Elavon review

Elavon vs Square

These two sell the same thing in opposite ways. Square publishes every rate on one page, signs you up online, charges nothing monthly on its free plan and lets you leave whenever: 2.6% + 15 cents tapped, dipped or swiped, 3.3% + 30 cents online, 3.5% + 15 cents keyed. Elavon publishes two starting rates, 2.60% + 10 cents in person and 2.90% + 30 cents online, and then puts you in front of a salesperson.

On the qualified rate alone Elavon wins both comparisons. That is not the whole bill. Square's number is the whole bill. Elavon's is a starting tier, and on top of it sit a monthly service fee, a percentage of volume billing fee that MerchantCostConsulting logs at 0.08% from February 2026, a PCI program fee, a $40 monthly minimum and a non qualified tier for any card that downgrades.

The trade is real in the other direction too. Square underwrites you in minutes and can hold or close your account on its own risk model. Elavon underwrites you properly first, is owned by a bank, and will process in more than 30 countries with a named account team. If you run one till and take $8,000 a month, Square is cheaper and simpler. If you run forty hotel properties across three currencies, Square is not in the running.

Converge, Fusebox and talech

Elavon sells three things under its own brand and it is worth knowing which one a quote refers to.

• Converge is the gateway and virtual terminal. It takes cards, PayPal, electronic checks and digital wallets in store, online, by mobile and by mail or telephone order, and adds invoicing, a buy button, card on file, account updater and a product catalog.
• Fusebox is the enterprise gateway, aimed at hotels, restaurants and property management systems. Its selling point is certify once, reach up to 17 third party transaction processors, so a chain can change acquirer without touching the POS integration.
• talech is the point of sale software, owned by U.S. Bank and sold as talech Mobile, talech Terminal and talech POS. Merchant Maverick puts those at $0, $15 and $69 to $99 a month respectively.

Elavon's June 2026 All In One announcement pulled these together with certified integrations to Agilysys, Oracle, Shiji and xnPOS, plus Android mobile devices built with Castles Technology.

The fees that are not on the pricing page

Elavon's pricing page advertises $0 batch fees and $0 additional authorization fees. MerchantCostConsulting, which collects the fee change bulletins Elavon mails to merchants, records a February 2026 increase that includes a $0.50 batch settlement fee and $0.18 per authorization. Both can be true at once, because which schedule applies to you depends on the agreement you signed and who sold it to you.

That is the single most useful thing to understand about Elavon pricing. The published numbers describe one offer. Your statement describes yours. The fees worth asking about by name before you sign are the monthly service fee, the monthly billing fee charged as a percentage of volume, the non qualified volume fee, the PCI program fee and the monthly minimum.

One of those has a fix with a catch. MerchantCostConsulting reports that the monthly billing fee disappears if you move to daily billing, where the percentage based fees come out of each batch instead of being invoiced at month end, and that daily billing creates reconciliation problems for most businesses.

Who is actually selling you the account

Elavon reaches merchants four ways: its own sales team, U.S. Bank branches, retail partners, and a large network of independent sales organizations that resell its processing under their own brand. CardFellow describes that ISO network as significant.

It matters because the contract is theirs, not Elavon's. Rate, term, termination fee, equipment lease and monthly extras are all set on the reseller's paper, and Merchant Maverick's review flags terminal leases sold through partners as a recurring problem. The $0 cancellation fee on elavon.com applies to the offer elavon.com is describing.

Two questions settle it. Ask who the merchant agreement is with, including the initial term, the renewal term and the notice period for cancelling, and ask whether any terminal lease sits on a third contract with Ladco Global Leasing Solutions, the leasing partner Merchant Maverick names behind four year leases that cannot be cancelled without buying out the remaining months.