Helcim

Helcim's customer support team is friendly, fast, and reliable. I am so thankful I chose this company to partner with for payment processing.

Based on my experience, Helcim is an outstanding company that provides good service; more importantly, their system simply "works" so that the need to contact them with problems is very minimal. I recently acquired the Helcim "Smart terminal" and it is a joy to use, a very good investment. Helcim is a big a large factor in the success of my small author and publishing business.

I opened an account a year and a half ago and tried using them to process one transaction as a test. The fees they charge were WAY HIGHER than I had ever paid with any other company before. While they are trying their best on their website to sell you on low fees, they fail to tell you that there are additional hidden fees, such as a "merchant location fee".

Fast forward to now, a year and a half later, I decided to give them one more try since I see some things had changed with their platform and I am so sorry that I did. This time after trying to use them to process two customer transactions, they charged my customers' credit cards and then refuse to give me the funds. Instead, I receive an email telling me that before I can receive my funds, I have to provide them with the customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, addresses of where we shipped the items they purchased, a description of the items they purchased, the date the items were delivered, and a copy of the invoice for the transactions. Keep in mind that my account was ALREADY verified before they would open it, AND these are customers deal with all the time.these are not customers who filed complaints or chargebacks, but normal customers who had no problems with thier orders. I do not have the time nor the patience to provide Helcim with all of these details of every transaction that I process - especially when there is absolutely no issue or complaint with the transaction.

I have already told them to refund my customers' money and close my account. I am going back to my previous credit card processor - PayPal - where I NEVER had any problems or issues with any transaction they've processed for me in all of the years I have worked with them.

EDIT: In regards to Helcim's reply, my account was already verified when the account was opened. There is no reason you should be further making me provide all of this extra information about all of the transactions I'm processing unless there was a dispute from the credit card holder. Obviously, the other processors I've worked provide financial services as well yet have never burdened me with having to verify every transaction I make. This is just your way of trying to steal money from your merchants by taking out from our customers and then not giving us what is rightfully ours. You will notice from the other reviews that I'm not the only person they've done this to.

They did not want my business. I guess revenues off of 70k a year is unappealing. Or maybe typing on computers is too dangerous. They didn't say. I guess I will keep using QuickBooks Payments for now.

I'm sure QuickBooks Payments is subject to the same rules and regulations as Helcim. Yet they accepted my business with no questions asked. You took all my personal and banking information and then insulted me. Be sure you purge every bit of my personal data from all of your systems and never contact me again.

Amazing service for our big World Airline Road Race event and we're so lucky to have this world-class company right here in Calgary - Thanks Brian, Rob & Callum!

After nearly ten years of processing over $1m in credit cards annually with them, I called to talk to them about adding ACH to our account and found out they sold our account to Elavon last year and can no longer help us. I find it absolutely incredible that a business which wants you to "feel good about your payments" would do this to a long time client and not even inform them. Up until today, I have been routinely recommending them to other business owners because I believed in Helcim's mission to lower merchant processing fees. It is sad to see that this business has lost its way and just looks at their clients as numbers in an excel sheet that can be traded to the highest bidder.

Leda was a big help getting me set up and the site is flawless. Very fee transparent too. Compared to my prior cc processor this was a dream come true.

Great Customer Service team! Wonderful onboarding experience - held my hand every step of the way to get my account set up!

We would recommend Helcim to anyone - their service is outstanding. Kudos in particular to Joey, who helped us via phone conversation, step by step through the process of understanding the workings of Helcim better. This is a local business, which we always would prefer to use over anyone outside of Canada, and they are so much more affordable. We think this system is easy to navigate, yet if any assistance is needed, they are there for you!

It was my first time to void a transaction. The process was so intuitive, but I wanted to confirm that I had done it accurately. So I called for customer support and Morgan walked me through the steps confirming that I had done it correctly. Thanks Morgan for your friendly help and Helcim for a great system!

