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Read More Jul 10, 2023 Filed under: Accounting, Bookkeeping, Invoicing, Small Business
Bank Of America Merchant Services Review
Bank Of America Merchant Services has undergone many welcome changes in the past two years, including no more long-term contracts and predictable flat-rate pricing.
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Expert Analyst & Reviewer
UPDATED
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Bank Of America Merchant Services
| Total Rating | 4.0 |
|---|---|
| Features | Excellent |
| Fees & Rates | Good |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency | Good |
| Contract Length & Early Termination Fee | Excellent |
| Customer Service | Good |
| Show More Ratings | |
| Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials | Fair |
| Show Fewer Ratings |
Bank Of America Merchant Services At A Glance
- Requires Bank of America business checking account
- Offers full-service merchant accounts
- Flat-rate or customized pricing options available
Pros
- Predictable flat-rate pricing offered
- Custom pricing available
- No long-term contracts or early termination fees
- Next-day funding available to all users
Cons
- Requires Bank of America business checking account
- Reports of poor customer support
Table of Contents
- What Is Bank Of America Merchant Services?
- Bank Of America Merchant Account Features & Services
- Bank Of America Merchant Services Fees & Rates
- Bank Of America Merchant Services Sales & Advertising Transparency
- Contract Length & Early Termination Fee
- Customer Service & Technical Support
- Bank Of America Merchant Services Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials
- Final Verdict On Bank Of America Merchant Services
What Is Bank Of America Merchant Services?
Bank of America Merchant Services (BAMS) is the merchant services division of Bank of America (BofA). BAMS offers an array of merchant services, including credit card processing, processing hardware, and support for eCommerce businesses. The company now advertises merchant accounts that come without long-term contracts and no early termination fees (a vast improvement over its previous contracts through Fiserv/First Data which it recently split from).
With its completely revamped product lineup and more flexible contract terms, Bank of America appears to be moving in a positive direction. The company now scores 4 out of 5 stars overall. At the same time, we’ll be looking for fresh feedback from merchants as to how well it honors the promises made on its website.
Bank Of America Merchant Account Features & Services
BAMS provides a full line of products and services for retail, eCommerce, and omnichannel businesses, including the following key features:
Bank Of America Merchant Services Fees & Rates
BAMS offers the option of flat-rate credit card processing fees for small businesses, with processing rates fully disclosed on its website. Customized, quote-based pricing is also available — if you ask for it.
Bank Of America Merchant Services Sales & Advertising Transparency
Bank of America Merchant Services has recently redesigned its website from the ground up, and it’s a tremendous improvement over the old one. The new site features extensive pricing disclosures, including processing rates for merchants on a simplified pricing plan and prices for the company’s many card readers, terminals, and peripherals. However, there’s very little information about recurring or incidental fees, other than a footnote mentioning that POS systems require a monthly subscription fee and a vague claim of “no hidden fees.”
BAMS continues to use an in-house sales team to market and set up its accounts, which should lead to a positive sales experience in most cases. The company does state on its website that you will be presented with a complete fee schedule and all relevant contract documents and that you’ll be allowed to review them before signing up for an account. We strongly encourage you to take advantage of this offer by thoroughly reading all of your contract documents and clarifying any lingering questions with your sales agent before signing up.
While the BAMS website includes links to all of the major social media sites, these accounts are for the main Bank of America organization, and finding information relevant to merchant services on any of them will prove to be quite challenging.
Contract Length & Early Termination Fee
BAMS prominently advertises on its website that its merchant accounts come with no long-term contracts and no early termination fees (ETFs). This is a welcome change from its previous practices when it was primarily a reseller for Fiserv, where three-year contracts and expensive cancellation penalties were the norm. Note that there are still plenty of older online complaints from merchants who had to pay an ETF, but this appears to only apply to merchants whose accounts were underwritten by Fiserv prior to 2020.
We have yet to see any recent complaints from merchants regarding long-term contracts or early termination penalties, so we’re inclined to believe that BAMS is being honest about its contracts. Nonetheless, we strongly encourage you to read your contract documents thoroughly before signing up. BAMS doesn’t advertise any “free terminal” offers on its site, but it’s become common practice in the payments industry in recent years to pressure merchants to accept a free terminal in exchange for signing up for a long-term contract.
