Authorize.Net Reviews 

Total SCAM, I was told by them that I'll get charged monthly after I get accepted to take cards... Wrong, they siphoned money out of my account and didn't tell me about it. Then I get a bank fee, cause said scam company took money and I had other transactions that tried going through. Total disaster, major money lost, and no accountability to this date.

Excellent Customer Support - Awfully tedious and frustrating website.

They need a complete top down overhaul that doesn't enrage its users.

im not sure how these people arent in jail. I got rejected from them literallywithin 20 minutes, yet they are charging my card. scammers. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM.

I am writing a web app that uses authorize.net to processes credit card transactions. I was testing the code and getting a error, the system was in test mode. I called their support and as best as I can tell, if the system is in test mode they can't help you. Even though my code was talking to their servers, and getting an error from those servers, they could not see any of it. I finally contacted a fellow programmer who COULD see the responses from their servers, and told me what was going on. I then fixed the issue, turned the system to live mode, ran a transaction, and BOOM, it worked perfectly. So why was the third party able to give me information FROM AUTHORIZE.NET'S SERVERS, that authorize.net could not? Well I took the survey and when they received it they wanted to call me back. The called me and one of the so-called managers basically called me a liar. So they can't/won't help and then when you get support from somewhere else, they tell you that you didn't. What?!?!?!?!?! If you need a credit card processor, look somewhere else, ANYWHERE else.

For eight years now, I’ve had a very positive experience with Authorize.net. The platform is easy to use, reliable, and offers very competitive rates and a stellar customer service team who are kind, helpful and readily available anytime.

Every time I have called because I was frustrated or thought something was wrong, it ultimately turned out to be user error on my end. Their customer-service team has always been patient, professional, and willing to troubleshoot with me until the issue was fully resolved.

Thank you to the team for consistently being so helpful over the years.

What a horrible third-party payment system! Order was placed with Landrover Thornhill who uses Authorize.net to process payments. The $1100 payment was processed with my bank. The funds are on hold at the bank but Thornhill now says they've never received the order OR the funds from Authorize.net. The bank won't release the hold for 2 weeks. Meanwhile, my vehicle is broke down 5 hours away from home.

Horrible company. Hold your funds and do not release them for 3 months then cancel your merchant services

Deceitful company whose customer service is non existent. I cancelled the service over a year and a half ago, not having one charge go through them. Finally in December, they followed through with the cancellation.. I now received a call from collections for over $2,000. They are crooks. Avoid this company at all costs.

I have used Authorize.net for years with no problem. Recently, my organization changed its bank account and tax id. The process that I have had to go through was confusing and took over a month. The people were pleasant, but the process was bungled. Their organization is fragmented and unable to provide integrated service.

This has been, without question, the worst onboarding experience I have encountered. We thought we were signing up for authorize.net but they deferred us to their partner Zen Payments. Both were incredibly underwhelming and would not recommend.

To begin with, our business was never properly approved. Based on the eventual feedback we received, we should not have been onboarded at all. We operate a small hormone practice with monthly memberships and lab billing—nothing complex—but no one took the time to understand our payment model during onboarding.

We were never informed that our subscriptions would be classified as keyed transactions, nor were we advised that a POS system would be required to swipe transactions through Zen Payments. As a result, during our first month, all transactions were processed in test mode, meaning zero funds were deposited despite transactions appearing authorized and swiped. This was later explained as an onboarding error between Authorize.net and Zen Payments. We are left to chase thousands of dollars of payments now with customer reputational damage in explaining this.

We were left to resolve these technical issues ourselves, which unfortunately aligned with the overall service experience after we learned authorize.net and zen payments were never even configured on the back end correctly together.

We were then instructed to purchase a POS system and overnight it to our business, costing us approximately $300. Only after doing so were we informed that our memberships would never qualify for swipe transactions and that we would instead be required to enroll in a 100% keyed program, which carries approximately $1,500 per year in Visa and Mastercard fees—rendering the POS purchase unnecessary.

Despite onboarding in October, four months later we have not received a single dollar of our own revenue, as all funds remain held in reserve. We have been told a determination *may* be made in February regarding release of funds. Expectations are extremely low.

