If you sell online, somebody else probably picked your processor. The shopping cart came with one, the rate came with the platform, and nobody ever put it on a statement you could read line by line. Black Mesa Payments is a Tulsa based merchant services company, and online and keyed volume is one of the first places we look.

The platform picks the processor unless you ask

Software that takes payment on your behalf usually allows exactly one processor, at 3% to 4%, with no way to shop the rate. Our Open Payments Connect page covers how we break that lock inside field service and salon software. The same question decides your bill online: will this platform let me bring my own processing, or is the rate part of the subscription? Ask it before you commit to a cart, not after your first big month.

What an online payment stack is actually made of

  • A payment gateway behind your own site or ordering page
  • A virtual terminal for the phone and keyed orders that never touch the cart
  • A payment link on the invoice, for the sales that close over email instead of in checkout
  • Recurring billing and subscriptions for memberships, service plans and standing orders
  • One processing relationship underneath all of it, instead of three apps that each take a cut

The platforms we plug into

We integrate with most ecommerce and content platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Ecwid, PrestaShop, GoHighLevel and Gravity Forms. On Shopify we support Shopify Plus only. We do not support regular Shopify ecommerce, and we do not support Shopify POS for a brick and mortar counter. That is a limit worth knowing before you switch plans rather than after.

If your store also has a register, Korona Retail runs $99 a month with no contract and carries a WooCommerce integration for the online side. If your online sales close as invoices instead of carts, our Hyfin integration for QuickBooks Online replaces the processing built into QuickBooks, which charges 2.99% on invoices, 3.50% on keyed and other card-not-present transactions, and 1% on ACH.

Card-not-present is the expensive end of the statement

Card brands price online and keyed transactions higher than a card dipped at a counter, and no processor can wave that part away. What we can change is everything stacked on top of it: true wholesale interchange plus pricing for high volume, a flat rate if you would rather have one predictable fee per transaction, and no junk or hidden fees in either. Where dual pricing fits your checkout it posts two prices, one for credit and one for ACH, and it is 100% compliant. It does not fit every cart, and we will tell you when yours is not a fit instead of selling you a program your platform cannot run.

Disputes come with the territory

A card-not-present sale can be disputed months after it ships, and the evidence is what decides it: a billing descriptor your customers recognize, delivery confirmation, a refund policy they actually saw, and order records you can pull quickly. Those are worth getting in order before you scale online volume, whoever processes for you. Nobody can promise you a chargeback rate, and a rep who does is guessing.

Switching without closing the store

A typical merchant is boarded and live in 3 to 5 business days. Repointing an existing checkout is a separate job that depends on your platform and whoever maintains your site, so we plan that part with you rather than putting a number on it. Every account funds same day or next day, nearly all of our merchants are month to month, and your processor fee program is locked in for the life of our relationship. Interchange, dues and assessments are set by the card brands and sit outside anyone's control, ours included.

An Oklahoma company on the other end of the phone

We are based in Tulsa with a presence in Grove, and our inside sales team works with online sellers nationwide. Support is 24/7 and US based, and you text or call your rep directly instead of holding in a phone tree.

Send us a recent statement, or a Square or Stripe transaction report if that is where your online sales run today, and we will show you what they really cost.