Processor Rating No. 028 · The Anti-Brochure Series
Heartland
The company that wrote a Merchant Bill of Rights against hidden fees and long-term contracts, now selling three-year contracts with a termination fee documented as living in the second document. And a pricing action its own manager admitted was an error, in writing, while the drafts continued.
weAUDIT SCORE
47
OUT OF 100
Scored under the weAudit Rating Methodology · Last updated August 2026 · Every claim linked to its source
Regulatory & Legal Record18/25
Fee Practices & Contract Terms7/25
Complaints & Resolution8/20
Corporate Transparency6/15
Sales Channel Conduct8/15
Company Snapshot
Who you’re actually signing with
Company
Heartland Payment Systems, founded 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey by Robert Carr, and for years the industry’s most vocal reform brand, built on a published Merchant Bill of Rights and a W-2 sales force pitched as the honest alternative to commission-driven agents. Global Payments acquired Heartland in 2016, and today it operates as that company’s small-business brand rather than as an independent processor. Global Payments is rated 49 on this board, and merchants should read both pages, because the documented conduct on your statement now belongs to the parent. Company history and acquisition · Ownership record
What it actually is
Despite the “direct processor” marketing, Heartland’s own registration disclosure identifies it as an ISO/MSP for Wells Fargo Bank and The Bancorp Bank. That is the footer sentence our reader guide teaches merchants to look for, and it tells you the same thing here it tells you anywhere: the sponsoring bank holds the network membership, and the brand on your statement is the sales and service layer above it. ISO/MSP registration disclosure
Credit where due
Real and worth stating: a W-2 employee sales force rather than an independent-agent army, which removes an entire category of misconduct this board documents elsewhere; no liquidated damages clause, so the exit penalty is a fixed fee rather than the remaining-term arithmetic that traps merchants at other processors; BBB accreditation since 2004 with an A+ rating and a complaint volume that independent review describes as low for the company’s size; and Heartland Secure, an end-to-end encryption and tokenization package offered at no additional charge. BBB record, security package, and contract structure
The breach
In 2008 and 2009, Heartland disclosed what was then the largest payment card breach in history, and the company has since built much of its security messaging around that history. It is documented here as a matter of record and scored in Category 1; it is not the reason this page scores 47. The fee record is.
The Headline Finding
The error admitted in writing, and drafted anyway
From the BBB complaint record, and it is the most specific specimen this board has published on post-acquisition repricing: a merchant operating two stores alleges that on November 1, 2025, an unauthorized “pricing action” added roughly $1,500 per month to each of the two accounts. On December 1, 2025, per the complaint, the merchant’s assigned Heartland client manager explicitly admitted the pricing error in writing, by email, and promised to lower the rates back down. The complaint alleges the drafts continued anyway, and frames the matter as unauthorized monthly bank drafts, uncorrected billing errors, and unfair collection practices.
Take the mechanics seriously, because they define the merchant’s actual position. This merchant did every single thing correctly. They caught the increase in the month it landed. They escalated to a named human being. They obtained a written admission, which is the evidentiary standard merchants are always told to reach and rarely do. And on the documented account, the money kept leaving the account anyway. In our professional opinion, that is the finding that matters, and it is not really about one client manager: it is about what happens when the billing system and the relationship-management layer are two different things, and only one of them can actually stop a draft. A merchant’s leverage is supposed to be documentation. When documentation is obtained and the debits continue, the merchant’s remaining options are the bank, the complaint file, and the exit, all of which cost more than the fee did.
SOURCES: BBB complaint record, Heartland Payment Systems, LLC (pricing action and admitted-error account). Allegations are reported as allegations.
From the same complaint file, the anatomy of a modern rate increase: fees rising gradually from the originally signed rate under an open contract, with additional charges announced through statement messaging under labels including Technology Upgrade Fee, Card Brand Enhancements, and Visa Base Increase. Note what those three labels have in common. Each one sounds like something the card networks did to you rather than something your processor decided. Network costs are real and they do change. But a line item that names an industry instead of a company is a line item designed to end the conversation, and the only way to know which is which is to match every increase against the published network schedules.