While holding all of our revenue, the company has nonetheless deducted hundreds of dollars in fees, which I consider excessive given the circumstances.

I have repeatedly requested to cancel the service, return the POS (which was opened but never installed), and have our funds released. These requests have gone unanswered.

At this point, I am preparing to dispute the POS charge due to the lack of response or return process and to leave reviews wherever possible to document this experience.

I strongly advise any business to avoid onboarding with this company. Based on our experience, the process is disorganized, poorly communicated, financially damaging, and unsupported.

They allow you to create an account after you give them ALL the details about your type of business... then they let you charge your clients, HOWEVER, they then HOLD ON TO THIS MONEY, and tell you they will no longer work with you because they don't work with your type of business. They hold onto the transaction for at least 120 days, with a small chance of releasing it before that (which doesn't happen).

If you're a bit confused, they essentially hold on to your money until they feel like it. You're only allowed to send emails, there's no one you can talk to. In my case they held onto $11k, which forced me to handle things with money from my savings and I even had to overuse my credit cards, and trust me, within those 120 days I contacted them a lot, they simply "followed their protocol" and barely cared about how serious 11k is in this economy, and how much it really threatened my stability. It was extremely frustrating and I felt powerless, AND SO WILL YOU.

Unethical practices, non comprehensive nor fair system.

I finally got my money back, and now I can comfortably say, F this company!

I recommend you simply check with your business's bank to see if they have a credit card payment option. Way better, safer, and damn near free.

Wish I would've come across all the reviews here before I signed up with those guys.

If you're reading this, lucky you! Good luck in your business efforts!

Was denied for a merchant account, did not use their service at all, then charged multiple times. They are next to impossible to cancel, you can't delete your account online, you can't request refund, their hold times are 30-60 minutes long and it's part of their tactics to charge money. Yes, if you have a merchant account with them, their gateway works, but lord help you if you need to cancel or if you apply, but then you're denied. They'll charge your card until the end of time. It'll be quicker for you to cancel the debit/credit card you gave them, order a new one and resetup all your bills you pay with that card, over trying to actually cancel and be refunded for the service you never used. STAY AWAY!!!!!

They do not have a reference to developers to set up authorize.net on your website. Terrible support - a bunch of foreigners. I would not recommend this awful company.

***Stay Away***
They will stick you in the highest rate without telling you. Meanwhile, they will promise you the best rate while signing you up and taking your information.

The is a deceptive practice...!!!

Worst customer experience ever. They will hold your information hostage. Dont work with them.

Theives. Took money from me for two years for a service I never used and didn't know I was signed up for and would not give it back.

I think I better provide feedback about authorize.net login obstacles. It took several minutes to log in. Here are the obstables.

1. To open the merchant page, a new page needs to open. (already really backwards just like a pop up window back 20 years ago)
2. Once it opens, it takes time to verify using I cloudflare or some kind of cyber security. I have to click on some icon saying I"m human (wasting more time)
3. After verifying I'm human.. after typing in the password, it send a text message to my phone. I then need to check the phone
4. I then have to copy and paste the code and submit it.
5. After the code is pasted, the site asks me to change my password (This is extremely unnecessary to be forced to change your password every 3 months. Authorize.net is the only website that requires this. It's a big hassle and no user should be forced to change their password every 3 months. Whoever is the programmers for Authorize.net does not understand this is very old methods and creates an osbtable for the users.
6. I then realize there is another new requirement for passwords that it has to be 12 characters long. This is new. Also need a capital letter, number and a symbol. This is just all very unnecessary and makes it harder for the user to log in. It's BIG waste of time and a hassle. So I'm now forced to create a new password with 12 letters and a bunch of unnecessary requirements. This is too strict. It's just a portal to view transactions. Banks and credit card companies don't even do this.

