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Processor Rating No. 008 · The Anti-Brochure Series
Bank of America
Merchant Services
Merchant Services
Sued over data security fees while a whistleblower alleged the company’s own compliance was the problem. A genuinely reformed contract, and a legacy paper trail that says read yours anyway.
weAUDIT SCORE
60
OUT OF 100
Scored under the weAudit Rating Methodology · Last updated July 2026 · Every claim linked to its source
Regulatory & Legal Record21/25
Fee Practices & Contract Terms17/25
Complaints & Resolution4/20
Corporate Transparency12/15
Sales Channel Conduct6/15
Company Snapshot
Who you’re actually signing with
Brand
Bank of America merchant services, historically operated as Banc of America Merchant Services (BAMS), a 2009 joint venture between Bank of America and First Data. The JV dissolved when the contract ended in June 2020, shortly after Fiserv acquired First Data, and the bank now runs merchant services in-house. JV dissolution announcement
Why the history matters
Merchants who signed before roughly 2020 are on legacy paper written for the First Data era: three-year terms, auto-renewals, termination fees, and separate equipment leases. Merchants signing today get materially different terms. Both groups are covered on this page, and knowing which one you are in is worth real money.
Published pricing
Genuinely rare in this industry: published flat rates by volume tier have been documented, from 2.50% + $0.20 down to 1.89% + $0.20 for swiped transactions, with a 1.1% additional rate on non-swiped volume. Published rate documentation
BBB status
No standalone merchant services profile. Complaints fold into the parent bank’s BBB presence (accredited since 1949, “A-” rating), which independent reviewers note makes the merchant unit’s complaint record impossible to evaluate separately. BBB analysis · Profile structure analysis
The Headline Finding
Billed for security. Sued over the bill. Accused over the security.
Two legal actions, side by side, tell this company’s story better than any brochure.
The data security fee class action
A 2021 proposed class action alleged BAMS charged merchants unauthorized data security fees. Per the complaint, the merchant agreement required annual PCI compliance validation by August 1 or a $40 annual non-compliance fee, and the suit challenged fees charged outside what merchants actually agreed to.
SOURCE: ClassAction.org case summary, 2021
The whistleblower on the other side of the same coin
Meanwhile, a 2019 whistleblower lawsuit (Slawin v. Bank of America Merchant Services, N.D. Georgia) raised allegations concerning the company’s own non-compliance with PCI data security standards and misleading customer assurances about that compliance. Hold both cases in your head at once: merchants allegedly billed unauthorized fees in the name of a security standard, while an insider alleged the company’s own adherence to that standard, and what customers were told about it, was the real problem. Both matters are reported as allegations.
SOURCES: Whistleblower case summary · Federal court decision (PDF, case record)
And the settlement every merchant was part of
Like its big-bank peers, Bank of America was named among the largest bank defendants in the interchange antitrust litigation that produced the $5.54 billion settlement for merchants, the largest private antitrust settlement in U.S. history, resolving allegations that the networks and their member banks kept merchant fees artificially inflated for fifteen years. Defendants maintained their practices were lawful.
SOURCES: Co-lead counsel case summary (names Bank of America among defendants) · Official settlement site
Category 1 of 5
Regulatory & Legal Record21 / 25
No FTC actions or state AG enforcement against the merchant unit were located, and independent research identified no other outstanding class actions beyond those described above. Deductions reflect the interchange settlement and the 2021 fee class action. As with our other bank-processor ratings, the parent bank’s broader regulatory settlement history across its consumer and institutional operations falls outside merchant processing and is not scored here.
SOURCE: Merchant-unit litigation review
Category 2 of 5
Fee Practices & Contract Terms17 / 25
This category tells a two-era story, and we score what merchants face today while documenting what legacy merchants are still living with.
The reform, on the record
Independent reviewers document that after the 2020 Fiserv split, the company began advertising no long-term contracts and no early termination fees for new accounts, dropped monthly and annual fees on its flat-rate option, publishes volume-based rates, and sells equipment outright instead of leasing. That is a genuine, verifiable improvement, and the score reflects it. It is also worth saying plainly why it matters: the old model generated years of documented complaints, and the company itself apparently concluded those terms could not survive daylight.
SOURCES: Merchant Maverick contract analysis · Pricing structure update
The legacy paper, still out there
The documented pre-2020 structure: three-year contracts with one-year automatic renewals, early termination fees up to $500, a 1.1% additional rate on all non-swiped volume, annual fees appearing on unused accounts, and confusing fee structures independent reviewers say drew considerable backlash. Merchants who signed in that era and never renegotiated are, in many documented cases, still on those terms.
