LawPay (8am, formerly AffiniPay)C63
Merchant Account (ISO) · Solo practitioners and small to mid-sized US firms that take retainers into trust and need the processor to…
Overview
$45
Best for: Solo practitioners and small to mid-sized US firms that take retainers into trust and need the processor to enforce the separation for them; firms on MyCase, Clio, PracticePanther, Smokeball or one of the sixty-plus integrated platforms that want payments inside their billing workflow; and any firm whose bar association offers LawPay as a member benefit. The 1% eCheck rate — which reviewers report is capped at $10 — makes it a good fit for large retainers and settlements paid by bank transfer.
Strengths
- + Trust-account safeguards are built into the processor: fees come from operating, never from trust, and chargebacks and refunds are not debited against client funds — the requirement that rules out most general-purpose processors for a law firm.
- + Flat, fully published pricing with no contract: $19 a month, 2.99% plus 30¢ on Visa, Mastercard and Discover, 1% on eCheck, and nothing to cancel.
- + Next-business-day funding on cards and eCheck is standard for new accounts and has been guaranteed by 8am since April 2026, with two-day settlement the fallback.
- + Distribution and endorsement nobody else in the niche has: available through all fifty state bars and sixty-plus local and specialty bars, and described as the only ABA-recommended payment solution for the legal industry.
- + Integrations with 65+ legal applications, including Clio, PracticePanther, Smokeball, CosmoLex, TimeSolv and Tabs3, plus native ties to 8am's own MyCase, CasePeer and Docketwise, so payments sit inside the firm's billing workflow.
- + A clean record for a processor of its size: an A+ Better Business Bureau rating, accredited since 2010, with fourteen complaints closed in three years, and a Trustpilot profile that is 78% five-star across 485 reviews.
Trade-offs
- – The card rate is a tenth of a point above the 2.9% plus 30¢ that Stripe and Square charge, and a firm with real volume could negotiate interchange-plus pricing well below it elsewhere — the premium buys the compliance layer.
- – American Express at 3.90% plus 30¢ is expensive, and Pay Later financing costs the firm 5.95% of the invoice.
- – A $7.99 monthly card-brand pass-through fee and a 1.75% surcharge on foreign-issued cards sit below the headline rates on the pricing page, and 'fees I did not expect' is the most common theme in the negative reviews.
- – The $19 monthly fee is a fixed cost on a low-volume practice; a solo who takes a few hundred dollars a month by card pays more in platform fee than in processing.
- – Trustpilot's TrustScore is 3.5 despite a 78% five-star share, which reflects recent complaints — clients hitting limits on Pay Later, and at least one firm describing a $9,000 chargeback debited months after the payment with little help resolving it.
- – United States and Canada only, and in-person terminals are not the product's focus; a firm wanting counter hardware as a primary channel will find the range thin.
Fees in detail
- Online rate: 2.99% + $0.30 on Visa, Mastercard and Discover; 3.90% + $0.30 on American Express; eCheck 1% (third-party reviewers report a $10 cap); Pay L
- International: Foreign-issued cards carry an additional 1.75% on top of the card rate
- Contract: Month to month
Standard published rate for a domestic online card payment. Confirm current pricing on LawPay (8am, formerly AffiniPay)'s pricing page.
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