CardX Review [2024]: Is it Truly No-fee Credit Card Processing?

Seamless Surcharging Plans Reduce Your Processing Costs

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Too often, the big savings some credit card processors promise with cash discount programs never materialize. Here’s the catch: you’ll need to mark up all your prices to recoup the discount.

CardX’s surcharging plans are different. CardX, like its parent company Stax, is extremely upfront about pricing and delivers the savings it promises. Once you sign up with CardX, you’ll be able to keep the full value of your credit card transactions and pay an interchange plus fee as low as 1% + 25¢ for debit card transactions.

CardX accomplishes this feat with automated surcharging, so you’ll never have to worry about complex federal, state, and card brand regulations. By taking care of all the persnickety details for you, CardX saves you money and leaves you free to run and grow your business.

Available in all 48 US states where credit card surcharging is legal, CardX is best suited to businesses with thin profit margins, regardless of size. It also offers favorable pricing plans to government and educational entities.

After reviewing hundreds of merchant reviews, contacting its customer support, and researching CardX from top to bottom, here’s my advice: if you’ve considered surcharging but have been put off by the regulatory requirements, CardX just might be the right payment processor for you.

Everything You Need for Zero Cost Online & In-Person Credit Card Sales

Whether you process in-person, in-office, online, or all three – CardX has a technology-driven solution that will help you save on processing fees. It pairs full compliance rules with advanced administration and reporting capabilities, which you can access through the CardX Portal.

Another plus is the better-than-average payout time. For all transactions made before 8PM EST Monday to Saturday, you’ll receive your payments by the following morning.

Custom POS Terminal & Software

For in-person payments, all CardX customers receive a Verifone VX520 POS terminal with EMV Quick Chip and CardX’s proprietary software pre-installed.

Terminals ship with everything you need to start collecting payments, including store signage (required for surcharging compliance), a detailed “Getting Started” guide, receipt paper, and ethernet and power cords.

CardX also offers a Magtek card reader if you want to accept in-person payments at pop-ups, events, and other locations. There’s a one-time $120 fee for the swiper. This lets customers pay with a credit card or debit card but not digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. If they choose to pay with a credit card, they’ll cover the credit card issuer’s fee instead of you.

While it doesn’t charge a monthly plan fee, CardX does charge a $35 monthly rental fee for the POS terminal. If you cancel your account, you’ll have to return the equipment. But unlike some credit card processors, there’s no restocking fee.

As an added perk, CardX will ship free receipt paper to you at no cost – all you have to do is ask.

Easy-to-Use E-commerce Solutions

CardX’s commitment to offering a turnkey surcharging solution holds true for e-commerce payments as well.

To set up payments on your website, you can embed a link to the CardX Lightbox1, which is a payment form that pops up on your page so your customers don’t have to leave your website to complete their transaction. When it’s time to pay, your customers can simply click on a “Pay Now” button to bring up the Lightbox and choose their payment method – credit card, debit card, or ACH.

If a customer chooses to pay for a product or service with a credit card, CardX displays the surcharge fee and gives them an opportunity to choose a cheaper, no-fee payment method (debit card or e-check).

Virtual Terminal for Card-Not-Present Payment Processing

If your business accepts telephone and mail orders for products or services, you can take advantage of CardX’s secure Virtual Terminal. This comes with advanced software that instantly recognizes a customer’s card type (credit, debit, or prepaid) and automatically calculates any payment processing fees that apply.

The fee to use the virtual terminal is $29 per month.

Advanced Analytics and Reporting

Simply log onto the CardX Portal (or Virtual Terminal) to search, view, and download weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly sales and deposit reports.

When you log on, you’ll see a quick overview of your business’s recent performance, including the number of recent sales (sorted by in-person or online), the total volume of deposits, the amount you’ve saved on credit card processing1, and more.

While CardX doesn’t offer apps and integrations, you can integrate third-party accounting and invoicing programs like QuickBooks by simply embedding a link.

Special Features for Government & Educational Institutions

Eligible government and educational organizations are entitled to CardX plans with reduced rates and unique features.

At the top of the list is CardX’s “Intelligent Rate” technology, which automatically identifies the type of credit card used and adjusts the surcharge fee to correspond to the interchange rate set by the card issuer. Customers will pay a fee that ranges from 0.75% – 3.99%, depending on the card type they use.

This feature benefits consumers who use a no-frills, basic credit card – they’ll no longer be asked to cover the higher interchange rates charged for rewards cards.

To learn if your institution qualifies, you can view a list of eligible merchant category codes (MCC)1 on the website or contact customer support.

A User-Friendly Experience

Even though you can’t apply online, setting up an account with CardX is straightforward and benefits from a quick approval process. In my experience, CardX sales representatives are helpful and informative, and they’re happy to support you through the application process.

Getting Started With CardX

To get started, you can submit an online form1 with your name, email, phone number, and company. You can also call the sales or customer support line directly.

When you’re ready to try the service, CardX will send you an application via DocuSign. If you’re an established merchant with a credit card payment history, you only have to submit the application and a color copy of your driver’s license. It should take no more than 2 to 3 days for CardX’s underwriters to approve your account.

Even if your business doesn’t have any payment processing history, the only supporting documentation you have to submit with your application is a copy of your driver’s license.

Once your account is approved, CardX will send your login credentials so you can access the Portal and add additional users, who will all get their own login details. You can also set access preferences for users.

An All-in-One Solution With Essential Software Built-in

CardX ships its POS terminal with its proprietary software installed and ready to use, so you can start accepting payments immediately.

