or convenient. You want to keep working with them for the long haul, as switching down the road can be an expensive mistake.