7. After changing my password, I am text another code to verify. What is this for? Is this to waste more time and create more obstacles?
8. I then need to check my phone for the code and then have to enter it on the website again.
9. After verifying and the password is changed, I am asked to log in again. But once I submit, I am asked to verify a code again! OMG, this is really unbelieveable.
10. I then need to check my phone and for the code and enter it in the website.
11. Finally I was able to log in. It took so many steps and several minutes to just do a simple log in. And this has to be done repeatedly every 3 months. Within the 3 months, there are still many steps because you still have to verify you are human and then verify text codes. I can honestly say Authorize.net has the worst login system I've ever experienced on any platform and of any system and website. Please try to ask other users and you will most likely get the same negative feedback. I'm extremely dissatisfied with authorize.net. In addition, the page will log out automatically even while you are doing work. In addition, the system does not detect fraud payments as the majority of fraud payments I get are from Authorize.net. In one year previously, I've actually lost over $30,000 in fraud payments. I had to set up my own system to detect fraud. So I ended up using other payment systems and authorize.net is just a back up system.

We got a call from these guys stating they could lower our fees to 1.8%. Sounds Great. They said they integrated seamlessly with our CRm Jobber.
First of it did not integrate. which meant my guys in the field could not collect payments. So then we had to have someone in the office call each customer and collect payment. My business partner spent 3 days on the phone with them and Jobber trying to get it to sync. They finally told us that it will not sync. Because of this we decided to stop using them and just process through our existing software. Now we find out all of our money from an entire week of business are no where to be found. Not in our bank, do not show on our dashboard. The company says they do not see them, but yet our customers can send us screenshots proving they were charged. Currently we are missing about 15k worth of transactions, and customer service may as well be non existent. I would run away from these guys. We have wasted many days trying to figure this out, and today is another one.

Seeking a more streamlined alternative to my payment processor, I transitioned to Authorize.net. Regrettably, this decision introduced a new set of operational challenges and frustrations.
Prospective users of Authorize.net are strongly cautioned to undertake a thorough examination of all contractual terms and conditions. They do not advertise that they automatically sign you up for a payment processor. Authorize.net did not disclose to me about any RISK holds, RISK hold requirements [documents] nor was I given directions to set up the payment processor account that was with a third party processor. In my experience, their policies were notably intricate and laden with fine print. It is paramount to recognize that Authorize.net functions as a payment gateway, rather than a direct payment processor. Post-account approval, a disconcerting incident occurred wherein a customer transaction was processed despite the system ostensibly remaining in "TEST" mode—an early indicator of potential systemic issues. Subsequently, upon transitioning to "LIVE" operations and processing a legitimate payment, the whereabouts of the transacted funds became a point of significant concern. There was a conspicuous lack of clarity regarding Authorize.net's utilization of third party processor for merchant account services. Although this third-party processor is presented as an independent entity, it functions more akin to an internal department, further complicated by restricted customer support availability (weekdays, Pacific Time). It was also concerning to discover the emails that were now being sent from Authorize.net employees were from a '@VISA.com' email domain.
My attempts to resolve these issues necessitated three separate interactions with their merchant support. The most recent engagement was particularly unsatisfactory: I was provided with information I had strong reasons to believe was inaccurate. Upon requesting clarification and while the support agent was ostensibly verifying the details, the call was abruptly terminated. Prior to this disconnection, I was informed that the Risk Department required a comprehensive review of my account to assign a risk assessment. A final effort to remediate this challenging vendor relationship and navigate the initial period of operational friction involved an attempt to utilize their online chat support; however, this communication channel also proved inconclusive as my message was apparently cut short. On 6/6/25, I was assured via phone that my first payout was scheduled and will be received within three business days. Yet, just ten minutes later, I received an email from the RISK assessment department that my funds were now frozen as this department conducted a review. They requested several documents, two I had already submitted during the initial application. This sudden review, coming a full week after the transaction, 06/09/25 I was emailed to let me know it will take 1 to 2 business days to review these documents, only to contradict themselves two hours later by emailing requesting that a document show certain customer information. on 6/10/2025 I was then given a max of four days to get a response and on 6/13/2025 my merchant account was now closed without any reason or purpose. The same day Authorize.net referred my portal account to a new third-party from which I stopped and had the entire account closed and reverted back to my original payment processor. I highly suggest looking into whom they assigned you as your merchant account holder ASAP.