Every-Pay is an Estonian payment processing service that offers some of the lowest card processing rates available anywhere as well as next morning settlement. In this guide, I review the service and share my own experience with it.
Review
Every-Pay is a service offered in partnership with LHV, Estonia’s third-largest bank by assets. It is a complete payment processing solution, which means that it acts as both a gateway and merchant account, in a way that is similar to what Stripe does. Where it differs from Stripe is in the requirement for an LHV business bank account.
Indeed, to open an Every-Pay account, you must first open an LHV business bank account. In most cases, this involves a personal visit to Estonia. I certainly hope that remote opening will be more widely supported in the future, at least for those with e-Resident cards, but little progress has been made in that direction so far. Estonian banks are also famously unfriendly to non-residents, often requiring proof of a significant local tie and even then it is a crap shot whether they will open the account or not. Your mileage may vary here but I recommend preparing a solid explanation as to why you need an Estonian business bank account. Obviously, if your company is registered in Estonia, things will be a little easier (just a little).
Now if you do manage to open an account, the service itself is great. Processing rates are some of the best I have seen anywhere, as low as 1.20% (no other fee). Transactions are settled into the linked LHV account by the end of the next morning, a great feature for those with high cash-flow requirements. Multiple currencies are supported although settlements are converted into EUR. It is worth mentioning that as of 2022, LHV cannot support USD payments as they do not have a corresponding agreement in place with a bank in the United States.
The interface is simple and easy to use (although not as good as that of Stripe or Braintree) and there are plugins available for most shopping carts. Developers will be happy to know that the plugins are well supported and that new features are also constantly being rolled out.
Overall, Every-Pay is a great option for those willing to jump through the hoops mentioned above. That is especially true for those processing large volumes of transactions.
My experience with Every-Pay
The first time I heard about Every-Pay was when I went to Tallinn, back in 2016, to open a number of bank accounts for my newly formed Estonian company. One of those accounts was with LHV and my private banker there recommended that I give their payment processing service a try. He offered to set up the account free of charge so I thought, why not?
A few days after the meeting I received the bank’s formal offer. I would pay 1.20% to process Visa and MasterCard payments, there would be none of those flat fees payment processing services love to charge (I am looking at you Stripe!) and all payments would be settled by the end of the following morning, even on weekends. Needless to say, I accepted the terms.
I use WordPress to power Freedom Surfer. Because Every-Pay has a plugin, integration was about as easy as installing an app on a phone. Frequent updates, including a major overhaul in late 2017, has also given me confidence that they are fully behind their plugin and intend to support it well. That is important as unfortunately, many payment processing services tend to neglect their plugins.
I have now been using the service for a few years and I am as happy with it as I was on day one. It works fantastically well, customer service is excellent and I have not experienced as big an increase in decline rate I worried I would (it is worth mentioning that it is a little higher than with my previous processor which was based in the US).
It is worth mentioning that I now use Mollie to process most payments on the site as they also support AmEx, PayPal and a number of local payment options but still maintain my Every-Pay account for specific types of transactions and as a back-up.
