Pay.com Review [2024]: Is E-commerce-Only a Good Option?

A Good Choice for Small Businesses, but Limited Overall

Pay.com is a promising alternative to payment processors like Stripe and PayPal, and it’s worth considering if you sell entirely online or remotely. Thanks to its modern user-friendly software, third-party integrations, and customizable checkout pages, it’s a good choice for small e-commerce businesses or service providers. In addition, you can set up an account in minutes, and the application form is one of the simplest I’ve come across.

The most impressive feature is Pay.com’s promised list of promised payment methods. While it currently accepts major credit and debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, it promises that even more payment methods – such as crypto – will be available in the future. Plus, you don’t need to wait for payment methods to be activated on your account – simply switch them on in your account settings.

However, with no POS devices on offer and no ability to work with your existing terminals or readers, it’s best to avoid this processor if you regularly handle in-person transactions. And while Pay.com’s flat-rate transaction fees offer good value for small e-commerce businesses, it’s a less attractive deal for high volume businesses.

Overall, Pay.com has a good amount to offer new and small e-commerce businesses, but it won’t be the right fit for everyone. Keep reading to see whether this processor is a good fit for your business.

Promising Software Tools, but No POS Hardware

While many software-focused payment processors focus on quantity, it’s clear that Pay.com’s focus is on quality. You won’t get a range of software tools to rival similar competitors like Square, but the tools you do get are robust, well-conceptualized, and intuitive. In particular, Pay.com’s smart routing software has a lot to offer e-commerce businesses that struggle with a high rate of declined transactions.

With that being said, Pay.com’s current feature list is lacking in two main areas. The most obvious is that Pay.com doesn’t offer or support POS hardware – not even a simple mobile reader, which is surprising. Secondly, there’s a clear lack of industry-specific features like online menus for restaurants or scheduling tools for service providers.

Plenty of E-Commerce Payment Methods (Eventually)

Pay.com’s standout feature is its wide range of payment methods. There’s a catch, however. As of the time of writing, Pay.com only accepts major debit and credit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. However, it lists 50+ more payment methods that it claims will be added to the platform, including ACH, cryptocurrencies, and buy-now-pay-later services like Klarna.

You won’t need to wait for a customer service agent to add the new payment method to your account, either – you can simply add each newly available payment method through your dashboard. On top of that, if you need a certain payment method that Pay.com doesn’t yet support, you can request it through your online portal.

It’s worth noting, though, that it can take up to 7 business days to receive customer payments. When I spoke to customer support, they told me that payout times depend on your account review, which includes your business’s revenue and estimated risk level. Some accounts can receive payments within one business day.

Customizable Checkout Pages

Because Pay.com focuses solely on e-commerce, it’s put a lot of thought into improving the checkout experience for your customers. Not only will you be able to customize your checkout page’s text, colors, and more, but you’ll also be able to use your own domain name. There’s even a built-in A/B testing tool to help you optimize your checkout process.

Once you’re ready to start accepting payments online, you can easily integrate your Pay.com checkout pages with Magneto, WooCommerce, OpenCart, and more. As Pay.com is still in development, it’s probable that this list of integrations will grow as time goes on.

Reduce Payment Denials With Multiple Resolution Tools

If an incoming transaction is declined, Pay.com’s system will automatically attempt to rectify the problem. You’ll get an automatic account updater to fetch updated card information in case you or your customer enters expired card details.

Plus, if a customer doesn’t have sufficient funds to complete the transaction, Pay.com will request partial approval for the amount of money the customer does have available. The system will then notify the customer that they need to use an additional payment method to complete the transaction.

Pay.com also uses a smart routing system to avoid declined transactions as a result of network traffic or outages. The system will automatically determine which acquirer is most likely to approve the payment. If one payment acquirer isn’t responding, the system will route the request to another.

Multi-Channel Payment Links

While payment links are a fairly common payment processing feature, Pay.com’s payment links tool goes one step further. You can send payment links via SMS, email, and WhatsApp, or you can build a custom solution with Pay.com’s developer kit. Most importantly, your customers won’t find a suspicious-looking link in their inbox – Pay.com’s payment links use customizable URLs so your customers know who’s requesting payment.

If you’ve got a larger team, Pay.com allows you to authorize selected team members to send payment links to customers, helping you to keep your payments secure.

Intuitive, User-Friendly, and Great for Beginners

If you’ve never used a payment processor before, Pay.com is a great option. Not only is the application process simple to complete, but you’ll get plenty of guidance along the way. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and you can start taking payments in a few days. On top of that, Pay.com’s software is modern and easy to use.

Getting Started With Pay.com

To start the application process, you’ll first have to create an account with Pay.com using the Start now button on the main menu. From there, you’ll be directed to your account dashboard. Click on Complete activation to open the Pay.com application form.

The application form should take around 10 – 15 minutes to complete, and there’s a good level of help along the way. If you need extra guidance, hover over the question mark icons available for most questions. Each section of the application automatically saves, so you don’t have to complete everything in one sitting. Once you’ve submitted your application, a customer service rep will contact you within a few days.

Powerful Built-in Analytics

Through your Pay.com dashboard, you can view transactions in real time, handle refunds, see sales trends, and more. You’ll even be able to see how much money you’ll receive on your next payout, which is a really helpful tool to help you manage your budget. Pay.com uses a combination of easy-to-read charts and graphs to help you visualize your data.

On top of this, you’ll be able to track customer behavior. Every time a customer makes a purchase, it is stored in their profile and used to form predicted trends. You can track the amount they spend, the payment method they use, and more. This gives you all the data you need to craft engaging marketing campaigns.

Robust Developer Kit

If Pay.com doesn’t offer an integration or feature that your business needs, you can build a custom solution using the developer kit. This comes with an API library with plenty of documentation, plus a sandbox for testing. You can even test the API in a variety of languages.

Simple Pricing, but Not The Best For Your Budget

Pay.com uses a simple flat pricing structure with no ongoing monthly or annual fees, which helps to keep your payment processing bills simple. You’ll pay 2.9% + 29¢ per transaction for almost every payment method – although ACH transfers (when they become available) will incur an extra fee of $1 – $5. There’s also a small fee to use the card account updater, which is fairly standard among payment processors offering this feature.

Pay.com’s per transaction pricing is higher than most and costs roughly the same as other technology-heavy processors like PayPal and Stripe. That’s not to say that it isn’t worth the cost. This pricing model is a good choice for small, low-volume businesses, as well as new businesses that are still growing their customer base. However, you’ll want to consider other options as your business grows.

If you process a large volume ($800,000+) of sales annually, then Pay.com does offer custom plans that likely come with reduced rates. However, by that point, you’ll be able to save up to 40% on your payment processing with a subscription-style processor like Stax. That’s because, despite having to pay a monthly subscription fee, you’ll pay considerably less per transaction. What’s more, Stax offers more software tools, a free POS device, and a great mobile payments app.

Decent Security, but You’ll Need to Manage Compliance Yourself

Pay.com boasts strong security and fraud prevention features, so you can be sure your data and payments are safe. However, it’s hard to overlook the lack of PCI compliance support.

PCI Compliance & More

On top of being PCI-compliant, Pay.com is fully PSD2-compliant. This means that, on top of the security features that are required for PCI compliance, Pay.com improves payment security with multi-factor payer authentication. Whenever customers make a purchase, they will be asked for at least two verification methods to confirm that the transaction is legitimate.

With that being said, you’ll need to maintain your own PCI compliance. Pay.com doesn’t offer any help with setting up or maintaining PCI compliance – you’ll have to figure this out yourself. Achieving PCI compliance can be difficult for new business owners as they’ll need to meet a long list of security standards, and it’s not easy to understand which questionnaire you need to complete and submit.

Additional Security Features

Pay.com’s dynamic fraud detection and prevention tool is one of the best on the market. It uses the PSD2 security protocol, 3DS2, to authenticate every transaction, and it applies additional security checks depending on the estimated level of risk.

For example, a new customer will be asked for additional authentication while the protocol performs extra checks in the background to ensure the transaction is genuine. This information is then stored against the customer’s profile so that, if they return, they won’t be asked for verification again unless they spend an unexpectedly large sum or otherwise behave suspiciously. The more information it can gather on customers, the less often it will perform verification checks.

This means that your regular customers effectively receive VIP treatment at checkout. Not only does this improve the customer experience and their confidence in your website’s security, but it helps to detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. It also means that, if a chargeback dispute is raised, you’ve got a greater chance of winning.

Support is Patchy at Best

You can only get in touch with Pay.com via a support ticket or email form. While these methods aren’t bad, they’re certainly not ideal as your only options. Unlike almost every other payment processor I’ve reviewed, Pay.com doesn’t send an automated response letting you know when you can expect a response.

There are three different forms you can use to contact support: you can email sales, fill out a general form, or send a support ticket from your account.

I received the initial response from the ticket support line, and it reached me in just over 12 hours. While this wait time for ticket support is not excessively long – as I have experienced longer wait times with other services I’ve evaluated – it may not be ideal when dealing with an urgent query.

On top of that, I never received a response from the sales team.

Finally, Pay.com doesn’t have a knowledge base or any other self-service support portal. This greatly limits your ability to troubleshoot problems on your own, so if an urgent issue arises, you’ll have to wait however long it takes Pay.com’s support to respond before you can fix it.