Payment Depot Review – Is It as Cheap as It Seems? [2024]

Cheap and Reliable Payment Processing with Some Support Issues

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Payment Depot definitely looks enticing on the surface, so much so that you might think there must be a catch. After all, it promises no markups on transactions – just a simple, reasonably-priced monthly subscription that could save you up to 40% on your credit card processing. Additionally, Payment Depot offers traditional interchange plus pricing with no monthly fees. It positions itself as one of the cheapest options in the industry today, but is that really the case? I decided to take a further look.

Interestingly, Payment Depot is actually a subsidiary of Stax. Unlike its parent company, which primarily caters to high-volume businesses, Payment Depot targets small to medium-sized businesses of any card volume. Only available in the US, it has many options available for both e-commerce and more traditional brick-and-mortar establishments.

A cursory glance at user reviews also paints a promising picture: Payment Depot is well-regarded among merchants, and the number of negative reviews is impressively low. Some of the happiest merchants have worked with Payment Depot for many years and state that it has actually delivered big savings as promised.

With my interest piqued, I compiled thousands of user reviews and performed extensive research, pitting Payment Depot against the top payment processors available today. All in all, Payment Depot mostly lives up to the hype, but it certainly isn’t perfect. Read on to see if Payment Depot is right for your business.

Strong Solutions for Both In-Person and Online Transactions

Despite being cheaper than many other payment processors, Payment Depot doesn’t cut corners on features1. It offers strong solutions for in-person transactions, flexible e-commerce options including an extensive API, and more. Surprisingly, it’s got a better lineup of features than many more expensive competitors.

Here’s what stood out to me the most.

Free POS Terminals

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Regardless of the plan you choose, Payment Depot offers a free Dejavoo terminal1. It’s EMV-enabled and can take contactless payments through credit/debit cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Wallet. You can also easily capture signatures via the touch screen.

If your business requires it, you may even be able to negotiate multiple free Dejavoo terminals. These terminals aren’t cheap, so you could save a significant amount of money.

Create Your Own E-Commerce Shopping Cart, Or Use a Pre-Built One

Payment Depot offers a wide range of e-commerce tools, so you’re bound to find a solution that fits your business. It integrates seamlessly with payment gateways like the popular Authorize.net, Stripe, PayPal, and more, and it offers its own virtual terminal. On top of this, you can create your own custom shopping carts1 for your websites or mobile apps, or simply install a pre-built template to begin selling right away.

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You’ll also be able to automate your e-commerce flow with integrations for QuickBooks, Sage, and other accounting software tools. Whenever you make a sale (whether that’s via e-commerce or in-person), it’s automatically entered into your books. This saves you a ton of time on administrative tasks, giving you more hours in the day to focus on growing your business.

Next-Day Deposits

Payment Depot can process all major debit/credit cards and ACH payments – but regardless of the payment method, Payment Depot aims to have your money in your account within 24 hours of every transaction. This isn’t too bad as some payment processors can leave you waiting over 48 hours.

That said, there’s no option for same-day or instant deposits. It’s always nice to have that option to rely on, even if it does cost a premium, so this is somewhat disappointing.

Chargeback and Risk Monitoring

Another advantage offered by Payment Depot is the ability to dispute chargebacks directly from your account area. This can save you tons of time, as you’ll have all the information and evidence needed to dispute a chargeback in one place.

Payment Depot also employs a 24/7 risk monitoring team that will help reduce your risk of chargebacks and fraud. They will keep a close eye on changes in bank policy and the latest methods of fraud, proactively notifying you of solutions before problems even begin to occur.

Fast and Easy Onboarding with a User-Friendly Platform

It’s fairly fast and easy to get started with Payment Depot. Of course, there’s a vetting process to go through, but as long as you’re prompt with providing information and documentation, you can begin receiving in-person and online payments in as little as 24 hours.

User reviews seem to back this up – I couldn’t actually find any reviews that complained of a long onboarding process. Conversely, I ran into plenty of users praising sales support for their help in getting started.

Getting Started with Payment Depot

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To get started with Payment Depot1, you have two options: you can either call sales support or fill out a contact form. You’ll get a much faster response by calling, and you’ll be in a better position to negotiate a more favorable deal with your sales agent.

You’ll have to describe your business to the sales agent to see if you’re a good fit. Prepare to be asked about your industry and average monthly income. Payment Depot doesn’t seem to work with high-risk businesses, but otherwise, you should have no trouble getting through this process.

Next, you’ll need to provide identity and other documents through a secure online form to prove the legitimacy of your business. You should get a response within 24 hours. If you’re accepted, you can start setting up your account and get selling. Payment Depot will also send your free POS terminal.

User-Friendly POS Terminals with Powerful Functionality

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While the free Dejavoo terminal offers the basics, if you need a more powerful solution, Payment Depot is a certified reseller of Clover equipment1. These devices have a user-friendly UI that lets you manage many aspects of your business straight from the terminal itself – you can sort inventory, manage staff scheduling, create custom orders, and much more.

All-in-One Payment Dashboard

Payment Depot also offers an impressive dashboard1 for managing your payments in one place. Its responsive UI is easy to navigate and has plenty of useful functionality.

For example, you can easily create and send branded invoices or simple payment links that customers can use to pay for items or services. It’s also simple to run promotions, monitor sales performance, and even manually input payments.

