COMPARISON MODEL
Comparison Methodology
RapidCents publishes comparisons of payment processors and is one of the processors being compared. The answer to that conflict is a scoring model published in advance: nine criteria with published weights, fixed before any provider is scored and never reweighted because a result was unwelcome. Pricing comes from first-party provider sources, each recorded with the date it was verified, and where a provider publishes no price the comparison records that rather than estimating one. RapidCents gets no better score for owning the site.
- Pricing transparency — 20 points
- Total cost visibility — 15 points
- Contract flexibility — 10 points
- Payment methods and workflows — 10 points
Try it, edit values and click buttons
API request
POST /v1/payments
{
"amount": 24900,
"currency": "CAD",
"capture": true,
"metadata": { "order_id": "4821" }
}Response
Click "Send request" to see the API response
Processing payment…
201 Created
{ "id": "pay_7xK2m", "status": "approved", "amount": 24900 }Demonstration data only
The scoring model — 100 points across nine criteria
Pricing transparency — 20 points
Whether the provider publishes its pricing at all, whether interchange is separated from the provider’s markup, whether the schedule of monthly, statement, terminal and ancillary fees is published, and whether a merchant could compute an effective rate from what is published. The heaviest weight in the model, because a price a merchant cannot see is the largest single source of unexpected processing cost.
Total cost visibility — 15 points
Whether cost stays visible after signing: itemized statements, deposit-level breakdowns, advance notice of fee changes, and chargeback, PCI, non-compliance, gateway and termination charges disclosed rather than discovered. Distinct from pricing transparency, which is about the quote; this is about the statement that arrives afterwards.
Contract flexibility — 10 points
Term length, automatic renewal, early termination liability, equipment lease terms and whether they are separable from the processing agreement, and what a merchant actually has to do to leave. Weighted because this is where the cost of choosing wrongly is set.
Payment methods and workflows — 10 points
The methods a merchant can genuinely accept in the relevant market and the workflows around them: card present and card not present, domestic debit, bank payments, payment links, invoicing, recurring billing, refunds, partial captures and pre-authorizations.
Hardware — 10 points
Device range and availability, whether hardware is bought, rented or leased, whether devices are locked to the provider, certification status, and what happens to the estate when the relationship ends.
Integration depth — 10 points
APIs, SDKs, hosted and embedded checkout options, documented webhooks, sandbox quality, plugins for common platforms, and whether a developer can evaluate the integration from the documentation without booking a sales conversation first.
Funding and reconciliation — 10 points
Settlement timing and the conditions attached to it, deposit-level reporting, whether a deposit can be traced back to the transactions and fees behind it, export formats, and multi-location or multi-entity views where the merchant needs them.
Security and compliance — 10 points
Published validation status, tokenization and vaulting, what the integration does to the merchant’s own PCI scope, authentication options, and whether security and compliance documentation is published rather than supplied only on request.
Independent user evidence — 5 points
What merchants report publicly and consistently across independent venues. Weighted lightly and deliberately: review volumes are gameable, unevenly distributed between large and small providers, and rarely verifiable, so this criterion can adjust a comparison but must never decide one.
Rules that apply to every comparison
Criteria are fixed before scoring
The nine criteria and their weights are set before any provider is assessed and are not changed for an individual comparison. A model that moves to fit its own results is not a model.
Pricing comes from first-party sources, with a date
A provider’s own pricing page, fee schedule or terms, recorded with the date it was verified. Third-party summaries and aggregator listings are not evidence of a competitor’s price, however widely they are repeated.
Unpublished is recorded as unpublished
Where a provider does not publish a figure, the comparison says so instead of estimating. Declining to publish a price is a finding about transparency, not an invitation to guess on the provider’s behalf.
RapidCents is scored like everyone else
The same nine criteria, the same evidence standard, and no adjustment for being the publisher. Where a competitor scores higher on a criterion, the page states it in the same place it would state the reverse.
Models are compared, not rates
Comparisons describe pricing and contract structures, which are stable and publicly documented, rather than quoting specific rates, which change without notice and would date the page within a quarter.
Placement is not for sale
No provider pays to be included, excluded, ranked or positioned, and no advertising is placed inside comparison content. The commercial disclosure policy states the commercial interest that exists regardless.
Every comparison carries a review date and a correction route
The date the sources were last verified is visible on the page, and any provider or reader who can evidence an error uses the corrections policy — the same route, on the same terms, for everyone.
Related policies
Commercial disclosure
Why a comparison written by a competitor needs a published model.
ExploreFact-checking policy
Why a competitor's own page outranks any article about it.
ExploreCorrections policy
The route a provider uses to challenge a score.
ExploreCompare processors
The comparisons this model produces.
ExploreCompare POS platforms
The same model applied to point-of-sale platforms.
ExploreEditorial policy
Who reviews a comparison before it publishes.
Explore
Questions about this policy: Comparison Methodology
Do providers pay to appear, or to rank higher?
No. There is no paid inclusion, no paid placement and no sponsored position in any RapidCents comparison. Inclusion is decided by whether a provider is a realistic alternative for the merchant the page is written for, and by nothing else.
Why not publish competitors’ actual rates?
Because a rate is a perishable fact and a comparison page is a durable one. Rates change without notice, vary by merchant profile and are frequently negotiated, so a page quoting one is wrong shortly after it publishes and misleading until someone notices. The pricing model is stable, so the model is what is compared, and your own statement is what settles your rate.
A provider says a score is wrong. What happens?
The same thing that happens for anyone else: the corrections policy. Evidence changes a score — an updated first-party source, or a documented error in a scoring input. An objection without evidence does not, and neither does a commercial relationship in either direction.
Does RapidCents ever score lower than a competitor?
Yes, on individual criteria, and the comparison says so on the page. A published model that never produced an unfavourable result for its own publisher would be evidence that the model is not actually being applied.
How often are comparisons re-verified?
Each comparison carries the date its sources were last verified, and that date is what a reader should judge its freshness by. Verification is repeated on the review cycle and whenever a provider changes a published source that a scoring input depends on.
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RapidCents Fee Check reads a processing statement and shows interchange separately from the markup. Upload a statement for an instant breakdown, or open a merchant account and start accepting payments on one account.
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