PayTrace

PayTrace is a payment gateway founded in 2004 and headquartered in Spokane, Washington. North American Bancard, which now trades as North, acquired it in March 2022 and made it the group's preferred gateway. PayTrace reports more than 40,000 merchants and $46 billion settled in 2023, and it is sold both directly and through a partner network of several hundred resellers. The product set covers a browser-based virtual terminal, hosted payment fields, pay-now buttons, payment links, a customer vault, recurring billing, ACH through Trace ACH and receivables automation through Trace AR.

Pricing and how it works

PayTrace does not publish a rate card. Its own pages route pricing questions to a sales conversation or a free statement review, and in the classic gateway model the processing rate is set by whichever merchant services provider sells you the account. Third-party listings put the gateway subscription in the region of $15 to $75 per month depending on plan, with per-transaction fees of roughly $0.10 to $0.30, so treat those figures as indicative rather than official. PayTrace's published billing terms do confirm a $25 handling fee for each bank rejection of an authorized ACH debit and a late charge of 1.5% per month. The real economics sit in interchange optimization. PayTrace automatically submits the purchase order number, tax amount, AVS data and line-item detail that commercial cards need to qualify for lower interchange tiers. On its own published tables a Visa Corporate or Purchasing card can settle at 1.75% + $0.10 at the best qualification level against 2.95% + $0.10 unqualified, which is where the saving comes from. Funding is next-day against a midnight ET cut-off, or same-day with a cut-off as late as 10:30 am ET.

Who it is for

PayTrace is a strong fit for US wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers and government suppliers that invoice other businesses and take a high share of corporate and purchasing cards. Those merchants gain the most from Level 2 and Level 3 automation, surcharging and the ERP and accounting integrations. It is a poor fit for consumer-facing retail, for anyone trading outside the US, and for merchants who want published, comparable pricing before they talk to a salesperson.