MelioB69
Bank & A2A Payments · Small and mid-sized US businesses with a real accounts-payable problem — a stack of supplier invoices, a mi…
Overview
Melio does the unglamorous half of business payments well: it pays suppliers who have no interest in your payment technology, in whatever form they will actually accept, and it tells you exactly what each method costs before you commit. A free tier that genuinely works, no contract, and a published price list put it ahead of most of the accounts-payable market on transparency alone. The grade is B- rather than better because the platform underwrites the money movement itself, and when its risk team stops an account the merchant experience is severe: funds already sent sit in limbo, support is chat-first, and the BBB file and Trustpilot one-star reviews say the same thing in the same words. Xero's ownership should stabilise the company; it has not yet fixed the support record.
Best for: Small and mid-sized US businesses with a real accounts-payable problem — a stack of supplier invoices, a mix of vendors who want cheques and vendors who want ACH, and a bookkeeper who wants it all reconciled in QuickBooks or Xero without manual entry. It is particularly good for anyone who wants to pay a bill by card to hold on to float or earn card rewards where the supplier does not accept cards, and for firms that need approval workflows without buying a full procurement suite.
Strengths
- + The complete fee schedule is published on the pricing page: every plan price, every per-payment fee, every delivery-speed surcharge. In accounts payable that is genuinely unusual and it means you can model your annual cost before you ever speak to a salesperson.
- + The free Go plan is a working product, not a trial — one user, five free ACH payments a month, card payments, cheques, international payments and the whole invoicing side, with no card required to sign up.
- + You can pay by card a vendor who does not accept cards, for 2.9%. For a business managing cash timing or chasing card rewards on large supplier bills, this is the whole reason to be here.
- + No contract, no setup fee and no early-termination fee. You can drop to the free plan at any time, which is the opposite of the three-year liquidated-damages norm elsewhere in payments.
- + Real accounting integration depth for the price: QuickBooks Online and Xero on a $25 plan, QuickBooks Desktop on $55, NetSuite on $80.
- + Approval workflows, user roles and an audit trail are available well below the price point where dedicated AP software usually starts.
Trade-offs
- – The Better Business Bureau rates Melio F and it is not accredited. Reading the complaints and the Trustpilot one-star reviews together, the same story repeats: an account suspended without warning, with money already sent and not yet delivered.
- – Support is chat-first. Premium phone support arrives only on the $55 Boost plan, and the complaint record says the hardest cases — a frozen account — are exactly the ones where reaching a person is hardest.
- – The float model concentrates risk. Money leaves your bank when the payment is scheduled and sits with Melio's partner banks until the delivery date, so a suspension in that window strands funds that are no longer in your control.
- – It is not a merchant account. The receivables side handles invoices and payment links but there is no card-present acceptance, no terminal, no gateway — pairing Melio with a separate processor is the normal setup, not an edge case.
- – Cheque delivery is slow or expensive with nothing in between: $1.50 for a standard cheque, then a jump to $20 for fast and $50 for overnight.
- – Free ACH allowances are small on the cheaper plans — 5 a month on Go and 20 on Core — so a business paying 60 suppliers a month is effectively pushed to Boost or Unlimited regardless of the feature set it needs.
Fees in detail
- Online rate: Melio charges by payment method rather than by a card discount rate. Paying from a bank account: ACH transfer $0.50, same-day ACH 1% (capped
- Disputes: Not applicable; no card acquiring.
- Contract: None; monthly or annual plan.
Standard published rate for a domestic online card payment. Confirm current pricing on Melio's pricing page.
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