Versatile Pricing Can Lead to Big Savings for Most Businesses

One of Payment Depot’s biggest selling points is its versatile pricing structure. While it promises not to add a markup to your transactions on the subscription plan, this isn’t exactly right. It adds no percentage markup but charges a flat fee of 0% + 10¢ (in-person) and 0% + 10¢ (online) per transaction. On the plus side, these are among the lowest per-transaction fees I’ve ever come across.

Payment Depot offers two subscription plans, with the only difference between them being the total amount of payments you can process. The Starter plan ($79.00/month) allows you to process up to $120,000 per year, while Growth ($99.00/month) is up to $150,000 per year. You can request a custom quote or might be referred to Stax if your business’s yearly card income exceeds these caps. While previously, Payment Depot only had subscription plans, now it offers affordable interchange plus pricing with rates ranging from 0.2%-1.95%.

Regardless of the plan you choose, you’ll have to pay the wholesale interchange fees charged by each credit card network in addition to Payment Depot’s low transaction fees. But there’s no avoiding that. The total fee you’d pay will depend on various factors, including the type and brand of the card used, whether the payment was completed in person or online, your business type, etc. There are also some extra minor charges to be aware of, such as for chargebacks and software for Clover terminals. But again, these tend to be outside of Payment Depot’s control.

While Payment Depot’s interchange+ plan is less predictable, it comes with no monthly fee and is among the most competitive I’ve seen. This means you won’t need to chase any particular card volume to experience savings, making it ideal for low-volume businesses or newer establishments. If you process at least $8,000/month or more, consider its subscription-based plans. For anything lower than that, you will likely end up paying less with Payment Depot’s interchange+ plan.

Regardless of the plan that fits you, in most cases, you’ll enjoy significant savings with Payment Depot. In fact, as long as your business can truly benefit from a subscription model, you stand to save up to 40% on your credit card processing bill1. The more you earn, the more you can save.

A PCI-Compliant Platform That Goes the Extra Mile

Payment Depot has had a spotless history when it comes to security – neither Payment Depot, nor its parent company Stax, have ever suffered a data breach. In addition, it’s easy to achieve PCI compliance because Payment Depot already offers the necessary encryption and data protection with every plan.

PCI Compliance & More

Payment Depot complies with the highest level of PCI standards1. This means businesses that have previously had a data breach, and those who process millions of credit card transactions per year, will be able to work with Payment Depot to achieve PCI compliance.

Surprisingly, Payment Depot has also aligned itself with the standards set by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law. As an American company, Payment Depot isn’t required to comply with this, yet it does so anyway as part of its commitment to transparency and data protection. This is above and beyond territory.

While there’s no guide available to help you achieve PCI compliance on your end, Payment Depot’s 24/7 technical support will be happy to advise you. That said, I would’ve liked to see some accessible resources without the need to call support.

Additional Security Features

In its effort to achieve PCI compliance, Payment Depot offers end-to-end encryption on all payment devices. Card information is never stored after a transaction is complete.

Additionally, Payment Depot’s e-commerce platform allows you to instantly and automatically verify a customer’s given information, reducing the risk of chargebacks.

Your customer’s data is further protected by payment tokenization. This means that sensitive card information is replaced by an alpha-numeric code during a transaction, ensuring that nothing usable is actually transmitted.

Overall, I was impressed with Payment Depot’s security. It offers a high-level of data protection that few competing payment processors can match.

Unresponsive Email Support, but Fantastic Phone Support

Payment Depot offers technical and sales support through an online form, live chat or over the phone. With a support team in Florida and California, Payment Depot has both coasts of the US covered. Technical support is available 24/7, while sales support is limited to 8:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m. EST & PST (depending on which team you’re contacting).

I conducted my own test to assess the level of support you can expect. Despite encountering a few frustrations during the process, I found myself quite satisfied with the overall outcome.

First off, I don’t recommend using the contact form. When I asked some basic questions about Payment Depot’s free POS terminals, I didn’t get any response. I sent these during business hours, so there really wasn’t any excuse. Its live chat support, on the other hand, provided me with the requested information, but it took multiple attempts to get in touch with a live agent. I just wish its live reps were more open to answering questions rather than asking me questions and trying to set me up on a call with a payment specialist.

I eventually decided to try the phone support, and was connected within a minute. That said, because I had called outside normal operating hours, the support agent asked me to leave my details so someone could call me back later. 24 hours later, I was still waiting for this call.

I called again – this time making sure I was calling during business hours. Thankfully, I was quickly connected with an incredibly helpful agent. I had a lot of questions to ask, and the agent patiently answered each and every one of them without hesitation.

Even when I asked some highly focused and technical questions, such as the exact security standards Payment Depot adheres to, the agent answered without the need to put me on hold or transfer me to someone else. I was very impressed with the agent’s overall knowledge.

I had positioned myself as an employee asking questions on behalf of my boss, and said that I was transcribing the answers. The agent asked if I could send this transcript over to him once the call was finished. When I did, he sent back the transcript with corrections and elaborations for each answer. Impressive!

So while customer service was initially hard to reach, I was very happy with the phone support I eventually received. I just wish there was a knowledge base available on Payment Depot’s site – then maybe I wouldn’t have had to barrage the support line with quite so many questions.