Flagship Services is a relatively new player in the field, though they were formerly known as Card Service Sales and very often both advertise as CardServiceSales, as well as still use the domain name. In either event you will be working with the same company.

This was an interesting review for us here as we have seen Flagship rated highly on other websites. However digging into the company we were reminded again about why we started our own website, as the more we learned the less we liked.

Flagship represents the type of company that we have come to truly dislike here at Cheapest Merchant Accounts. On one hand we have to admire how well they know their target audience and have refined their marketing and sales pitch to speak directly to the items that new and frustrated business owners are concerned about. Their sales pitch and marketing are focused on the one word that consumes many small businesses “RATES” – there is no question, Flagship has some of the lowest rate pricing we have seen during our review process.

However as we have spoken about throughout our website, by focusing the entire conversation on how attractive their rate package is they avoid all of the uncomfortable questions around contracts, and fees. Which is a real plus for them, as they have some of the most aggressive fee structures that we have come across.

Specifically a major concern was their PCI fees, which contrary to many of their peers in the industry they assess this fee 3-4 times per year, with each of these fees the same if not larger than some of the other companies we have reviewed.

So yes, merchant signing up with Flagship will get some of the best rates possible on their credit card transactions. However if a merchant were to compare their total costs with Flagship versus some of our top rated merchant processors, we feel very strongly that they would find that the true cost of working with Flagship was much higher than it need be.

Additionally a lack of in-house support does not represent the commitment to their customers that we would expect to see from a processor ranked so highly by some of our peers. Of course it takes some work to dig into what is going on and often a more holistic review rather than just examining what the cost would be after you see the initial rate package.

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Note: Before you get started here is a final piece of advice from our co-founder Gerald Evans on the importance of calling a merchant service provider and avoiding the temptation to ask for rates and quotes through email alone. Why You Should Always Call

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