Top Credit Card Processors of June 2012

Apparently there is a website, topcreditcardprocessors.com, that ranks the top 10 credit card processors in the US. I am guessing this happens every month, even though this is the first time I've heard about it. Here is their list:

1) Leaders Merchant Services

2) National Bankcard Inc.

3) Cornerstone Merchant Services, Inc.

4) Electronic Transfer Inc.

5) PaySimple

6) Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.

7) Merchant Warehouse

8) SafeCharge.com

9) Charge Anywhere Direct.

10) First Data Corporation

After seeing this I was really curious as to how this website determines which companies are in the Top 10. I looked up the "evaluation criteria" that they use, which is as follows:

1. How reliable the actual credit card processing service is.

2. How quickly customer service can handle/fix an issue.

3. How much volume the processor can handle.

4. How "stable" the service is. (This sounds a lot like the first one to me, they probably could be combined.)

5. Whether or not the company can accept automatic payments/charges.

According to the press release, topcreditcardprocessors.com also contacts customers of the companies to talk about their experiences. What stood out to me is that the customers were referred to as "references" which means that the processing company tells the evaluation team who to contact. Obviously the payment processor is going to have them contact the people who will give rave reviews. It's just like a job interview; you don't give out the contact info of people who won't sing your highest praises.

The other thing that sounds a little strange to me is that you have to apply to be evaluated. So this isn't a completely thorough review of all the processing companies; only those that have applied. How do we know that only 10 companies applied and that's why they are the "top 10"? 

I checked out their full disclosure and they state: "Any rankings are ultimately based on subjective opinions; our rankings provide a glimpse into whom we believe would rank #1 or #2, etc. based on our exhaustive research process.  We believe there is no one company that is the right fit for all potential buyers. The rankings are strictly our opinions based on our research process."

OK, that makes sense. So I read further. "We charge a standard fee from agencies and software developers for our time to evaluate."

Aha! I knew it. So it's a pay-to-play type of thing. I suspected that. It's kind of weird to pay to be evaluated to try to be the Top 10; I guess it's just good press for those companies.