Marketing
Many types of businesses use affiliate marketing to boost the span of their marketing efforts by entering into relationships with other companies to cross-promote their products and services. ePayments was designed for affiliate marketing. So, while some competitors may offer lower fees and larger range of services, ePayments can help affiliate marketers. Though ePayments is available for many ad networks, it is not used by nearly as many people as some of its competitors.
Honesty
For the most part, ePayments is honest and transparent in terms of its policies and fees for e-wallet and its prepaid MasterCard. Some of complained that one fee is misleading and worded in a confusing way, as a means of tricking customers. There is an .8% fee with a minimum $85 fee and a maximum $135 fee to have money transferred from an e-wallet to a bank account. That fee is charged against bank wire transfers below $10,000. We agree these terms are misleading and should be changed for clarity.
Sales
ePayments is straightforward and operates honestly in terms of its e-wallet and prepaid MasterCard. All pricing for fees and transactions for these services are clearly displayed on its site. Having online access to this, we feel makes the company look like a trusted, responsible payment platform. Overall, the information is comprehensive, clear, easy to understand, and a very valuable option for individuals and businesses. However, based on the lack of information provided about its merchant account service fees, we believe it is likely that use customized prices for individual sellers.
Staff Education
The core employees of the ePayments team includes specialist with information security and financial and regulatory compliance backgrounds. However, those in charge of customer support are either intentionally vague or do not have a clear understanding of its services and industry. Most of the information provided sounded like scripted comments that all staff were trained to use.
Staff Interaction
Often, when you reach support, the responses are “robotic” and lack a lot of clarity. It can feel like you are going in circles without any resolution. Also, it seemed suspect that whenever a representative offered to provide more detailed answers when discussions were online, the person suggested the conversation be taken offline.
Support
Support Responsiveness
Since the first step to getting an ePayments account is to register, telephone sales people will only speak generally about fees. They keep encouraging you to register and have an account they can reference before giving you any concrete information about merchant account fees. Emails were met with automatic replies promptly. Most came less than an hour after they were sent. The responses to follow-up emails also were similar. Some of the return emails included links to help pages or the FAQ section of its site. Nevertheless, it never seemed like our questions were ever answered with anything more than a cold, automated answer.
Fortunately, epayments.com staff responds to customers pretty quickly on social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. Most of the time, staff replied on the same day.
Many comments are responded to with apologies, brief answers, as well as requests for customers to take chats off the social platforms and discuss issues via direct messaging.
Availability
ePayments is available through various digital channels, as well as the telephone. We found that contact them via telephone and email were not the best options. Many have found that sending emails or using its internal ticket system ineffective. Fortunately, ePayments is active with customers via social media sits, such as Facebook and Twitter. On these pages, customers also can find the reviews from other users and interact with them.
These channels and its FAQs page provides lots of good information if you want to know how to register or verify account, or find out pricing rated to its e-wallet and prepaid MasterCard. However, ePayments is not as transparent with information related to its merchant account services.
Those with questions and issues can contact ePayments by email at: support@epayments.com. Customers who have already registered and verified their accounts, can use their ticket systems.
We believe the inconsistency with its phone and email communications is a problem. It can be frustrating not to be able to get basic questions answered.
Complaints
Common complaints among users were long waits to receive their prepaid cards, an inability to access their accounts, or never being notified of whether their accounts have been verified. Most verification issues were related to user errors. Many of the delays or lack of response was due to users failing to provide all of the necessary documents that had been requested. Some of the complaints about users being locked out of accounts were due to customers not using their accounts for periods of time.
ePayments also encourages people who are having problems to regularly check for internal message from the support team. During the verification process, it is not rare for the team to ask for clarifications or additional documents. Responding to their requests promptly, the team says will move the verification process along quicker.
Pricing
When it comes to pricing, ePayments is transparent in terms of its fees related to the e-wallet and its prepaid MasterCard. The host of its fees for these services are clearly displayed on the site.
ePayments does not charge to open or close an account. However, there are transaction fees and maintenance fees for its Prepaid MasterCard. There are no fees for internal and mass payments, as well as loading funds to an ePayments MasterCard or withdrawing funds from ePayments to cryptocurrency.
Users are charged the following fees for the following transactions:
- Withdraw funds to credit/debit card (VISA/ MasterCard/ Maestro) – 2.9% (minimum $3.50)
- Withdraw funds from ePayments to WebMoney – 2%
- Mass payment to WebMoney – 2%
The steepest charge is for bank wire transfers. The fee is .8% with a minimum $85 fee and a maximum $135 fee. Users have found this pricing information misleading. In actuality, it should state that there is an $85 fee on all transfers to bank accounts where the sum is less than $10,000. Wire transfers above that amount are charged .8%.
These are the fees for depositing through ePayments:
- Internal payment – free
- Bank wire transfer – free
- Processing of bank wire transfers with incorrect bank details or without ePayments ID as payment reference – $30
- Deposit funds from WebMoney to ePayments Prepaid MasterCard – 1% (minimum $5 charge)
- Unload funds from ePayments MasteCcard – free
- Upload funds with credit/debit card (VISA/ MasterCard/Maestro) – 2.6%
- Upload funds with cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Litecoin) – free
We believe one of the best ways to get at your cash is to withdraw it to your ePayments prepaid MasterCard. The card costs $5.95 and comes with two free months of maintenance fees. The monthly maintenance fee is $2.95. But, users who use the card to make at least $300 in purchases in a month don’t have to pay the maintenance fee the next month. Those who don’t use their cards for six months will be charged $10 per month. It is free to closeout a card.
When it comes to merchant account fees, it is not as upfront. ePayments wants to know the specifics of each merchant, such as the type of business it operates, its sales volumes, and other information, before providing pricing information. Telephone staff would not provide even vague estimates via phone, email, or chat without providing us providing verified account numbers.
Termination Fees
Some of the major pros of ePayments is that it does not charge termination and cancellation fees when registering for an e-wallet or prepaid MasterCard. It is unclear if the policies are the same for those that have opened merchant accounts.
