Gravity Payments Review

I founded my own e-commerce business and have now grown it to a business with a revenue rate of seven figure plus. After dealing with Gravity Payments earlier this year, I discovered them to be a highly unreliable partner in scaling and growing my business. I would advise any business with high growth potential to look elsewhere and avoid the agonizing experience I endured with Gravity. We opened the account in May and initially forecasted to process a certain amount. After a few weeks, we implemented a marketing campaign that proved to be extremely successful. We gave our helpful account representative a heads up that we were definitely going to surpass our processing amount exponentially. She congratulated me and told me she would speak to the Risk Department so our processing would continue smoothly. We continued to use Gravity over the week. The following week, we were abruptly told that due to our over-processing, our funds would be held. We got a portion of our funds but a large majority of it remained held. In e-commerce, cash flow is key to the purchasing and selling of merchandise. This period of held funds nearly killed our business, especially at a point in which we were experiencing the absolute peak in our growth rate. We had to appease vendors who gave us credit to support our growth, push out pay cheques to our own employees, etc. I tried several times to reach out to our account representative and the Risk department but they shut me down, citing the possibility of chargebacks or our business going out under. I even tried reaching out to Dan, the founder of Gravity, explaining my situation. While he noted my reply, there was no proactive response. We understand Gravity’s position and the financial risk of being over processing a business. However, we provided all our corporate documents, illustrated the risk prevention systems we use (Signifyd), offered to open up our e-commerce platform so they could see all our sales, and more. We felt we were being extremely flexible but we weren’t being met with a fair chance. Gravity owns the unique ability to manage their own risk (other processors usually have to abide by the underlying processing bank’s risk team). Regardless, they weren’t able to help us which really surprised us given we had such high potential given the numbers we were pulling at that time. This is entirely my unbiased opinion as I do not want the same experience I had to pass on to other fellow business owners. When you’re growing your business, you should be celebrating and seeking to expand the empire- not spending time pulling hair out while nervously wondering what your credit card processing company will be doing. Due to a single credit card processor, I felt that I had lost control of my own business. I am currently using another widely used processor and my experience with them has been excellent. They have been extremely supportive of my growth. At this time, our funds are still held and we have not experienced ONE chargeback since that time. We’ve requested this to them several times. We still haven’t seen our funds back.

I use Gravity Payments for my business Trudeau Automotive in Tacoma, WA and my mother uses them for her business in Gig Harbor, WA. All my experiences with Gravity Payments have been amazing. Their customer support team is always very responsive, professional, and courteous. I have spoken with their support representative Alyssa many times and she always is able to get me the information I need, not to mention its amazing calling and getting on the phone with a real person. In this day and age that is rare and a huge benefit of Gravity Payments.

I founded my own e-commerce business and have now grown it to a business with a revenue of seven figure plus. After dealing with Gravity Payments earlier this year, I discovered them to be a highly unreliable partner in scaling and growing my business. I would advise any business with high growth potential to look elsewhere and avoid the agonizing experience I endured with Gravity. We opened the account in May and initially forecasted to process a certain amount. After a few weeks, we implemented a marketing campaign that proved to be extremely successful. We gave our helpful account representative a heads up that we were definitely going to surpass our processing amount exponentially. She congratulated me and told me she would speak to the Risk Department so our processing would continue smoothly. We continued to use Gravity over the week. The following week, we were abruptly told that due to our over-processing, our funds would be held. We got a portion of our funds but a large majority of it remained held. In e-commerce, cash flow is key to the purchasing and selling of merchandise. This period of held funds nearly killed our business, especially at a point in which we were experiencing the absolute peak in our growth rate. We had to appease vendors who gave us credit to support our growth, push out pay cheques to our own employees, etc. I tried several times to reach out to our account representative and the Risk department but they shut me down, citing the possibility of chargebacks or our business going under. I even tried reaching out to Dan, the founder of Gravity, explaining my situation. While he noted my reply, there was no proactive response. We understand Gravity's position and the financial risk. However, we provided all our corporate documents, illustrated the risk prevention systems we use (Signifyd), offered to open up our e-commerce platform so they could see all our sales, and more. We felt we were being extremely flexible but we weren't being met with a fair chance. Gravity owns the unique ability to manage their own risk (other processors usually have to abide by the underlying processing bank's risk team). Regardless, they weren't able to help us which really surprised us given we had such high potential given the numbers we were pulling at that time. This is entirely my unbiased opinion as I do not want the same experience I had to pass on to other fellow business owners. When you're growing your business, you should be celebrating and seeking to expand the empire - not spending time pulling hair out while nervously wondering what your credit card processing company will be doing. Due to a single credit card processor, I felt that I had lost control of my own business. I am currently using another widely used processor and my experience with them has been excellent. They have been extremely supportive of my growth. At this time, our funds are still held and we have not experienced ONE chargeback since that time. We've requested this to them several times. We still haven't seen our funds back.

Ah, yes. Who can forget about Gravity Payments? After all, it’s the company that made it abundantly clear to the world just how much money credit card processors make when it raised its company’s minimum wage to $70k. The tactic was marketing candy that was gobbled up by many less-than-thorough journalists all around the Internet. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation isn’t so glamorous. Gravity Payments is like any other processor in that it will make margins where it can on vulnerable businesses. Gravity is an ISO of TSYS, and it sets its pricing on a per-business basis. The more you know about the fundamentals of processing fees, the more competitive the pricing you’ll be able to negotiate with Gravity. The less you know, the more you’ll pay.