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Card Cutters Review

Card Cutters is one of the UK’s leading merchant account providers that operates as an independent sales operator (ISO). Card Cutters uses its buying power and partnerships to offer smaller businesses the kind of prices normally reserved for lager firms. Which should mean lower rates on every credit and debit card payment you accept from customers.

That puts Card Cutters in a good position to cater for small businesses – and that’s precisely what it does. Cheap rates, a clear pricing policy and some interesting features you won’t find with many providers means Card Cutters can meet the needs of just about the smallest of business models.

All that sounds very interesting indeed, because small business owners have been underrepresented in this industry for far too long. So let’s see if Card Cutters can pull off what moany merchant providers fail to do and deliver a service that really caters for small businesses.

On the face of things Card Cutters doesn’t break the mould with the services it has to offer. And that’s not a problem; often it’s the firms that focus on mastering the basics that have more to offer where it really counts – especially for smaller businesses.

This largely sums up Card Cutters too and you can see there’s a clear emphasis on getting the essentials right. But you’ll also see it holds a couple of aces up its sleeve and we’ll come on to those shortly.

Products & Services

Card payment machines

Countertop machines: For fixed till and point of sale businesses.
Contactless terminal: Allowing lightening-fast contactless payments for transactions under £30.
Portable machines: Ideal for ‘at the table’ payments in restaurants or similar businesses that need long ranges and battery life from their terminals.
Mobile/GPRS terminals: For professionals on the move who need to take their payment machines to customers.

Virtual terminal

Card-not-present payments: So you can accept payments over the phone or by mail, as if the customer were there.
Fully browser based: Meaning you don’t need any extra hardware or software – nothing more than an internet connection – to accept payments.
Multiple users: So every member of staff that needs access to the virtual terminal can accept payments on their personal account, no matter how may others are taking payments.
Real-time records: So you can keep track of all transactions in real-time and search payment history to monitor progress all the way.

Online payments

Online payment gateway: For a seamless payment process on your website.
Fully customisable: To create a payment page that fits the look and feel of your existing website and any future redesigns.
Free trial: So you can try out the Card Cutters online payment experience before you buy into its services.
3-D Secure: Includes a number of fraud screening tools to keep your business and its transactions secure.
Advanced payment solutions: For recurring payments, high-volume processing, risk scoring and integration with ERP systems.
Virtual terminal option included: Bringing all the virtual terminal benefits to your eCommerce business when you need them.
Google AdWords credit: Giving you £150 to get started with paid advertising for your online venture.

Fees

As we say, nothing particularly outstanding about the services Card Cutters has to offer, but we also promised a couple of aces hidden amongst the deck. And it all starts with some incredibly competitive pricing – including a special offer £9.99 per month for startups hiring one of its countertop card machines.

Prices gradually increase for more established businesses and peak for firms that need short term leases on terminals. Now let’s just say that one more time: “short term leases on terminals”. Because you won’t hear that in many reviews about merchant service providers and that’s another ace right there.

A terminal for one day will cost you £23.00 and the firm also offers leases for a week, month, three months, six months and a full 12-month period. And that 12-month rental tallies up at £450 which works out at less than £1.25 per day.

Compare Card Cutters with our roundup of the best uk merchant accounts.

Contract Length

You may have guessed from the fees we just mentioned that Card Cutters has yet another ace at hand, in the form of contracts. This is a dirty topic in the payment industry and Card Cutters makes a clear effort to clean it up. Basic contracts start at 18 months, but those short-term leases make Card Cutters a real option for seasonal businesses that only set up during the summer, Christmas period or other times of year.

If you need regular card payments throughout the year, then those short-term leases may not be of much use to you. But the fact Card Cutters offers such an option in the first place says a lot about this firm. And once you add that to their competitive pricing model and relatively short contract lengths you start to see the overall picture with Card Cutters.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

We spent a lot of time trying to find negative reviews about Card Cutters and the truth is we didn’t have much luck. While most merchant firms rely on third party sales agencies, with a reputation for bending the truth, Card Cutters is busy promoting a pretty clear pricing system that leaves little room for misunderstanding.

So, while it’s refreshing not to come across complaints about shady sales reps and false promises, the truth is Card Cutters doesn’t really make that an option in the first place.

Customer Service and Technical Support

From the feedback we’ve been able to get our hands on, customer service and technical support is right up there with the strengths Card Cutters brings to the table. By focusing on smaller businesses that need a quick response to costly problems, Card Cutters has earnt a reputation for fast, effective customer service.

This is a huge deal, because no firm can promise flawless technology – but how they handle problems when they arise is another thing altogether.

Positive Reviews and Testimonials

If you search for reviews on Card Cutters they’ll be overwhelmingly positive. In fact it’s incredibly difficult to find a bad word said about this firm. Don’t let that fool you into thinking they don’t have any unhappy customers lurking in the cupboards, but it’s certainly a promising sign that we couldn’t find any trash on this firm.

As for a taste of the positive, all you need to do is visit Trustpilot (which features as the entire testimonial section on the Card Cutters website) to find a dedicated following of glowing reviews. In all honestly, we’re still trying to weight up how impartial Trustpilot is as a review site, but if that impressive 9.8/10 score is anything to go by, then Card Cutters is up there with the best of them.

Negative Reviews and Complaints

The only strange thing about Card Cutters is how quiet things are on the complaints front. It’s unusual to find a firm that has more positive reviews than negative for one things. But to struggle as much as we have to dish up dirt on Card Cutters is unheard of.

Much of this will come down to the transparent marketing nature of Card Cutters, because this is where a huge amount of complaints typically begin. For us to find no complaints at all though, suggests the firm knows how to keep its existing customers happy for the long term. Which could mean Card Cutters simply has a support team large enough to cope with its customer base.

That’s where many firms trip up as they grow, taking on more customers than they have experts to deal with them. If Card Cutters is getting less complaints to start with and has a support team capable of handling any technical issues that arise, this would certainly explain why reviews are so overwhelmingly positive – but we can only speculate on this.

Final Verdict

Card Cutters is one of those firms that stands out from the pack by focusing on a specific customer type, rather than trying to cater for everyone. And we have to say the results are pretty fantastic. If you’re a small business owner on the hunt for a payment processor, that cuts out the hassle of taking card payments, then this is one of the first places you want to start looking.

We’re not only talking about competitive prices, but transparent prices teamed up with a customer support team that has people signing its praises. The only reason we can’t give Card Cutters a higher score than we have is because of a slightly modest range of services. Which is a shame really, because focusing on those services and getting them right actually proves to be one of the firm’s strengths.