Merchant accounts are not fun. There’s the complex pricing schemes ($.32/trans + 2.9%*trans + $29.99 account fee + $? misc charges = huh?), and the weird reselling structure, whereby the company you pay isn’t the one actually doing the payment processing. Nevermind the fact most merchant account provider websites appear to have been designed by someone who has been without an internet connection for the past 9 years. This company’s site has a bad SSL certificate! Are you kidding me?

When we started designing the ParkWhiz payment system, I was not looking forward to picking a merchant account provider. I expected it to be something like the Douche and Turd episode of South Park. Except less funny, because it wasn’t a cartoon and it was happening to me.

ParkWhiz was competing in the U of Chicago NVC at the time, and by some stroke of luck one of our fellow competitors was a merchant account provider called Braintree Financial. Their business was focused around cutting through all the crap associated with typical merchant accounts. I’m not a religous man, but my prayers had been answered.

After working with Bryan and the rest of the team at Braintree for the past two months to get the ParkWhiz payments set up, I’m happy to say that Braintree lives up to it’s promise. They delivered the complex payment solution we were looking for, their manage console is well desgined, and the service has been fantastic.

Braintree won the U of Chicago NVC a couple weeks ago, and rightfully so. If you’re looking for a way to process credit cards or work with e-checks on your website, check them out.

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