North

Also called North American Bancard, NAB, Payanywhere, EPX, PayTrace

A large, aggressive acquirer formerly called North American Bancard, with a documented merchant complaint record worth reading before you sign.

What it is

North, formerly North American Bancard, is a large privately held merchant acquirer that rebranded to the shorter name. It owns EPX, its own back-end processing platform, PayTrace, a B2B payments and Level 3 specialist acquired in 2022, and Payanywhere, its SMB-facing product. It runs one of the most aggressive agent and ISO recruiting operations in the industry, along with a POS Pros team, white-labeling and a developer portal. Structurally, North is a full-stack acquirer: it underwrites, processes on its own back end, supports, and distributes through a large independent channel. The PayTrace acquisition in particular gives it genuine capability in B2B and Level 2/3 interchange optimization, which is a real technical asset in wholesale, distribution and professional services. Agent-facing terms are not published. Merchant-facing pricing is not published. As with most of the industry, everything material is negotiated privately.

Why it matters to your business

This is the clearest case in the glossary for a simple rule: get the term length, the early termination fee, and the annual fee schedule in writing before you sign anything, with any processor. Not because North is uniquely bad, but because the complaint pattern here is the industry's failure mode in concentrated form. If you're already with North and things are fine, nothing here says leave. If you're being sold on month-to-month terms, get that phrase in the signed document rather than the sales conversation. "Month-to-month" spoken and "36-month term with a $495 early termination fee" printed have coexisted in the same deal often enough to be a documented pattern.

Where it gets contested

North's merchant complaint record is the most severe of any large acquirer we reviewed, and it is documented rather than anecdotal. A compiled review record at PaymentPop reports a 1.0 out of 5 rating across 28 reviews, fund holds of 120 to 180 days including a reported $70,000 hold, $199 annual compliance fees, and $295 to $895 early termination fees on accounts merchants say were sold to them as month-to-month. It also documents a $15 million class action settlement over fee overcharging covering 2009 to 2019. On the agent side, the same record cites reps misrepresenting terms and undisclosed contract lengths. Every one of those is a reported complaint or a settled matter, and they should be read as such. A compiled review record on a review-monetized site is not a court finding, review populations skew negative, and North processes for a very large merchant base — the denominator matters. The $15 million settlement, however, is a settlement. The fair reading: North's products are real, EPX and PayTrace are genuine assets, and plenty of merchants process without incident. But the pattern in the complaint record — month-to-month representations followed by multi-year terms with four-figure exit fees, and long fund holds — is specific, repeated and exactly the sort of thing a merchant should ask about in writing before signing rather than discover afterward.

How to check it yourself

Before signing with any processor, request a single email that states: the term length in months, the exact early termination fee, every annual fee and its amount, and the funding-hold policy. If a rep tells you it's month-to-month, reply asking them to confirm that in writing. Save the email. It costs nothing and it is the single highest-value five minutes in the process.

Receipts

Claims above that are checkable, with where to check them. Published so you do not have to take anyone's word for it.

A compiled review record reports North/North American Bancard at 1.0/5 across 28 reviews, with reported 120–180 day fund holds, $199 annual compliance fees, $295–$895 early termination fees on accounts sold as month-to-month, and a $15M class-action settlement over fee overcharging covering 2009–2019
paymentpop.com ↗
North owns EPX (its own back end), PayTrace (B2B, acquired 2022) and Payanywhere, and markets white-labeling and a developer portal to partners
partners.north.com ↗