EMS Merchant Services Review

Pros

EMS has a number of products and services that merchants might find appealing, including in-house merchant accounts, two different smartphone apps for mobile processing, a custom tablet-based POS app, data metrics and insights reporting, card reader terminals, virtual terminals, ecommerce support, and Flok compatibility. All of this means that they are on the cutting edge of the technological innovations that are taking over credit card processing merchant services, online payment merchant services, and others industry areas.

Cons

EMS does have steep early termination fees, and doesn’t offer no contract credit card merchant services. This means that they may not be merchants choice card services. There are also a number of complaints lodged against them regarding hidden fees. The $595 early termination fee is a good example of this, as it may not be pointed out by the sales rep you work with. There have also been complaints that they push terminal leases, which can be a bad use of precious capital for a new small business. Customers may find themselves forced to negotiate with EMS for lower rates or to get out of disadvantageous leasing agreements that they were talked into.  Finally, they only offer a tiered pricing model, which can get expensive for companies that are hovering just under the cheaper tier, and isn’t as preferable as the interchange-plus model that many companies are moving to.

Verdict

While EMS offers many good applications and technological aids, the cons mean they don’t even breach the top 10 merchant services providers. The contract terms are much too strict, and the early termination fee is well above the industry average. All of this means that you should look elsewhere for merchant services.