I had the best customer service ever! I am very happy I found helcim. Excellent service provider and excellent pricing. Thanks a lot for being awesome.

My company was with a different point of sales company and had a terrible experience with them. Helcim was so supportive and helpful with setting up our account! Tania was so nice, helpful, and explained answers to any of my questions when I needed to verify a transaction. 10/10 would recommend to everyone!

Working with Helcim's Team is such a breeze, everyone is really helpful. Their customer service is great and I would recommend working with them. Though the product and system itself could be more user-friendly and intuitive to avoid the need to go through customer service in the first place.

As an employee of a company that uses Helcim for the past 6+ months and being the main operator of all our transactions I have had, by far, the most experience using this companies POS terminal and receipt printers. I couldn't honestly recommend this company to anybody. Our issues started on day 1 with issue on our receipt printer (They are cheap, no name, printers keep in mind). When connected to the PC app the printer would 95% of the time print receipts that are completely illegible, they would print 1/4 of it fine then the next 2/4th of it in broken code with just lines of "23##%%@84@*3485**6" and then finish the last 1/4 of the receipt normal on every single Receipt. No matter what we attempted, even with Helcim's support (Note you they just told us the basics, restart your printer, Uninstall and reinstall the software, etc) it wouldn't fix the issue leaving us to print receipts on full page paper from our standard printer. After a few months of this they recommended we use our personal Apple phone with their Phone app. This actually fixed the issue of the receipts not being legible but then started another slew of issues. When using the phone app only one phone can be connected to it at one time.and losing connection every time the app has been minimized for 15+ minutes.the connection process isn't fast, more than half the time the auto connect fails and you need to go into manual connection, find the terminal and connect to it taking 1-3 minutes every time while the customer is standing at the machine just waiting to pay. Lastly when using the phone app only the employee with iPhones could connect to the terminal and anyone with a Android was out of luck and would need to use our phone if they were the ones completing a transaction.

Through this whole process I've spent an unrecoverable amount of time (10-20 hours at least) just troubleshooting issues and speaking with support that is very little help. The amount of money lost working on these issues and not on actual work + them refusing to refund any amount on these machines which we have at 2 business over issues that are 100% caused by their machines, bad coding and very little troubleshooting support.

Our company is left with a nice hole in its pockets and now spending even more money switching to another company that can actually fulfill our basic need of being able to process transactions fast, easy and without a massive headache of issues.

Unfortunately, our experience with Helcim went from decent to terrible as soon as we needed to switch from the Ingenico terminals to Helcim's proprietary terminals and printers. In January 2023, my staff found out that our Ingenico terminals no longer worked. Apparently, Elavon (who managed those terminals on behalf of Helcim) had decided to stop supporting them because they were old (bought new in 2018). It appears that Elavon and Helcim do not communicate, so we received no warning about this and had no way to accept payments from our customers starting January 1st, 2023.

This is where things went from bad to worse. We decided to buy Helcim's new payment terminals and their separate receipt printers. Helcim kindly rushed delivery of the terminals and printers so we only were without a POS system for about a week. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of endless problems for myself and my staff. Helcim terminals can be connected via USB to a PC, or connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone. At first, we connected them to our PCs, but the printers were never able to print correct receipts. They printed incorrectly formatted receipts that were very hard to read and interspersed with random ASCII garbage code. We were assured by Helcim staff that their development team was working on a solution. They never found a solution and we would go weeks without hearing anything from Helcim, and when I'd contact them again, we would just get more canned emails telling us to uninstall/reinstall the app, update the app, forget connections, reset computers, terminals and printers.but to no avail.

After a few months of being forced to print massive receipts on our regular full page printer, we were directed by Helcim staff to try using a IOS smartphone connected to the terminal and printer via Bluetooth. This worked and we were able to print proper receipts. Yay! But this involved asking staff to use their personal phones as part of the company payment solution. Understandably, not all staff were willing to do this, so our Vancouver location printer went unused.