Customer Service & Technical Support
| Bank Of America Merchant Services Support | Availability |
|---|---|
| Phone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| Support Tickets | |
| Live Chat | |
| Dedicated Support Representative | |
| Knowledge Base or Help Center | |
| Videos & Tutorials | |
| Company Blog | |
| Social Media |
Like other aspects of BAMS’ services, customer support has been extensively revamped in the wake of the company’s split from being a Fiserv reseller to running an independent merchant services organization. Overall, these changes appear to be positive. True 24/7 telephone and email support are now available again, and you won’t have to contact a third-party partner to get help. At the same time, there’s still no live chat option.
Perhaps the biggest improvement is the launch of a new Merchant Help Center, an extensive online knowledgebase full of technical support discussions, product documentation, and other helpful resources. The Help Center includes a search function, which should make it easier to find the specific information you’re looking for.
The real question is how good the quality of BAMS’ customer service is, and at this point, we don’t have adequate feedback from merchants to assess this area. The company previously received many complaints from users alleging poor or ineffective customer support, but now that BAMS is handling this critical function in-house, we’re hopeful that it will lead to improvements in this area.
Bank Of America Merchant Services Reviews, Complaints, & Testimonials
Final Verdict On Bank Of America Merchant Services
Since breaking off its relationship with Fiserv/First Data in 2020, Bank of America Merchant Services has taken several positive steps to improve both the quality of its services and its reputation among merchants. It’s done away with long-term contracts, eliminated early termination fees, and introduced a flat-rate pricing plan with no monthly fees that will appeal to small-business users. It’s also instituted 24/7 customer support and completely revamped its hardware lineup, eliminating Clover products and replacing them with universal devices that can be reprogrammed if necessary. While we can’t say for certain that BAMS has completely eliminated terminal leases, it’s clearly moved away from them by disclosing the prices for buying them outright.
These are all very welcome changes, especially in an industry where the biggest players tend to offer the worst services and pricing to small business owners.
While we have lingering concerns about the quality of the company’s customer service and are still waiting for more recent feedback from merchants to determine how these changes have actually improved the overall user experience, we’re comfortable with stating that BAMS has made some major improvements over the past few years.
These improvements have lifted the company’s overall score to a respectable 4 out of 5 stars. If you’re already a Bank of America customer (or are willing to become one), it’s definitely worth your time to check out Bank of America Merchant Services and compare what it has to offer against other providers.
Frank Kehl
Expert Analyst & Reviewer at Merchant Maverick
Frank has been writing about payment processing and business services since 2015. He is a retired Air Force officer and a former practicing attorney. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University and a Juris Doctorate degree from the Ventura College of Law, and currently resides in Paso Robles, California.
View Frank Kehl's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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Organization Name: Wyndham Garden
Remarkably incompetent at an institutional level. I would not recommend BOA Merchant Services to anyone.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Yep I do not like they stupid system
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Relational Repair
Thank you for your comprehensive review of BAMS, it lines up with my experience as a sole practitioner in my small business. I have had business accounts with BoA and using BAMS for 4+ years now. For the most part it has worked to process cc payments well, but I have been frustrated with not having a Clover Go device that works with my phone (and hence paying higher rates this whole time and not appreciating the hard upsell to Clover Flex which I don’t need.), and also just all the other monthly charges that keep adding up. I am finally looking into switching banks and merchant processors, and reading your review is giving me courage to do it finally, armed with information that my frustrating experiencing is valid!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: villa azure
it is not possible to describe it. never! Never use this service and this bank, it’s thieves and crooks. A year ago, I started to work with this service, after 6 days they froze (closed) my account and all the money that I earned. It’s been a year since they did not give me my money and nobody can tell me why.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Dare to Wear
For anyone looking for a merchant account please stay away from Bank Of America Merchant. They make it loos so easy and it might seem fair price for your clover device but believe me they are ripping people off. They will sign you up for a long term contract and you won’t be able to get out of it for a long long time. I closed my store last year and I called BOA Merchant customer service to close my account immediately after I shut down my business. They were unable to cancel my account unless I pay over $500 cancellation fee so now I’m stuck to monthly fees until next year. They should be more supportive of small business as we are the ones who work hard to make the magic happen … but instead they will lure you in and if your business doens’t go according to your plan you will be stuck with long term fees. There are many other companies out there to chose from …. This is my experience and I would like to share with everyone. Please don’t make the same mistake I did.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Deeva Threading
OMG, i came here after i have been victimized by BAMS, they never told me about the contract and termination fee. i thought the machine from first data is $500. they have very poor communication skills. They are big frud. They charge me $1478. at the end when i close my business and try the close the account. I feel like so cheated and the amount goes to collection. then finally i had to pay $1478 after paying the monthly fee of $42 for a year. This so sad that most of the people have kind of same situation.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: MicroAdvantage, Inc.
