Payment companies — how to shortlist one for your business.
There is no definitive payment processing companies list. What survives is a shortlist you build against a small set of criteria: contract holder, MID structure, rate model, underwriting scope and support. This page explains that shortlist and shows where BazPay sits inside it.
BazPay is a direct regional acquirer and gateway operated by NEWERA PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES LTD. Scoped to EU, UK and Commonwealth e-commerce sellers, subscription software firms and professional-services businesses.
What BazPay brings to a shortlist of payment companies
Four things stay true whether you clear a hundred euros a day or several million. They are the answers you would want any credible online payment processing company to give, in writing, before you sign.
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One legal entity, one contract
Every merchant contracts with BazPay directly. No downstream reseller, no aggregated MID pool, no third party that owns your MID. The company that authorises your traffic is the company that settles your funds.
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Sized for the merchants we underwrite
BazPay is not one of the biggest payment processing companies by volume — it is the right size for the merchants across the EU, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand it boards. Direct access to the integration team is a feature of that scale, not an accident.
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Published rate structure
Interchange, scheme fees and gateway margin appear as separate lines on every settled transaction. You do not compare a shortlist of payment companies against a blended rate you cannot see through.
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Transparent scope
The list of merchant types BazPay does and does not board is published. That saves everyone a boarding cycle when the answer is going to be no anyway.
The four kinds of card payment processing companies you will meet
Most shortlist confusion comes from treating every payment company as the same category. Below are the four structural types you will encounter in procurement, in the order they tend to appear.
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Direct acquirer
Direct-acquirer payment companies
One entity holds acquiring membership with the card networks, runs the gateway and settles the merchant. Fewer boarding shortcuts, cleaner reporting and named-MID attribution. BazPay is a direct-acquirer payment company of this type for the regional book.
- Named MID
- Interchange++
- Direct settlement
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Reseller
Aggregated / third-party PSP
A company that resells a downstream acquirer under an aggregated MID. Fast to sign, and one of the fastest ways to go live — with the trade-offs of shared attribution and blended reporting.
- Shared MID
- Blended rate
- Fast boarding
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Gateway-only
Gateway payment companies
Payment companies that provide the software layer only, forwarding authorisation traffic to an acquirer you contract separately. Useful when you already hold a bank relationship you want to keep.
- Software only
- Bring-your-own-MID
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Full-stack
Full-stack payment platform
A company that bundles acceptance, billing, fraud, payouts and reporting on one API. Higher engineering leverage for teams that would rather integrate once than stitch four vendors together. BazPay ships in this shape.
- One API
- One dashboard
- One event catalogue
The underlying platform: payment infrastructure. The service envelope: payment gateway services.
Six steps to shortlist and choose a payment company
The mistake to avoid is treating vendor demos as evaluation. Demos are marketing. Evaluation is asking every vendor the same questions and scoring the answers.
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Define scope
Business model, target markets, monthly volume and channel mix (web, mobile, in-app) written down before you contact any payment company.
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Filter by fit
Cross out companies that do not underwrite your merchant type, do not settle in your region or do not offer the rails your shoppers already use.
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Score the shortlist
Score the survivors against the seven criteria above. Fill answers in a spreadsheet — the sales call turns into fact-checking, not discovery.
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Demo the API
Ask each vendor for sandbox access and post a real charge. This is where the difference between a gateway you can build on and one you cannot becomes visible.
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Reference check
Speak to a merchant in your size band and vertical who has been live for at least six months. Ask about incidents, migrations and rate changes.
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Contract
Sign with the company whose named contract-holder matches its acquirer, whose rate card matches its published pricing and whose support matches your on-call model.
Seven criteria to score every candidate against
Apply the same seven criteria to every gateway payment company on your shortlist. Below is where BazPay lands on each, next to the typical reseller answer for contrast.
| Criterion | BazPay | Typical reseller / aggregator |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity + region | NEWERA PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES LTD, regional | Reseller or offshore entity |
| Contract holder | Direct with BazPay as acquirer | Downstream acquirer via reseller |
| MID structure | Named MID per merchant | Shared MID pool |
| Rate structure | Interchange++ per transaction | Blended-rate summary |
| Underwriting scope | Merchants across the EU, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (published list) | Broad, few exclusions |
| Support model | Named integration manager | Ticket queue |
| PCI scope | Merchant SAQ A via hosted fields | Full merchant PCI where PAN passes servers |
Rate structure on the pricing page. Plugin coverage on integrations. Underlying contract on merchant acquiring.
What the BazPay platform ships
Every capability below is on the standard integration. Turn features on with a request flag or a dashboard toggle — no enterprise-tier gate on the primitives most payment companies keep behind a sales call.
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Direct regional acquiring
One EU, UK and Commonwealth licence, one named MID per merchant and settlement into your local settlement account — no reseller layer between you and the schemes.
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Cards, wallets and APMs
Visa, Mastercard, Cartes Bancaires, eftpos, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, Bancontact, BLIK, pay by bank, PayTo and Interac through one integration.
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Recurring billing
Card-on-file with network tokens, MIT exemptions on renewals and dunning-aware retries baked into the platform.
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Payouts
SEPA and SEPA Instant to your named settlement account. SWIFT and push-to-card available on approved corridors for specific routes.
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Fraud rule engine
Device, velocity and geography signals scored inline with allow, step-up, review and block verdicts you tune from the dashboard.
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Hosted checkout
Prebuilt hosted pages plus drop-in components — the fastest way to a compliant checkout that still fits your brand.
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Signed webhooks
HMAC-signed, replay-protected events for every state change across every rail — one signature scheme end to end.