SOURCES: Contract terms documentation · Merchant accounts · Business.org review
The two-contract trap, from the documented record: merchants report signing what they believed was one agreement with the bank, then discovering a separate four-year equipment lease with First Data they say was never explained, in one case billing $38.49 per month for years after the service was cancelled and the machine returned, totaling $1,293, with each company pointing the merchant at the other.
SOURCE: Documented merchant accounts
Category 3 of 5
Complaints & Resolution4 / 20
The recurring themes across the documented record:
1
Holds and terminationsDocumented accounts include an attempted $7,000 hold on a merchant in their first year, funds kept after the merchant confirmed transactions were not fraudulent, and account freezes and shutdowns triggered by chargeback and volume flags.
2
A signature dispute worth reading twiceOne documented merchant account states the signature on the agreement produced against them was not theirs at all, with lawyers pursuing the early termination fee anyway. Another describes signing on a pin pad where the merchant could see only what the rep chose to display. We report these as the merchants’ accounts; the pattern they describe is why we tell every business owner to demand the full paper before any signature, on anything.
3
The collections mazeDocumented accounts describe multi-call ordeals to reach a collections department the company’s own representatives struggled to contact, hangups, unexplained residual balances, and closure requests that produced continued monthly billing.
4
SOURCES: Merchant complaint records · Documented merchant accounts · Complaint theme analysis
The measurement problemBecause the merchant unit has no standalone BBB profile, its complaint record cannot be separated from the parent bank’s, and our methodology deducts for exactly that kind of structural opacity. A division whose report card cannot be read is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
Category 4 of 5
Corporate Transparency12 / 15
Credit given in full: publishing flat rates by volume tier on a public page is something most of this industry refuses to do, and Bank of America has been documented doing it. Full public-company disclosure applies through the parent. Deductions land on custom-quoted accounts where reviewers describe the total cost as unknowable before signing, on add-on charges documented beyond the published rates, and on the absorbed BBB profile discussed above. One caution from our audit practice applies to every bank processor: a published headline rate only means something if every line beneath it on the statement can be independently verified. Before you celebrate a rate table, confirm your interchange arrives in the networks’ published categories, not internal codes. See our Chase rating for why we now check this on every bank statement we audit.
SOURCES: Published rate documentation · Cost transparency review
Category 5 of 5
Sales Channel Conduct6 / 15
Selling the bank, delivering the fine print
The documented pattern trades on trust in the brand: merchants of 25 and 30 years’ standing with the bank describing sales conversations that omitted the second equipment contract, promised free business banking that later required repeated fee-waiver battles, and undisclosed cancellation fees surfacing only at exit. One documented account records a supervisor acknowledging the salesperson had been misleading while still enforcing the disputed fee. The reform era reduced what there is to hide; the record shows how it was sold when there was more.
SOURCES: Documented merchant accounts · Ripoff Report complaint summary
The Bottom Line
If you process with Bank of America today
Is Bank of America Merchant Services a good processor? Based on the documented record, Bank of America Merchant Services scored 60 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band our methodology describes as a documented pattern of merchant-hostile practices: a litigated legacy fee record, the documented two-contract equipment trap of its earlier era, and a reformed post-2020 model that earns back real points. The reform is real; the audit of your own statement is still yours to do.
A 60 sits at the very floor of a band our methodology describes as a documented pattern of merchant-hostile practices. The reform is real and the score credits it. The history is also real, and hundreds of thousands of legacy accounts did not get reformed by press release. Three things to do this week:
1
Determine which era your contract is fromIf you signed before mid-2020, assume the old terms: auto-renewal, termination fee, and possibly a separate equipment lease. Pull the actual documents. The new advertised terms do not apply to you until you make them.
2
Hunt for the second contractThe most expensive surprises in this record were equipment leases merchants did not know existed. Search your bank drafts for any recurring charge you cannot name, because the documented cases ran for years.
3
Verify the published rate against the actual statementA public rate table is a promise. Your statement is the truth. Reconcile them line by line, including whether your interchange categories can be checked against the networks’ published tables.
The brochure reformed in 2020. Did your contract?
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Right of response: Bank of America is invited to respond to any item in this profile. Responses received will be published unedited. Contact: [email protected]
How this rating works: This profile reports documented information from government filings, court records, the Better Business Bureau, and independent published analysis, with sources linked throughout. Scores are calculated under weAudit’s published Rating Methodology, applied consistently to every company we rate. Allegations from lawsuits, including the whistleblower and class action matters described above, are reported as allegations and are not adjudicated facts; interchange settlement defendants maintained their practices were lawful, and settlements are not admissions of wrongdoing. Complaint data is reported as complaint data.
Independence: weAudit accepts no compensation, referral fees, or advertising from any payment processor. Our only clients are merchants.
Corrections: Documented errors are corrected within 48 hours of verification. Last updated July 2026.