Originating from England in 2007, Axcess Merchant Services (AMS) is a UK-based merchant account provider with its headquarters in Wolverhampton, UK. The provider’s forte is to make payment processing solutions accessible for eCommerce and other card-not-present and high-risk businesses. Please know more about the company in our Axcess Merchant Services review below.
AMS serves multiple industries, including airlines, CBD, hosting, web design, SAAS, dating, marketing agencies, travel, gambling, and gaming, and also deals with most MOTO and subscription-based businesses.
Keeping in mind that it is difficult for most online and high-risk companies to find a feasible provider that meets all their needs, the company offers services designed to eliminate the obstacles these business types face in signing up with a processor. Partnered with multiple banks and third-party processors, the provider has established a reputation for offering customized solutions for each business model.
To be in sync with the ever-increasing demands of a fast-growing company, the provider has the expertise to simplify the processing complexities at the beginning and upgrade its services as the business expands. Its extensive support and problem-solving capacity make it reliable for most e-commerce businesses. The company provides very scarce information on its website, but here is an Axcess Merchant Services review for merchants to know the benefits, shortcomings, and factors that distinguish the provider from other payment processors.
Axcess Merchant Services Review Based on Products and Features
The company provides efficient POS solutions, virtual terminal services, e-commerce payment solutions, and multiple payment gateways to streamline the intricate procedure of payment processing. To give ease to the merchants, AMS purveys numerous billing options, including mobile and recurring billing, and provides security management and fraud prevention tools to secure one’s business. It offers global reach to its merchants by accepting over 179 currencies and prides itself on being a multi-territory provider by serving companies worldwide.
E-commerce Payment Solutions
The e-commerce market is setting its claws in the business world, and its significance is becoming more evident with time. The number of customers preferring online payments and merchants setting up an online alternative for their business is increasing rapidly. Today, even a street shop owner is offering online payment options to its customers, and even the smallest of businesses have an online website or page to reach out to the virtual world. Numerous companies are solely virtual and do not have an actual brick-and-mortar outlet.
AMS provides advanced technology that can go hand in hand and grow with your expanding business. The provider accepts all major credit card brands, such as MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Maestro, and Diner Club. It provides cost-effective, PCI-compliant payment gateways with 60 types of settings to ensure secure online payments.
Axcess Merchant services reviews claim that the company offers chargeback management to assist merchants in analyzing their data to recover revenue lost to chargebacks and avoid them in the future. Furthermore, the provider is linked with over 390 banks and promises opportunities beyond limits with its advanced analytics and reporting for each transaction.
Virtual Terminals and POS Systems
AMS provides a variety of virtual terminals and POS solutions to carry out payments. It offers tailored integration with its standalone, integrated, and semi-integrated POS systems and accepts major brands such as Apple Pay, AMEX, and Google Pay. Merchants can choose from its fixed and portable terminals to offer flexibility and convenience to their customers. Some Axcess Merchant Services reviews show that the company is partnered with Pax, Ingenico, and Castle to facilitate user-friendly POS terminals.
Fraud Prevention Tools
As online businesses are evolving, so are scams. With the constantly changing marketplace, online transactions are more prone to fraud than in-person payments and require additional measures to keep businesses fraud-proof. AMS provides fraud prevention suits that analyze each transaction and reject the ones with a hint of potential risk. It offers useful features such as database comparison, transaction velocity checks, and card blacklists. The company alerts the merchants with chargeback notifications to help merchants be ahead of the game and cut their losses.
Merchants can avoid threshold breaches, protect their businesses, deal with scams, and increase the possibility of success by identifying and eliminating fraudulent activities. Moreover, merchants get a timely report of flagged transactions from the issuing bank and decide their course of action. This way, merchants have complete control over each transaction.
Recurring Billing Option
Recurring billing is a way to charge customers regularly at predefined intervals with the cardholder’s permission. By offering this payment method, merchants can avoid late payments, save time, and improve customer relations. AMS enables businesses to keep their customer’s card information secure with PCI DSS availability and timely process all transactions.
Merchants with an existing recurring plan with a previous provider can move their payment processing to Axcess without causing inconvenience for their customers. The company claims to increase business revenue to around 15% with its billing options and increase a merchant’s success rate.
Multi-Currency Processing
Merchants can reach out to international customers and expand their business globally with Axcess’s multi-currency processing solutions. They can accommodate customers by accepting payments in over 179 currencies and country-specific card acceptance. The provider offers assistance and a payment page in multiple languages, allowing customers to understand the criteria better and see the pricing in their local currency.
Axcess Merchant Services reviews indicate that the provider makes sure the acquiring bank submits the payment in the merchant’s bank account in the desired currency. It can also convert all the payments into one decided currency. This way, merchants can avoid currency exchange fees.
Management Solutions
With Axcess’ management information solutions, merchants can track the progression of their accounts and understand their business better with the provider’s reporting tools. The company offers adequate resources to monitor and analyze the information from the issuing and the acquiring bank and track the data from the payment gateway. This way, merchants can make the right decisions and plan effective strategies to improve the transaction process. Moreover, they can reduce chargebacks and prevent fraud by being aware of every detail of the online transaction.
AMS reporting tools are developed separately for each client to meet individual requirements and help merchants save the time and effort of reviewing all the data driving the e-commerce business. It provides the necessary means to eliminate the cost of training an in-house team.
Axcess Merchant Services Review Based on Services Contract Terms and Pricing
Depending upon the business type, size, processing history, and the agent setting up the account, AMS offers a variable contract term designed for each merchant. Reviews indicate that an average AMS contract lasts three years. The company’s partnership with over 391 acquiring banks generates flexibility in pricing and the capacity to provide multiple categories of merchant accounts. The provider does not mention its pricing and contract details on its official website.
A few Axcess Merchant Services reviews show that the company charges 1.00% to 4.99% for swiped and keyed-in transactions and offers a similar virtual terminal rate. It isn’t easy to estimate the provider’s overall pricing. The company offers a tiered pricing plan and charges 1.00% to 4.99% for mobile payments. It should be noted that high-risk merchant accounts charge higher than standard-risk accounts, so merchants looking to gain a high-risk e-commerce account should expect to pay a higher fee.
Axcess Merchant Services Review Based on Services Sales and Marketing
The company trains an in-house sales team and utilizes traditional marketing methods to advertise its services. No Axcess Merchant Services reviews hint at the company hiring independent sales representatives. None of the online complaints has accused the provider of being a scam or using deceptive quotes to mislead the merchants.
AMS does not disclose all the essential information, and its pricing details are a mystery to the public as the company mostly advertises its services relating to e-commerce solutions. However, the provider claims to use simple marketing strategies and trains the sales representatives to provide truthful information to its merchants.
Axcess Merchant Services Review Based on Customer Support Options
The provider has maintained a general phone support number and has reserved an email address for customers. It offers a live chat option for merchants to access quick assistance and an FAQ page on the website to answer basic queries. Furthermore, AMS provides a knowledge base containing documentation, instruction manuals, how-to guides, and troubleshooting instructions for the equipment offered by AMS. Merchants are accommodated with recorded training videos with basic instructions and details about the company’s services.
Axcess Merchant Services Reviews and Complaints
The merchants have not posted many complaints against the provider, and very few Axcess Merchant Services reviews are cited online, which is noteworthy. The company has not been sued with any mentionable class-action lawsuit, and its record is clean, with zero FTC complaints filed against it. However, since AMS has multiple partner banks, merchants may be directing their complaints towards one of them instead of Axcess.
AMS is not accredited by Better Business Bureau and does not have a profile on the platform. There are no formal complaints viewed on any of the well-known review sites. Although, before signing up with the provider after trusting its low complaint rates, merchants should consider that the lack of negative reviews could also mean that the consumers are choosing not to say anything online and instead complaining to the provider itself or addressing their concerns to its customer support agents.
Drawbacks
The company seems to be a reasonable provider with a wide range of services to facilitate e-commerce businesses. However, if you look beyond the surface, you will recognize a few major shortcomings that can be damaging to your business and cause trouble for you in the long run. Here is a review of the company’s drawbacks that merchants will likely face if they choose AMS as their payment processor.
Undisclosed Information
Merchants looking for a new service provider expect full disclosure and deserve to be provided with all the necessary information to help them in decision-making. AMS mostly markets its payment gateway and e-commerce payment solutions and does not disclose any other details on the official website. Merchants cannot know about the company’s contract terms and clauses and are given minimal information about its pricing.
The company’s website covers the equipment and payment solutions but leaves out major facts and statistics about AMS. Being ill-informed, merchants can not decide if they can trust the provider.
Below Average Customer Service
Maintaining good customer support says plenty about a provider and is a company’s way to keep a steady relationship with its merchants. If a provider listens to the complaints of its clients and provides active assistance and timely solutions, it signifies that it prioritizes its clients.
AMS’s poor customer service is one of the major factors tarnishing the company’s reputation and proving it a below-average service provider compared to the top-rated payment processors concerning their approach to dealing with customers. The provider seems negligent and does not provide adequate assistance to the merchants, leaving them on their own in most scenarios.
Too Pricy for Most Businesses
The company claims to offer flexibility in its pricing and provides customized rates to comply with a merchant’s business needs. However, the reviews indicate that AMS offers expensive pricing plans and charges higher rates than the providers especially catering to high-risk businesses. The company’s rates are only halfway suitable for some e-commerce businesses. Most merchants are unaware of the provider’s rates and trust the available quotes on the website but end up paying unaffordable charges in a long-term contract.
Final Verdict
This Axcess Merchant Service review concludes that even though the provider comes with a reasonably decent package with effective e-commerce payment processing solutions, it is not a suitable option for most companies. AMS does not provide dependency to its merchants and shows incompetence in maintaining satisfactory customer relations. The insufficient guidance and lack of disclosure cause distrust and force merchants to not rely on the provider.
Merchants are advised to research the best payment processors, compare the available options, and settle for a service provider that understands their requirements and strives to meet their expectations. Various service providers offer competitive and transparent rates and exemplary assistance to high-risk and e-commerce businesses. Moreover, merchants signing up with the company should hire a third-party audit to detect hidden charges.