We’ve had BofA Merchant Services for over a decade and frankly I’m surprised that BofA got as many as three stars in this review. When the reviewer listed “poor customer service” under cons, she was not kidding. Because this bank farms out all its merchant services to other companies, whenever anything goes wrong they point fingers and NOTHING gets done. There is no ownership of their product so they don’t put any initiative into solving any problems. It’s the number one reason we would leave BofA in a heartbeat if we could. We’ve tried at least twice to survey all the various processors but because the bulk of our charges come from large ticket or Tier 3 charges, we’ve been unable to find another company that can handle that.Our only saving grave at this point is the fact that they switched their online processing provider and that company’s technicians are outstanding, both knowledgeable and helpful and it’s simple to get through to somebody. You could call BofA all day and never get through to someone who could or is willing to help you. The only worse company in terms of customer service (or lack thereof) is AT&T.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Pelham Services Inc
This BOA merchant service has the worst service that i have ever seeing only comprable with trash collection. Our terminal got Hacked and were issue wrong charges, they not only took from my account the amount the was deposit (no complains about that, but they also did charge backs in the same amounts and BOA is charging us huge fees for those transaction and now we do not find a person in the whole organization who can help us to solve the situation. Please advice if anyone has gone thru the same case and how did it get solved.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: helix
Terrible customer service. No support. They charge YOU for fraudulent online services. They do not update you on requirements. They do not respond to requests. They do not monitor your account until it is 100 times over the normal usage with obvious fraudulent charges online.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Amy, When you mention that, “They do not monitor your account until it is 100 times over the normal usage with obvious fraudulent charges online.” Are you talking about chargebacks?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Life Transitions, LLC
I gave a rating of one star because there is no available rating that is lower . I wish the Bank of America representative would have explained to me that BOA Merchant Services is a separate entity and getting in touch with the right department to resolve an issue is close to impossible. Fortunately, I was able to discontinue my contract before actually activating if after I read these reviews. However, it’s not completely resolved and it’s going into the 5th month. The customer service which I’m lumping all departments (sales, customer service, collections, IT, etc.) are horrible. There is no communication between these entities and you have to start over with your issue each time you are transferred, which in my case has been a minimum of 20 times (not an exaggeration). I did not expect type of behavior from a reputable business (Bank of America) but as I mentioned, they are separate from BOA. A few of the representatives were very helpful and tried to resolve the issue and for them I am grateful. However, overall, I would not recommend Bank of America Merchant services to anyone for their processing needs. I’m still searching and will make sure I read the fine print before proceeding with a merchant services provider.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Around The Clock Gas Service
Bank of America Merchant has very poor customer service, I was on the phone with them for 3 hours and 32 minutes today, I was transferred 4 times to 4 different departments and nobody seem to find the problem, while having some charge backs they first tell you that the best and fastest way to respond to a dispute is to fax it…. Well did that on two occasions and get denied on both, reason! well because my first fax did not go through completely, when I did re-fax and made sure it was sent the second time because I did notice all the pages did not go through. When I called back because I received a denied letter, they said that it was because they only received partial fax, goes to show they are getting paid as a merchant but do nothing for you because instead of checking the paperwork before sending it to the credit card company, they send what they receive first.. to me they are just big bullies and do not care about their customer’s interest even paying them. I am under contract but as soon as my contract it up, I will be taking my business elsewhere. It is such a shame because I’ve had them for as my bankers for more than 20 years, any recommendations on a better bank?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: M.S. Auditing & Comsulting
As it was said in the beginning of this this review they say that Bank of American and Bank of American Merchant Services are two different companies. There are not the same. That is important to know. So if you have a loan or bank account with Bank of America it is not with Bank of American Merchant Services. The other thing is that First Data is the company that processes for Bank of America Merchant Services.
I have audited Bank Of America Merchant Services statements and have found that they are padding merchants statement. this is costing merchants a lot of money.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Resilient Tresses Hair by Nae
What are you doing about it?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.