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SolaC40

Merchant Account (ISO) · Software platforms and ISVs that want to embed payments and monetise them — this is where Sola's ownership …

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Overview

Sola is a competent, long-established reseller with an unusually quiet complaint record and one genuine asset: it owns the Cardknox gateway rather than reselling somebody else's. For a software company that wants to embed payments, or a merchant who needs a gateway with real developer surface and a human on the phone, that combination is worth a quote. B rather than higher for the reason almost every ISO lands here: nothing about the price is public. Sola publishes no rates, no monthly fees, no contract length and no cancellation terms, and as a registered ISO of Citizens Bank and Elavon it is selling on somebody else's rails, which means your pricing is whatever your rep wrote down and your leverage is whatever you bring to the conversation. Get interchange-plus in writing, get the term and any early-termination fee in writing, and it is a reasonable place to land.

Best for: Software platforms and ISVs that want to embed payments and monetise them — this is where Sola's ownership of Cardknox actually pays, because the gateway, the developer support and the payment-facilitator machinery come from one company rather than three. It also suits established mid-sized merchants who value a named human on support over a self-serve dashboard, businesses already running on Fiserv-family or Clover hardware, and anyone with an integration problem — Cardknox has plugins, SDKs, gateway emulation and a card updater, and gateway emulation in particular is what lets a merchant move without rewriting an existing integration.

Strengths

  • + It owns its gateway. Cardknox is Sola's own product, so processing, gateway and developer support come from one company rather than three pointing at each other.
  • + Nearly thirty years in business — the BBB records the company as started on 1 December 1996 — with an A+ BBB rating and only two BBB complaints closed in the preceding three years against a base the company describes as tens of thousands of merchants.
  • + Genuine developer surface: hosted checkout, tokenisation, 3D Secure 2.0, terminal SDKs, cart plugins, a card updater and gateway emulation, which lets a merchant switch without rewriting an existing integration.
  • + Credible in embedded payments. The PayFac and integrated-payment monetisation offer is aimed at software platforms, and Sola cites a customer, Aluvii, saying integrated payments with Sola produce 30% to 40% of its revenue.
  • + Support is structured around the problem rather than the caller — separate customer service, gateway, technical and developer desks — which matters more than average because the company sells to integrators.
  • + The footer says plainly what the company is: a registered Independent Sales Organization of Citizens Bank, N.A. and Elavon, Inc. Plenty of resellers make that far harder to find.

Trade-offs

  • – No published pricing of any kind — no rates, no monthly fee, no hardware prices. Every number arrives through a sales conversation, and what you pay depends on how well you negotiate.
  • – No published contract terms either. Length, notice period and any early-termination fee are all in the agreement rather than on the site; a $295 termination fee appears in a BBB complaint, which is a reason to ask rather than a stated policy.
  • – It is a reseller, not a processor. As a registered ISO of Citizens Bank and Elavon, Sola sits between you and the rails, which is fine when it goes well and adds a party to the conversation when it does not.
  • – Private-equity owned since 2017, when H.I.G. acquired the business, and again since 2022, when PSG acquired it with H.I.G. staying on as a minority investor. Neither is a fault, but a second ownership change in nine years is a reason to nail down repricing rights before signing rather than after.
  • – The rebrand is still only half-landed. The BBB profile is still filed under Fidelity Payment Services with a superseded CEO listed, and public review coverage remains thin and split across three names — Sola, Fidelity and Cardknox — which makes the company genuinely hard to research.
  • – Very little independent merchant feedback exists at any scale. A quiet record is better than a bad one, but it means you are relying on your own reference calls rather than on a public body of evidence.

Fees in detail

    Standard published rate for a domestic online card payment. Confirm current pricing on Sola's pricing page.

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