Per the exchange on Paysafe’s BBB profile: a merchant contacted the company in November 2017 about closing his account. The company’s response states a closure form was to be emailed and no completed form was received, that non-use of the service does not relieve the merchant of financial obligations, and that, in the interest of resolving the matter, it would provide a courtesy refund of the last three years of inactivity fees, totaling $9,001. Read that number again. Three years of fees on an account processing nothing, on a relationship the merchant tried to end the better part of a decade ago, amounted to nine thousand dollars, and that was the portion offered back. The surrounding record shows the same machinery at every scale: monthly fees still drafting under the descriptor BNKCD SETTLE MTHLY FEES more than a year after a documented September 2024 closure; a Leaders account billing $26.10 a month that blended invisibly into a merchant’s new processor’s charges until it exceeded $2,500 in a year, with customer service stating not a penny was refundable; $51.90 plus a $99 low-volume penalty billed monthly against zero transactions, with no invoice ever sent; and a documented April 2020 account whose revenue was $419.67 and whose Paysafe charges were $3,072.68.

No FTC actions, state attorney general enforcement, or card network fines against the U.S. merchant business were located. Deductions reflect a documented 2021 lawsuit over equipment leasing practices at Leaders Merchant Services and a 2023 breach of contract suit naming Leaders and Paysafe Payment Processing Solutions among defendants, dismissed without prejudice. Separately, securities class actions filed after Paysafe’s November 2025 disclosure of an $87.7 million quarterly loss, alleging misleading statements about banking relationships and reserves, are investor matters and are displayed, not scored; merchants may nonetheless note which topics the investor suits concern.

The documented record here earned near-floor marks in every subcategory:

Three review platforms, three failing customer averages, and complaint themes that map one-to-one onto the findings above: post-closure billing as the dominant pattern, funds held including a documented $8,000 held for exceeding a monthly processing allowance, a risk-department closure in which $748 for therapy services already delivered was returned to the customers rather than paid to the provider, and support the record describes as unreachable when it matters and unauthorized to refund when reached. On the other side: the company responds publicly on the BBB and Trustpilot, and the $9,001 courtesy refund, whatever else it concedes, was offered. Resolution exists here. It just tends to arrive after the BBB does.

Public-company disclosure applies through the NYSE listing, credited in full. The deductions: entirely unpublished, quote-only pricing that independent review flags as preventing any upfront evaluation; the sub-brand structure documented above, under which a merchant frequently cannot connect the name on the statement descriptor to the company holding the contract; and pending securities allegations, reported strictly as allegations, that the company’s public statements about banking relationships and reserves were misleading. A transparency score is hard to hold above water when the shareholders and the merchants are asking versions of the same question.

Is Paysafe a good processor? Based on the documented record, Paysafe scored 41 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band reserved for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution: its own published responses conceding years of billing on a closed account, termination-fee exposure documented above $25,000, and a sub-brand structure that scatters the complaint record across a dozen names. The wallets are established; the documented merchant conduct is what the score measures.

A 41 sits deep in the band our methodology reserves for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution, and the first task with this one is unusual: confirming whether you’re a customer at all. Three things to do this week: