Overview
Background
Payment Depot is a merchant services and credit card processing company founded in 2013 in Orange, California by Danny Choi. The company originally built its business around a membership-based pricing model aimed at giving small and medium-sized businesses access to wholesale interchange rates in exchange for a fixed monthly fee.
Stax Acquisition and Rebrand
Payment Depot was acquired by Orlando-based Stax Payments in 2021. In April 2023 the company adopted the Stax interchange-plus pricing approach and began operating as Payment Depot by Stax, with the website logo and branding updated to reflect the new ownership structure.
Products and Services
Payment Depot markets payment acceptance to small and medium-sized retailers, restaurants, and e-commerce sellers. The platform supports in-person card acceptance through smart terminals, online payments through hosted payment pages and gateway integrations, mobile card readers, and invoicing with recurring billing. According to multiple third-party reviews, transactions are processed through partnerships with Fiserv and TSYS, two of the largest payment processors in the United States.
Pricing
Processing Rates
Payment Depot publishes interchange-plus pricing with variable markups described on the company pricing page as ranging from 0.2 percent to 1.95 percent above interchange. Under this model merchants pay the underlying interchange rate set by Visa, Mastercard, and the other card networks plus the markup Payment Depot quotes for the merchant specific business type and monthly processing volume.
Membership Pricing Legacy
Before the April 2023 transition to interchange-plus, Payment Depot operated on a tiered subscription model with monthly fees in exchange for lower per-transaction markups. Pricing reported by user reviews and expert content for this legacy structure included tiers around 49 dollars, 79 dollars, 99 dollars, and 199 dollars per month, scaled to the merchant monthly processing volume. Some long-standing customers signed up under the original model may continue on those membership terms until they are migrated to the newer pricing.
Other Fees
Payment Depot current marketing states there are no cancellation fees and that PCI compliance, setup, and miscellaneous fees are not added to the published rate. Reported by user reviews and expert content, however, are accounts of long-time customers being moved onto Stax-managed billing after the acquisition and seeing new or higher monthly charges, including annual fees in some cases. Several reviews also describe processing costs that ended up higher than the merchant expected based on the initial quote.
Contact
Ownership/Leadership: Danny Choi
Address: 238 W Chapman Ave Suite 201, Orange, CA 92866
Phone: 877-876-8776
Website:paymentdepot.com
Merchant Reports
Write a review →mix feeling, with my Busines in CA , I was very happy with them.
everything was as they say . was really no issues .
then moved to TX, I contact them again, this time I dealt with two other guys, Scott and James , two clowns basically . they lie about everything . the lie about when you get the founds to your account, the lie about sending you another terminal , they don’t reply emails. rude on the phone. 3 weeks after I am still chasing them. STAY AWAY
the also sign you with a different provider and you not even aware of. STAY AWAY
I found this page after reading a review on another processing company that is being offered to me by the web cart host. I then wanted to see what was being said about my current processor. I love Payment Depot. I am obsessed at getting the best prices for everything but with payment processing it probably has gone a little too far. Over the past 18 year I have probably been with at least 10 different processors trying to get the best rates. I think Payment Depot has been a great fit for my business over the last 18 months. Last year we processed $375k with them with no problems or extra junk fees. We do a significant amount of ecommerce but also some in person transactions. We have always used Authorize.net as our website payment gateway and Payment Depot was compatible. We do not get charged extra for the gateway, PCI, or anything else. The only complaint I have with Payment Depot is they use First Data that I have had problems with.