SOURCE: BBB complaint record (fee-label documentation)
The Structural Finding
The Merchant Bill of Rights, and the second document
A reform brand measured against its own standard
Heartland built its reputation on a published Merchant Bill of Rights, a document arguing that merchants deserve full disclosure, freedom from hidden fees, and freedom from long-term contract traps. This board holds every company to the standard it markets, and here is what the documented record shows against that one. Independent review reports Heartland signs merchants on three-year agreements with a $295 early termination fee per location and 60 days’ notice required, and documents the mechanism by which merchants report learning about the fee: two documents at signup, a short merchant agreement summarizing rates and terms, and a lengthy program guide where the termination fee sits deep in the text. The company’s position, per the same review, is that the fee appears above the signature line. Both things can be true, and that is precisely the point. A disclosure that is technically present and practically unread is the exact practice a Merchant Bill of Rights exists to condemn. When a company writes the standard and then structures its paperwork this way, the gap between the two is not an accident of drafting. It is a choice about which document a merchant will actually read in the room, and in our professional opinion it deserves to be scored as one.
SOURCES: Two-document structure and termination fee documentation · Contract term and notice requirements · Fee structure record
Category 1 of 5
Regulatory & Legal Record
18 / 25The deductions here are historical and executive rather than current and merchant-facing, and the score reflects that distinction. The 2008 to 2009 data breach was, at the time of disclosure, the largest payment card compromise on record, and it produced substantial settlements with the card networks. That is a documented security and compliance failure affecting merchants and cardholders, and it is scored, with weight reduced for its age and for the remediation the company has since built its security messaging around.
Separately, and reported here only for completeness: after the acquisition, Global Payments brought litigation against Heartland’s founder, Robert Carr, alleging insider trading, and the SEC filed an action in 2018; a representative for Carr has stated that exculpatory information was withheld. Those are matters between a company and a former executive, they are allegations, and under Rule 2 of our methodology they are displayed rather than scored, because they describe no conduct toward merchants. Independent review also notes at least one lawsuit alleging contract and disclosure issues, which is consistent with the fee record documented below.
SOURCES: Breach, acquisition, and executive litigation record · Litigation and disclosure review
Category 2 of 5
Fee Practices & Contract Terms
7 / 251
Three years, $295 per location, and the program guideLong-term contracts with a per-location early termination fee and 60 days’ written notice, plus a documented $100 cancellation fee on leased hardware. The mitigating fact, and it is real: no liquidated damages clause, so the exit is a fixed number rather than the remaining-term math other processors use. The aggravating fact: the documented placement of the fee in the program guide rather than the summary agreement merchants report actually reading.
2
The compliance and upgrade line itemsDocumented merchant accounts describe a $125 annual PCI charge the merchant states was not in the merchant agreement, billed across two years; a $200 monthly non-compliance charge in the BBB record; an annual account fee reported rising from $100 to $250 in 2025; and a $250 technology upgrade charge that one merchant describes as being billed for the processor’s own system update. Under Rule 6, these are fee practices, and they cluster in exactly the categories this series sees used as discretionary revenue.
3
SOURCES: BBB complaint record (PCI, pricing action, fee labels) · PCI charge and hardware cancellation documentation · Annual fee and technology upgrade accounts · Contract and fee analysis
Increases as a standing conditionThe BBB record describes rates rising gradually from the signed rate under an open contract, with increases delivered through statement messaging, and the headline specimen above documents a $1,500 monthly pricing action per store that a manager admitted in writing was an error. Merchant reviews describe monthly fees increasing by triple digits over time. A rate you must renegotiate to keep is not a rate. It is an opening position.
Category 3 of 5
Complaints & Resolution
8 / 20Volume normalization earns Heartland genuine credit: BBB accreditation since 2004, an A+ rating, and complaint counts independent review describes as low for a company of this scale and consistent with industry norms. The deductions are entirely about theme and outcome. The documented themes are unexpected pricing adjustments without prior notice, withheld funds, customer service responsiveness, and the resolution failure at the center of this page, where a written admission of a billing error was followed, per the complaint, by continued drafting and collection activity. Independent review also notes that satisfaction correlates strongly with which sales representative a merchant happened to get, which is a resolution problem in disguise: when your experience depends on your rep, your remedy depends on your rep, and reps change. A processor that responds well on average while a documented subset of merchants cannot stop an admitted erroneous draft has a resolution system that works until it is actually needed.
