Merchant Guide To Secure Trading

Monday, June 1st, 2020

Pros

• Offers multi-currency support
• No early termination fees
• No public complaints about pricing or costs
• 24/7 Customer support by phone, email, and online help

Cons

• Fees are not disclosed on their website
• A few merchants reported bad experiences

Overview

Secure Trading is a sizable, London-based merchant account provider that offers credit card processing solutions for average risk businesses throughout the U.S. and the U.K. Founded in 1997 and as a subsidiary of the UC Group, Secure Trading enjoys a solid relationship with numerous acquiring banks. It does not designate a particular “backend credit card processor” on its website.

As of May 8, 2019, the company declared a change of ownership. Secure Trading was purchased by CORDET Capital Partners LLP, an independent investment fund management company. It was also rebranded as Tru//ST Payments Limited. The current CEO of Secure Trading is Daniel Holden, with its headquarters in Canary Wharf, London. 

Secure Trading is known for offering “omnichannel” payment solutions to help businesses expedite their business growth. 

They offer comprehensive merchant services for mail order, e-Commerce, point-of-sale, email payments, and telephone payments.

They offer a powerful and dependable 1 PCI DSS- compliant online payment gateway. Their extensive e-Commerce experience equips them with sound advice about alternative payment methods, additional levels of fraud protection, and optimised mobile checkouts.

Products and Services

• Debit and credit card processing
• Support for multi-currency
• Processing for mobile payments
• Recurring billing
• Online payment gateway
• A virtual terminal

Fees and Rates

At this time, Secure Trading does not disclose or display its fees or rates within its agreement.

Contract Length/Early Termination Fee

Secure Trading offers a one-year contract with an automatic renewal at the end of the year. There are no early termination fees. The only clause for cancellation is that the contract needs to be canceled with 180 days written notice, well before the end of the current term. It is also the merchant’s responsibility to pay for the monthly and transaction fees for the remaining contract term.  Since the contract term is only for one year, this greatly reduces the ultimate cost to the merchant. 

Sales and Advertising Transparency

It appears that Secure Trading markets its services primarily through inside and outside sales representatives, strategic partnerships, and traditional advertising. At this time there is no information available that proves Secure Trading utilizes a large team of “independently contracted sales agents”. Complaints about sales agents using deceptive and manipulative sales tactics is also largely non-existent.

Customer and Technical Support

Secure Trading offers 24/7 customer support by phone, email, and an online help section. 

The few customer complaints that were located online were found on the Trustpilot website. Disgruntled merchants cited a “bad experience”, basically wasting their time and nothing to show in return. Others warned that Secure Trading should be avoided at all costs and called them an “incompetent bunch.” The last merchant said, “terrible cheats, lying, thieving company, don’t use.”

Final Assessment

Overall, the evidence reveals that Secure Trading has performed well on all the critical points mentioned above and can be trusted as a dependable e-Commerce merchant account provider. 

Although there is no overwhelming amount of feedback given by customers about its pricing models and customer support, Secure Trading does not have any issues with transparency within its marketing literature or within the terms of their contract.