To accept card-not-present payments with the CardX Virtual Terminal, log into your account on the CardX website with your username and password as you would for any other cloud-based platform. You don’t need any technical expertise to key in manual payments using the virtual terminal.

Intuitive Interface for Managing Sales

From your CardX portal, you can access an overview of your business’s current sales, deposits, and processing savings. Even if you’ve never worked with a payment processor before, CardX’s user-friendly interface1 makes it easy to access and customize your analytics data and reports.

The portal is also your virtual terminal where you can enter and schedule mail order/telephone order (MOTO) payments, including recurring payments and subscriptions. Jut be aware that CardX only accepts payments in US dollars.

Surcharging Can Save You Money

CardX’s zero-cost surcharging plans will allow you to keep the full value of your credit card sales by passing on all the usual credit card processing fees to your customers. To make this possible, your customers will pay a flat 3.5% customer surcharge on every credit card transaction. Debit card transactions will still incur a small 1% + 25¢ transaction fee payable by you, the merchant.

Also be aware that CardX charges a monthly rental fee for both its POS terminal ($35) and its virtual terminal ($29). Even if you only accept in-person payments, you’ll still have to pay for the virtual terminal because it also functions as the CardX Portal.

This doesn’t apply to plans for government entities and educational institutions. In this case, CardX waives the monthly fees for its virtual terminal and Lightbox payment gateway. What’s more, it uses advanced technology to calculate card-specific interchange rates and applies a smaller surcharge to (nearly) every payment, helping to reduce costs for the people you provide your services to.

CardX doesn’t charge a fee for PCI compliance on any plan. And since all contracts are month-to-month, you can cancel at any time with no termination fee.

Business Surcharge Plan (credit cards)

3.5% customer surcharge / transaction

No Monthly Fee

Hardware Fees:Payment terminal $35/mo.

Software Fees:Lightbox software $29/mo.

Payout Time:24 hours

Accepted Payment Methods: Credit/Debit Cards, ACH

Get Started

Business Surcharge Plan (debit cards)

1% + 25¢ / transaction

No Monthly Fee

Hardware Fees:Payment terminal $35/mo.

Software Fees:Lightbox software $29/mo.

Payout Time:24 hours

Accepted Payment Methods: Credit/Debit Cards, ACH

Get Started

Compliance & Security

Secure Processing for You and Your Customers

Whether your customers pay online or in person, you can be confident that their information is protected and your money is secure. Not only is CardX PCI compliant, but it also offers additional fraud protection tools, including regular fraud monitoring of merchant accounts.

PCI Compliance & More

CardX is a Level 1 PCI-compliant processor, the highest level available for business-to-consumer transactions. After your account is approved, a specialist CardX team will work with you1 to help you achieve PCI compliance within 90 days at no additional charge.

CardX is also HIPPA compliant, which allows healthcare companies and service providers to take advantage of the savings it offers.

In addition to PCI compliance, CardX monitors merchant accounts to reduce exposure to fraudulent transactions and ensure customer data is not compromised.

Additional Security Features

In addition to PCI compliance and fraud monitoring, CardX uses end-to-end encryption and tokenization to keep your customers’ stored credit/debit card numbers secure.

The CardX POS terminal also accepts EMV chip-enabled cards for more secure in-person payments. PCI risk is lower for online transactions because customer data exposure is limited – by using CardX’s Lightbox payment gateway, your clients are never directed to a third-party site.

Automated Surcharging Compliance

As a CardX customer, you never have to worry about complex surcharging rules, which vary by state, card type (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover), and issuing bank. CardX will register your business with each card brand as required, so you don’t have to.

It also offers merchants additional solutions that ensure your business is fully compliant by:

• Providing signage to display at the point of sale (in store or online) that discloses your surcharging policy.
• Limiting the credit card fee your customers pay to 3.5%, so you’ll never exceed the maximum 4% fee allowed.
• Processing the purchase amount and credit card fee as a single charge, as required by credit card companies.
• Listing the combined purchase amount and credit card surcharge fee as a single item on your customers’ credit card statements.

CardX’s patent-pending technology automatically detects when a customer pays with a debit card and doesn’t apply a surcharge – even if the customer runs their debit card as a credit card and doesn’t enter their PIN.

Helpful and Knowledgeable Sales Support

You can contact CardX support via phone and live chat from Monday to Friday, 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM CST. You can also email sales and customer support or fill out an online contact form. If you run into a technical problem with your account, there’s also a technical support team on call 24/7.

To test the standard of CardX’s customer support for myself, I started by submitting a “Learn More” form on the website. Two days later, I still didn’t have a response. In fact, I never received one. This wasn’t a great start.

I then called the main support number and spoke with a CardX account executive, who was friendly and helpful. I got clear answers to all my questions. The agent also sent a comprehensive follow-up email with a PDF deck and additional information about plans, fees, and the application process.

Finally, I tested the live chat service. After interacting with the CardX bot and getting answers to some very basic questions, the bot referred me to a live rep. The connection was fast, and again, I quickly got answers to my questions. The rep I chatted with also forwarded our interaction to the sales rep I had previously spoken with, suggesting that CardX has effective, well-integrated support systems in place.

In addition to providing live support, CardX maintains a “Resources” page containing both current and archived articles, categorized as “News” and “Insights.” These articles primarily focus on the advantages of surcharging and detail CardX’s initiative to legalize this practice across all states in the US. Please note that this isn’t designed as a typical knowledge base.

The lack of a knowledge base is one area where CardX comes up short. On the other hand, its live support is mostly excellent, and it’s easier to set up than with other credit card processors. And while there are no video tutorials, you do have a handy “Getting Started” setup guide that comes with your POS terminal.