SOURCES: BBB complaint record · Complaint volume and theme analysis · BBB accreditation record
Category 4 of 5
Corporate Transparency
6 / 15Credit first: the ISO/MSP registration and sponsoring banks are disclosed, which is more than several companies on this board manage, and public ownership under Global Payments means the parent’s financials are a matter of record. The deductions are specific and they stack. Pricing is not published, and independent review describes the company as not transparent about rates and fees on its website, which is a difficult position for a brand built on a Merchant Bill of Rights. The two-document signup structure documented above places the most consequential term where merchants report not finding it. And the brand architecture itself now obscures the relationship: a merchant signs with Heartland, is served by Heartland-branded materials, and is contracting into the Global Payments organization, with complaint records showing merchants describing their counterparty as “Heartland / Global Payments” because the boundary is not clear from the outside. Transparency is measured by what a merchant can determine from their own documents, and on this record the answer requires a search.
SOURCES: Pricing disclosure analysis · Merchant-described counterparty confusion · ISO/MSP and sponsor bank disclosure
Category 5 of 5
Sales Channel Conduct
8 / 15
The W-2 sales force, and what it did not prevent
Heartland’s channel is structurally better than most of this board, and the credit is genuine: a W-2 employee sales force with assigned relationship managers eliminates the independent-agent layer whose incentives produce a large share of the misconduct documented across these ratings. There is no sub-ISO army here reselling your account to whoever pays the best residual. What the employee model did not prevent is the classic pattern itself. A publicly posted merchant account describes a representative indicating a long-term contract would not apply, followed by the merchant being informed of a three-year non-cancellable agreement and a $295 termination fee. Independent review reports that satisfaction varies materially by which representative a merchant was assigned. In our professional opinion, that is the useful lesson for merchants evaluating any processor’s channel: an employee badge changes who is paid, not what is promised, and the only durable protection is the same one it has always been, which is that nothing counts unless it appears in the document you sign.
SOURCES: Sales representation account and relationship-manager structure · Merchant review record
The Bottom Line
If you process with Heartland today
Is Heartland a good processor? Based on the documented record, Heartland scored 47 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band reserved for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution: three-year contracts with a $295 per-location termination fee documented as sitting in the program guide rather than the summary agreement, PCI and technology-upgrade charges merchants report never agreeing to, increases delivered by statement message under network-sounding labels, and a documented pricing action of roughly $1,500 per month per store that a client manager admitted in writing was an error while, per the complaint, the drafts continued. Set against that: a W-2 sales force, no liquidated damages, long-standing BBB accreditation, and a no-cost security package. Heartland is a brand of Global Payments (49), and the two records should be read together.
Three things to do this week:
1
Find your program guide, not just your agreementRequest both documents in writing: the merchant agreement you signed and the full program guide it incorporates. Read the guide for the termination fee, the notice period, the annual and PCI charges, and the amendment clause that permits pricing actions. The documented record shows the money lives in the document merchants do not read, and you are entitled to a copy of it.
2
Challenge every network-sounding line itemTechnology Upgrade Fee, Card Brand Enhancements, Visa Base Increase. Ask, in writing, which specific published network schedule change each one corresponds to and what portion is processor markup. Real network cost changes can be cited to a schedule. Anything that cannot be cited is a price increase wearing a costume, and knowing which is which is exactly what a monthly audit produces.
3
If you get a written admission, act on it in days, not monthsThe specimen on this page is a merchant who obtained the written admission and still watched the drafts continue. If that happens to you, escalate in writing with a deadline, notify your bank about the ACH authorization, and file the complaint immediately rather than waiting on a promised correction. Documentation is leverage only when it is used quickly.
They wrote a Bill of Rights. We read the statements.
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Right of response: Heartland Payment Systems and Global Payments are 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 the Better Business Bureau, review platforms, and independent published analysis, with sources linked throughout. Scores are calculated under weAudit’s published Rating Methodology, applied consistently to every company we rate. Complaint data is reported as the accounts of the merchants who filed it; individual accounts describe individual experiences, and merchant terms vary. Allegations from complaints and lawsuits are reported as allegations and are not findings of fact; litigation involving the company’s founder is reported for completeness, is displayed rather than scored under Rule 2, and describes no conduct toward merchants. Settlements are not admissions of wrongdoing. weAudit has not audited merchant statements from this company; no first-party audit findings are reported here.
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 August 2026.