In August 2017, the law firm Webb, Klase & Lemond filed two class actions in the Eastern District of New York (case numbers 17-cv-3650 and 17-cv-4507) alleging that EVO promised merchants the rates prominently disclosed in the Merchant Application, then, once processing began, imposed undisclosed fees and increases hidden in monthly statements, with the complaint specifically identifying line items labeled PASSTHRU, APF, NABU, ANNUAL, PCI, and IRS Reporting as the vehicles used to obscure the additional charges, some assessed in automated fashion regardless of the agreed rate structure. A separate 2018 proposed class action by two former EVO merchants alleged the company almost immediately begins increasing charges and cramming merchants with fees after signup, adding fee categories never mentioned in the application, and, most usefully for every reader of this series, labeling them so they appear to be required by law or by the card networks when they are, per the complaint, revenue. Independent review notes additional legal actions identified in 2021 and describes the earlier suits’ resolution as not extensively documented in public records. All of it is reported here as allegation, not adjudicated fact. But when the industry’s most experienced merchant-side plaintiffs’ firm, appearing for the fourth time on this board and chronologically the first, chose its early targets, this fee architecture is what it filed on.

weAudit audited a mid-sized business client processing through an independent sales organization running on EVO and Global Payments rails. Our statement-by-statement analysis documented $134,689.38 in overbilling: charges above and beyond the client’s agreed pricing, accumulated quietly across the statements the way the 2017 complaints describe. The finding was not our opinion against theirs; the provider’s own customer success manager acknowledged the overbilling in writing, and the matter was resolved in our client’s favor. We publish the number, anonymized, for one reason: it is the difference between reading about coded fees in a lawsuit and seeing what they cost one real company. In our professional experience, findings of this kind are not detectable from a fee schedule or a sales proposal. They are detectable only in the statements, month after month, by someone paid to read them on the merchant’s side of the table. That is the entire reason this firm exists.

No FTC actions, state attorney general enforcement, or card network fines were located. The deductions are carried by merchant class litigation: the two August 2017 federal class actions described above, the 2018 proposed class action, and additional legal actions identified in 2021, with independent review describing the matters’ outcomes as not extensively documented publicly. We score the documented filings and report their unresolved status plainly.

The documented record produced near-floor marks across every subcategory:

A 244-complaint BBB file, a C-adjusted effective grade, zero positive Google reviews, and a documented theme set that maps exactly onto the litigation: hidden fees, raised rates, cancellation that requires escalation to complete, and funds. On funds: a documented 24-day deposit hold attributed to a paperwork technicality; a merchant reporting thirteen months of withheld money accompanied by a rotation of explanations, a check was issued, a wire failed, someone will call; and one account describing the final answer as the money having been sent to the State of Illinois, the escheatment endgame readers of our QuickBooks Payments rating will recognize. One more documented account deserves its own sentence: a person who states they never held an EVO account at all found their personal checking account being debited monthly, on the strength of an application bearing incorrect information. The resolution points the category retains come from the post-acquisition record: Global Payments responds, and documented refunds have issued.

Ownership now runs through Global Payments’ public disclosure, credited. The deductions: no published pricing anywhere, statement conduct that is the subject of the litigation above and the descriptor finding that defeated three accounting firms, and a brand transition that leaves merchants documented as unsure which company owns their agreement, answers their complaint, or collects their fees. When your own statement descriptor, your contract’s owner, and your fee schedule all require investigation to identify, transparency is not the word.

Is EVO Payments a good processor? Based on the documented record, EVO Payments scored 37 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band reserved for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution: federal class actions alleging fees concealed under statement codes, documented post-cancellation billing lasting years, and our own audit finding of $134,689.38 in overbilling on its rails, acknowledged in writing. The infrastructure is global; the documented conduct is what the score measures.

A 37 sits at the deepest end of the band our methodology reserves for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution. If your agreement says EVO anywhere on it, three things to do this week: