As a business, payment processing should be one of your top priorities. After all, it’s where your income streams and you need to make sure that you’re giving customers flexible options that will allow them to pay for products without any hassles. This is why having a payment processor is a must because it serves as a mediator between you and the customer’s financial institution.

However, it’s not uncommon to choose the wrong payment processor, and here are three definitive signs that you need a new one for your business:

1. Compatibility issues

Whether you’re processing payments in a physical store or online, you have to make sure that transactions are successful all the time. If you’re experiencing compatibility issues all the time, this could affect your reputation with customers and even get you banned from processing credit and debit card payments in the long run.

Hardware and software should be updated regularly, so if you notice that your merchant account provider hasn’t been updating your system, you might want to re-think your relationship with them. Remember that these issues can make you less credible in the eyes of customers, so make sure that you choose a payment processor that can guarantee you high uptimes.

2. Expensive fees

Yes, having a payment processor is a must if you want to run your business successfully. But if you’re working with the wrong partner, you could be spending more money on charges, fees, and equipment leases than you’re earning.

So, if you’ve been suffering from low sales lately or you’re already struggling to keep up with the high fees that your payment processor is charging you, it’s time to find a better company that can offer you a reasonable package that won’t eat up all your potential income. Check out https://www.firstcardpayments.com/ to learn more about its high-quality service.

3. Bad contracts

Contracts can be a headache to read, which is why a lot of businesses sign them without reading the fine print. This could be quite catastrophic for your business, especially if you missed details that will make it hard for you to terminate the contract later on.

For instance, a lot of these contracts include an automatic renewal clause, which means that at the end of your contract, you will be automatically renewed for the service unless you choose to cancel beforehand.

If you decide to cancel after the renewal, you could be charged an expensive termination fee that usually runs between $300 and $500. Worse, if the contract includes a liquidated damages clause, your business could easily be obliged to pay thousands of dollars to your existing payment processor just because you canceled a contract.

At the end of the day, it’s best to be smart about choosing the right payment processor for your business. If you feel that your current relationship isn’t working anymore, you can always check your options and decide to switch accounts before it hurts your business more.