Two additions make the arithmetic worse, and both are published. The company’s materials document an additional 4 basis points on recurring transactions, a surcharge applied to the most predictable, lowest-risk volume a business can produce, and one that on its own approaches the entire markup a well-priced merchant should be paying for processing. And American Express is priced at approximately 2.73% plus 15 cents, a bundled flat rate rather than interchange-plus, which means that on Amex volume the interchange-plus promise simply does not apply and the markup becomes uncomputable, the exact opacity this company’s brand is built against. Every number in this paragraph is disclosed. None of them is inexpensive.

No FTC actions, state attorney general enforcement, class actions, or card network fines against Helcim or Helcim USA were located in two decades of operation. Full marks, with the standing caveat: a company of this size generates fewer filings by nature, and a clean docket is evidence rather than proof. It is fair to note that a company with no termination penalties and no long-term terms gives merchants correspondingly little to sue about.

The documented theme is holds and abrupt closures, and the facilitator structure explained above is why it exists. One BBB complaint documents $14,307.70 held, with the merchant describing a 180-day security hold imposed alongside immediate account closure, and the company’s response citing its Establishment of Reserve provisions and a post-termination reserve maintained for a minimum of six months. A Trustpilot account from a cleaning business describes a $3,390 deposit held for six days after the merchant completed every verification step requested, including a photo holding a government ID, after which the account was closed while the funds were still held. Another documented complaint describes weeks of holding with support reachable only by email while calls went unanswered. Independent review adds that applications are approved and later terminated, and that the terms permit cancellation at any time without notice. Volume is moderate against a base of more than a thousand Trustpilot reviewers and that normalization is applied; partial credit is given because the company’s complaint responses are substantive and cite the specific provisions relied on, which is more than most of this board manages. But explaining a hold well is not the same as a hold not happening, and a merchant whose account closes while their money sits in reserve has experienced the worst outcome this category measures.

Real credit, first: rates, contract terms, and included features are published before signup, ownership and funding history are public, and a prospective merchant can learn the price without speaking to a salesperson. That is more than most of this board offers. The deductions are specific. The company’s facilitator status and its Elavon sponsorship, the two facts that determine who holds your money and who can close your account, live in legal documents on a separate subdomain rather than anywhere a merchant decides. The platform’s inability to accept a third-party data-enhanced gateway, which for B2B merchants is the most expensive fact about the product, is not disclosed as a limitation at all. The Amex bundled rate is published as a number without the disclosure that it abandons the interchange-plus model the brand is built on. And the reserve and risk policies that govern access to your own funds are described in terms of discretion rather than published thresholds. A company whose entire market position is transparency is measured against the standard it chose, and on the facts that matter most, the disclosure is present but placed where it does not inform.

Is Helcim a good processor? Based on the documented record, Helcim scored 64 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band our methodology describes as a documented pattern of merchant-hostile practices: published pricing that is nonetheless expensive at roughly 50 basis points plus 25 cents for small merchants and about 15 basis points plus 15 cents at high volume, an added 4 basis points on recurring transactions, American Express priced as a flat bundle outside the interchange-plus model, no documented ability to bring a data-enhanced gateway, which can cost B2B merchants 100 basis points or more in unqualified commercial interchange, and a documented record of fund holds and no-notice closures, set against genuinely excellent contract terms and real pre-signup disclosure. Structurally, Helcim is a payment facilitator sponsored by Elavon, not an ISO and not a traditional dedicated merchant account.

Three things to do this week: