Payanywhere Review 2022: Fees, Features, Rates, Top Alternatives

While many important steps are involved in starting a business, finding the right merchant services to accept payments is the most crucial. After all, if your business can't make money, it won't get far.

And while the world of payment processing is a competitive one, Payanywhere is one option you may want to consider for your business. What is Payanywhere, and how does it compare to other payment processors? In this Payanywhere review, we'll answer those questions, as well as explore this service's features, pricing, and alternatives.

What Is Payanywhere?

Payanywhere is a payment processing company that launched in 2010. For those familiar with more well-known payment processing companies like Square and PayPal, Payanywhere offers similar services, including the ability to accept payments in person, online, or on the go, as well as additional business services, including payroll, invoice, employee, and inventory management.

Payanywhere offers two pricing tiers—one targeted at small businesses and offers pay-as-you-go pricing, and another customized to each merchant.

Payanywhere Features

Here are Payanywhere's basic features:

• Payment processing: mobile, online, and in-store
• Invoicing
• Employee time tracking
• Inventory management
• Reporting
• Live customer support

Now, let's take a closer look at each one of their features so you can decide if Payanywhere is the best fit for your business.

Payment Processing

Payanywhere makes accepting payments online, in-store, or on a mobile device easy with their payment processing software and hardware.

Payanywhere offers a multitude of payment terminal options to process swiped, chip, and contactless credit card payments. Most terminals are offered for free with the customer plan pricing. However, you will be charged a monthly software fee. If you don't want to use Payanywhere's hardware options, you can also accept payments with your own smartphone or tablet.

Their point of sale software lets you process payments via the Payanywhere app, or you can download the Payanywhere SDK to integrate payment processing into your own app or website for a more seamless user experience.

To accept payments where the customer's card is not present—say, either online or over the phone—you can use Payanywhere's virtual terminal to key in the card details and process a payment. You can also connect a Payanywhere credit card reader to your computer if you want to accept in-person transactions with your virtual terminal, as well.

Additionally, Payanywhere will store your offline transactions so you can still collect payment information, even with bad service. Offline transactions will be processed once you've reconnected to the internet.

Invoicing

Payanywhere also allows business owners to send invoices to their customers and accept payment online. You can email customer invoices from the Payanywhere POS or the online portal.

You can automate your invoices for recurring payments, brand them with your business logo. Customers can enroll in autopay, so they don't have to manually enter their payment information each time they receive an invoice from your business.

Employee Tracking

Payanywhere also includes multiple employee tracking features such as hiring, scheduling, tracking time, assigning roles, and paying employees. Employee roles allow you to customize permissions depending on the role, including restricting certain information to certain roles, such as only giving managers the ability to operate cash registers.

Payanywhere also integrates with Homebase so you can manage your employees' schedules, payroll, time clocks, and more. You can also manage hiring from Homebase and run reports to find out which employees are performing the best and which could use additional training.

The employee tracking and Homebase integration are included with your Payanywhere account at no extra cost.

Inventory Management

If you're in the business of selling goods of any kind, you need to know how your sales are affecting your inventory so you know how much to carry and when to restock. Payanywhere includes inventory management features that make it easy to store your catalog of products in the cloud and track the availability of items from any terminal or mobile device.

Inventory management features also include:

• Setting categories of items.
• Customizing your items with modifiers.
• Adding discounts.
• Using barcode scanners or your smartphone camera to add items to an order.

You can also set low-stock alerts and get notified when an item is out of stock. For bars and restaurants, Payanywhere also includes tickets and tabs functions.

Reporting

Payanywhere's reporting features make it easy to understand the story behind your sales and what they mean for your business. The Payanywhere software allows you to run reports on just about any facet of your business, from inventory to employees to customers.

You can dive into which products sell best, who's buying them, and who's the best at selling them. You can also learn more about your customers habits, including how often they visit your business, how much they spend, and what they're buying, as well as encourage customer feedback by asking them to rate their experience through their digital receipt.

You can even export reports to other third-party software, such as QuickBooks. You can view reports from a desktop, mobile device, or wearable device.

Dispute Management

Unfortunately, one of the necessities of payment processing is dispute management. Payanywhere provides data on chargeback activity, allows you to upload supporting documentation, and sends notifications when action is required on your end.

Next-Day Funding

One of the features offered by Payanywhere is next-day funding. This means that funds processed by 10 p.m. ET are delivered the next business day. Funds processed after 10 p.m. on Fridays will be delivered the following Monday. Funds are always deposited after the processing fees have been subtracted.

Some customer reviews included complaints about late funding of processed payments. While this might be concerning, it's also unclear if those customers processed their payments after the cut-off time or if Payanywhere was withholding their funds due to chargeback concerns.

Payanywhere Rates

Payanywhere offers different pricing models to customers, depending on your business's transaction volume. For businesses with less than $10,000 in transactions per month, Payanywhere offers a pay-as-you-go plan. For businesses with over $10,000 in monthly transactions, you will have to contact Payanywhere for custom pricing rates.

Pay-As-You-Go Pricing Fees

For smaller businesses with a low volume of credit card transactions, the pay-as-you-go plan can be a good deal. Suppose your number of credit card transactions might exceed the maximum number, though. In that case, you need to be careful signing up for this plan.

With the pay-as-you-go plan, you'll receive the following per-transaction fees:

• Swipe, dip, or tap: 69%
• Keyed-in transaction: 49% + $0.19
• Inactivity fee: $3.99 per month (for businesses that don't process a payment for 12 months or more)

Custom Pricing

Suppose your business is doing more than $10,000 in transactions per month. In that case, you fall into the custom category for pricing at Payanywhere. There's no pricing information on Payanywhere's website for their custom account, so you'll need to make some price comparisons on your own.

Payanywhere Pros and Cons

When choosing a payment processor for your business, or any new software for that matter, it's always about striking a balance between benefits that work well for your company and drawbacks that won't have a significant impact.

Payanywhere Pros

While there are a lot of negative reviews for Payanywhere, there are still a few places where this product shines.

Pre-Authorization

Payanywhere allows you to pre-authorize a funds transfer or payment from a customer. This is an excellent feature for businesses that schedule appointments ahead of time and want to put a hold on funds but not charge a customer until the appointment date. This is an important feature because Payanywhere seems to be the only mobile credit card processor to offer it. Neither Square nor PayPal offers this feature.

Range of Features

Besides the standard payment processing features, Payanywhere also includes a solid range of general business management features. If you're looking to bundle several of your business processes with one platform, this could be a pro for you.

Payanywhere Cons

No matter how great a credit card processor might be, it's likely there are a number of negative reviews out there. However, it's important to consider any negative reviews to parse out what could be potential issues for your business.

Payanywhere Customer Service

One of the major questions and concerns when signing up for any merchant services provider for your business is customer support options. Unfortunately, Payanywhere doesn't mention customer service prominently on their website.

Payanywhere Merchant Portal

In the footer of their website, there is a "support" button, which takes you to their knowledge base. From there, you can click the "contact us" button. From there, a phone number, email, and chat function are available; however, the availability and turnaround time for support requests is unclear.

From reading Payanywhere customer reviews, it becomes clear that there are a lot of negative experiences with Payanywhere support. It appears from reviews that the customer support has improved their customer service demeanor but that they haven't improved their product knowledge or ability to efficiently solve issues and complaints.

Lack of Contract Clarity

The biggest issue that showed up with Payanywhere reviews was the lack of clarity in their contract. When you sign up for Payanywhere, you essentially sign two contracts. Still, the payment terms of the second contract aren't made available upfront or on their website.

According to reviews, if you process more than $100,000 on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal within 12 months, your Payanywhere contract is rolled over to a merchant account agreement. That agreement includes large early termination fees, multiple monthly charges, penalty fees, and tiered pricing. This information is not readily disclosed on their website, so—as with any contract you sign—you need to carefully review the paperwork before signing anything to make sure you fully understand what you're committing to.

Prone to Account Freezes

Like other payment processors that aggregate their clients in one merchant account, Payanywhere faces the issue of account freezes. Suppose your business has a high transaction volume. In that case, you might consider a merchant services provider that offers dedicated merchant accounts. Hence, you have a lower risk of account freezing.

Payanywhere Alternatives

If you're not convinced that Payanywhere is the right choice for your business, you may consider an alternative. Below, we'll explore two of the most well-known payment processors.

PayPal

Like Payanywhere, PayPal is a credit card processor that offers additional business tools, such as invoicing, shipping, and business financing.

PayPal charges 2.7% to Payanywhere's 2.69% for in-person payments. For online and invoice payments, PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 compared to Payanywhere's 3.49% + $0.19. PayPal also doesn't charge monthly or annual fees and doesn't have required minimums.

One place where Payanywhere potentially outshines PayPal is that they provide free hardware. PayPal only provides merchants with a free card swiper. Of course, Payanywhere also charges a monthly software fee. One of the main differentiators to keep in mind with PayPal is that is a well-known and trusted payment processor.

Square

Similar to PayPal, Square might look more expensive than Payanywhere at first glance.

Square charges 2.6% + $0.10 per transaction, making it more appealing than Payanywhere's 2.69%. Plus, Square, unlike Payanywhere, doesn't charge monthly fees or minimums. They offer free software and hardware (if you choose their magstripe reader). This makes Square a fantastic option for small businesses.

Square also has the benefit of offering a robust set of apps and dashboards, offering more tracking options than Payanywhere. Plus, Square is another very well-known payment processor and business tool.

Payanywhere Review: The Bottom Line

All in all, in a sea of payment processors, Payanywhere doesn't particularly stand out for any exceptional features or fees. They don't have a ton of transparency around their pricing if you have more than $10,000 in monthly transactions and need to choose their custom pricing plan. Customer reviews call out a lack of clarity and transparency around certain contractual obligations and customer support for merchants—both major issues to consider.

Of course, deciding which merchant services to work with is entirely up to you and what's best for your unique business. If you're considering Payanywhere, we recommend connecting with their sales team to receive a quote, but be sure to shop around and make sure you're getting a competitive price.