But printer problems were only part of the headaches. The Helcim payment app, both on PC and phone, required near constant updating, and would always lose it's connection if another transaction wasn't done within 30 or so minutes. Our business is not like a Tim Hortons with thousands of transactions a day, so we would often have our clients wait while the PC app or phone app had to reconnect to the terminal (often 1-3 minutes!). Not exactly how you want to waste client's time. Lastly, I was never able to connect my OnePlus Android phone to the terminal or printer, so when my employee with his Apple phone was away, I had to log onto the app on his PC, reconnect the app to the terminal, and print full page 8.5x11" receipts.

Imagine going from a system where you pickup a wireless Ingenico terminal, punch in the amount owing, and pass it to the client, have them insert or tap their card and enter their details, then print a copy of the receipt for them and one for the company, with 99% reliability and only rare connection issues over 4 years. COMPARED TO.using Helcim's phone or PC app that near constantly needed to reconnect to the terminal, often needed updates, could only print proper receipts if connected to an IOS phone, could only have the terminal connected to one smart phone at a time, and never worked with my android phone. Sure, Helcim terminals/printers are cheaper than other payment terminals, but our company lost far more in productivity, many hours troubleshooting with Helcim staff, waiting weeks for solutions that never came, and inconvenience for our customers.

Ironically, when I finally decided to pull the plug and switch to another payment provider, Helcim refused to offer any compensation for the now useless terminals and printers because it's beyond their 30 day refund policy. UPDATE: Helcim eventually agreed to refund the cost of the printers, which helped mitigate some of our wasted expense.

We've been happy with many aspects of Helcim.just don't expect a quick answer when you call in for help. I am always on hold for 20 minutes at minimum. So frustrating!

Have used them for almost 2 years. After a talking to one of there team member. We manage a compromise to an extension of our service. I hope in the future we resolve our difference and would restart using there service if we can fix the issues that need resolving.

I recently went from Wells Fargo merchant services to Helcim. I recommend them 100%. Amazing people, amazing customer service, amazing low fees. I Love working with them!

I used to have 5 stars on this company, but they caused me much frustration and I turned it to one star. Things smoothed out and I changed it to 3 stars to split the difference.

Poor capability to do business honestly. They want me to open a account with them so they can help with my retail business website but in certain point they can’t help jewelry online business and obviously they can’t tell you the reason why they can’t help. They just leave you and the process that you took in the middle. Helcim is not really good to choose to be your business payment partner. Poor customer service there is not even service in helcim. Thank you all the hardship Nicolas beique and the group. Regards Sac Jewelers

Gut feeling told me this was NOT going to be a good relationship. I do a lot of my research at night before I go to sleep. Helcim caught my attention so I reached out on Sunday night. After 1/2 dozen traded emails, most seeming to be automatically generated, I'm still no closer to scheduling a time to speak with a representative even though I've outlined what my time schedule looks like for the next few days. "Click the calendar link to schedule a meeting", I was told in my last email! I'm easy to get along with except when I feel like I'm getting jerked around. Boo Helcim.

Began with a lack of professionalism with regard to initial transactions. Gave them an opportunity to correct. They lasted a few months and the lack of service and lack of professionalism began again with their representative Noah. We’ve instructed to close the account immediately. Noah really finds it necessary to take jabs at his customers in his response emails. Really indicating that this company puts no value on customer relationships. Steer clear and stick with the more established service providers out there. They made a significant amount of money from our transactions in a very short period of time. Sad that they don’t value their customers business. We regret the risk in trusting their services.

Don't loose your time with them, they are lot more expensive than advertised. They wait that you do the first transaction to raise your price put you in high risk then ask your a lot of paperwork. I regret to have brought the material from them

I used Helcim 5 years ago and was excellent experience. Now I called customer service for my new business, I see some things are changed for better, but what made me make my decision to go again with Helcim it was the excellent customer service from Leda, who answered my questions on very professional and some funny way. Good company with amazing customer service makes company Great. Way to go Helcim!