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Interchange++ reporting
Every settled transaction breaks out interchange, scheme fees and gateway margin for line-level reconciliation.
Ask every payment company to post one real charge
The fastest way to separate credible payment processing companies online from marketing-heavy ones is to ask each to give you sandbox keys and post a real charge. Below is what a BazPay charge looks like — versioned, idempotent and returning a canonical object regardless of rail.
POST /v1/charges
Idempotency-Key: 8f1c-2b3a-9e4d
BazPay-Version: 2026-04-01
{
"amount": 4990,
"currency": "EUR",
"payment_method": "card",
"capture": "auto",
"three_d_secure": "required_if_needed",
"descriptor": "ACME EU LTD",
"metadata": { "order_id": "ORD-10842" }
} The response returns the authorisation code, the MID it posted against and the exemption applied. Read the complete schema in the API reference.
Who BazPay boards as a payment company
Underwriting is scoped to four merchant profiles. If your model fits, boarding takes days rather than weeks. If it does not, it is better to know before the demo call.
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E-commerce sellers
DTC brands and multi-country storefronts running Shopware, Magento 2, WooCommerce or PrestaShop. One direct regional payment company under the hood.
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Subscription software
SaaS teams billing monthly and annual plans with saved-card renewals, MIT exemptions and dunning — the shape most SaaS payment companies claim, one BazPay ships.
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Professional services
Agencies and consultancies invoicing higher tickets with named-payer allow lists and enforced 3-D Secure 2 over a ceiling you set.
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Digital publishers
Membership renewals, single-issue purchases and paywall unlocks reconciled per SKU on one MID.
Out of scope for BazPay: adult, gambling, cannabis, CBD, nutraceutical, forex, CFD, crypto-exchange, debt-collection and MLM. BazPay is not a merchant of record, not a consumer wallet and not a marketplace of third-party PSPs.
Compliance signals every payment company shortlist should require
The floor for a credible payment company is PCI DSS Level 1 on its own environment, authentication with 3-D Secure 2 and named scheme registrations. Anything below the floor is a red flag — a company that cannot show you those attestations does not belong on your shortlist. BazPay's signals are below for reference.
- PCI DSS Level 1
- Annual assessment on the acquiring and gateway environment
- Merchant SAQ A
- Hosted fields and gateway vault keep card data out of your stack
- Authentication
- 3-D Secure 2.2 with automatic exemption logic on every card charge
- GDPR
- In-region data residency; DPA on request
- SEPA / SEPA Instant
- Direct participation for merchant payouts in supported corridors
- Scheme registrations
- Visa VIRP and Mastercard SPoC/PCI-CP where required
Questions merchants ask about payment companies
Is there a definitive payment processing companies list I can pick from?
No definitive list survives a real procurement pass. The market changes as licences move, resellers get acquired and networks admit new members. A better approach is to build your own shortlist against a small set of criteria (contract holder, MID structure, rate structure, underwriting scope, PCI scope, support model), then check each candidate against those answers. BazPay is one credible regional-scoped answer on that shortlist.
Is BazPay one of the biggest payment processing companies or biggest payment processors?
No. BazPay does not claim to be one of the biggest payment processing companies by volume. It is a direct regional acquirer for merchants — sized so that a boarded merchant gets a named integration manager and reaches the engineering team quickly, rather than a queue. Size is a legitimate procurement criterion; it is not the only one.
Does BazPay serve Canadian merchants — is it one of the Canadian payment processors?
No. BazPay is a European and Commonwealth Union payment company operated by NEWERA PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES LTD. It boards merchants under regional acquiring and settles in EUR into a regional settlement account. Merchants looking for Canadian payment systems, Canadian payment processors or Canadian payment processing companies should shortlist providers licensed in Canada — BazPay is not in that market.
Are you a suitable option among payment processing companies for small businesses?
Yes, when the small business fits regional underwriting: e-commerce, subscription software, professional services and digital publishers. Every merchant BazPay boards receives the same service surface — named integration manager, sandbox, dashboard admin, signed webhooks and interchange++ reporting — regardless of monthly volume.
How does BazPay compare with healthcare payment processing companies?
For clinical or PHI-bearing workflows, BazPay is not the right fit. It does not act as a health care payment system and does not store patient health data. The medical adjacency BazPay does cover is the non-clinical side — private clinics, therapists and healthcare software billing consultations, memberships or subscriptions — where no protected health information sits on the payment side.
Does BazPay offer instalments, BNPL or payment plan companies' functionality?
No. BazPay is a payment gateway and acquirer, not a payment plan company. Instalment plans, BNPL underwriting and credit-provision products are outside its scope. Merchants wanting instalments can still accept cards on the BazPay contract and integrate a specialist BNPL provider separately on the checkout page.
What makes BazPay different from other online payment processing companies?
Three things: it is a direct regional acquirer (not a reseller), it bundles acceptance, recurring billing, fraud and payouts on one platform (not stitched vendors), and it publishes underwriting scope and rate structure openly. The trade-off is that scope — BazPay is not for every merchant type; that is exactly what keeps the book underwritable and the approval rates stable.
How long does it take to switch from another payment company?
Boarding for a regional merchant typically completes in a few business days once KYC documents, beneficial ownership evidence and business model description are received. Migration from an incumbent processor — vault imports, network-token portability, debit-order mandate handovers — is planned alongside boarding, with old and new webhook streams running in parallel until traffic is proven on the new stack.
Add BazPay to your shortlist of payment companies
Share your business model, monthly volume and target markets and we will confirm boarding fit and likely rate structure within one working day. Read more about the operating company on about NEWERA PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES LTD, and explore related pages: card and APM processing, recurring billing, open banking.