They Promised Transparency. Then Came the Infrastructure Fee.

Heartland complaints all start the same way — a merchant who signed up years ago, trusted the Merchant Bill of Rights, and then opened a statement that didn’t look anything like what they were promised.

Marcus runs a dental practice in Boca Raton. Two locations, about $85,000 a month in card volume. He signed with Heartland eight years ago because the sales rep made a specific promise: Heartland doesn’t hide fees. They even had something called a Merchant Bill of Rights. It was printed on the materials. He remembers thinking — finally, a processor that gets it.

For the first few years, it was fine.

Then the statements started changing. Slowly at first — a few dollars here, a new line item there. By 2024, Marcus was paying an effective rate north of 5.8% — he had never pushed back or tried to reduce his processing rate. He hadn’t changed anything about his business. His card mix was the same. His volume was the same. What changed was the fee schedule — and nobody had told him.

The last straw was a $254 line item labeled “Infrastructure Upgrade Fee.” He called to ask what it was. He was told it was a fee Heartland charges merchants to cover the cost of upgrading their internal systems. He asked why he was paying for their IT budget. He was told it was in the agreement.

He switched the next week.

Heartland built its reputation on a Merchant Bill of Rights — a public commitment to transparency, honest disclosure, and no hidden fees. It was a direct shot at the rest of the industry. It worked. For years, Heartland was considered one of the cleaner processors in a notoriously opaque business.

Then Global Payments acquired Heartland in 2016. And the Heartland complaints started.

Federal Class Action Allegations

A federal class action filed in New Jersey alleges that Heartland charged merchants fees that were never authorized in the original merchant agreement — including a $125 monthly PCI non-compliance fee, a $69 reporting fee, an $8.50 service and regulatory mandate fee, and a $54.95 “customer intelligence suite” fee. The lawsuit alleges these fees were imposed without requiring merchants to sign new agreements or providing written notice, directly contradicting the Merchant Bill of Rights Heartland had used to attract those merchants in the first place.

The Federal Reserve’s interchange fee data documents what card processing actually costs at the network level. The gap between that and what Heartland was charging many merchants is where those unauthorized fees live.

Marcus wasn’t alone. Across BBB filings, Trustpilot reviews, and court documents, the same Heartland complaints pattern appears: merchants who signed years ago, stayed because switching felt complicated, and woke up one day to find they were paying 5%, 6%, sometimes close to 7% in total processing fees — on a contract that never disclosed those numbers.

The infrastructure upgrade fee became Heartland’s most visible complaint point in 2024 and 2025. Merchants who’d been with the company for years — some for over a decade — suddenly found a $250–$500 annual charge on their statements with no prior notice and no explanation beyond “system upgrades.” When they called to dispute it, they were told the fee was valid and non-refundable. When they tried to cancel, they were told cancellation would trigger an early termination fee on top of it.

But the infrastructure fee is the fee merchants noticed. The more insidious problem is rate creep — the slow, steady increase in processing costs that happens across multiple line items over multiple years, each change small enough to miss, cumulative enough to matter. One dental practice documented an increase from 3.7% to nearly 6% over 18 months with no formal rate change notification. Heartland’s position: notifications were included in the “Important Messages” section of monthly statements. Most merchants never read that section.

The Fee Stack — $200–$400/Month Before a Single Transaction

The specific fees that appear most frequently in Heartland complaints:

• Infrastructure Upgrade Fee — $250–$500/year, added unilaterally starting around 2024
• PCI Non-Compliance Fee — $125/month, charged even to merchants who were compliant and had submitted their SAQ
• Customer Intelligence Suite Fee — $54.95/month for a service most merchants never requested or used
• Service & Regulatory Mandate Fee — $8.50/month, purpose not clearly explained to merchants
• Reporting Fee — $69/month for statement access
• Annual Fee — $500/year introduced in late 2024, increased from prior years

Stacked together, these Heartland complaints add $200–$400 per month to a merchant’s processing costs — before a single card transaction is processed. Under interchange-plus pricing, every fee appears as a separate line item on your statement. Under Heartland’s tiered or bundled structure, these costs are folded into rates merchants can’t separately verify.

Heartland assigns relationship managers to merchant accounts — a dedicated point of contact, in theory. In practice, Heartland complaints about support responsiveness are among the most consistent across review platforms in 2024 and 2025: voicemails that don’t get returned, emails that go unanswered, and a general support line that can see your account but can’t resolve anything without your rep’s involvement.

One merchant reported leaving two voicemails and three emails over a two-week period before getting a callback — and only after threatening to close the account. Another described spending hours on the phone with general support trying to understand a fee dispute, ultimately being told no one could authorize a refund without rep approval, and the rep never calling back.

The CFPB’s guidance on payment processing consumer protections makes clear what merchants are entitled to — but knowing your rights and being able to reach someone who can act on them are two different things.

Marcus called to cancel in March 2025. He was told to submit a written cancellation request. He submitted it. He received a confirmation email. He thought it was done.

Two months later, he received a statement for $519 — charges after his cancellation date, including the infrastructure fee prorated for a partial year. When he called, he was told his cancellation had been “processing” and the charges during that period were valid. When he pushed back, he was offered a partial credit. When he declined and asked for a full refund, he was transferred to an escalations team that took three weeks to respond.

Post-Cancellation Charges

This is documented across dozens of Heartland complaints. Post-cancellation charges are one of the most common issues — merchants who cancel receive additional statements for months afterward, sometimes for fees that weren’t disclosed at signing. One merchant who’d been with Heartland for 12 years described a $1,057 charge the month after cancellation and a $519 charge the month after that, despite sending certified cancellation letters.

The early termination fee structure also creates problems. Heartland’s contracts typically run three years with an ETF for early exit. Some merchants report being told verbally by their sales rep there was no ETF — but the written contract controls. Without documentation of what the rep said, merchants have limited recourse.

If you’re currently in a Heartland contract, read how to switch payment processors before you take any steps — the sequence matters, and there are ways to exit without triggering fees you shouldn’t owe. If you run a private K-8 or K-12 school specifically — where the relationship may include MySchoolBucks for cafeteria payments alongside generic processing — see Heartland alternatives for private K-12 schools for the layer-by-layer assessment.

Heartland built something real in its early years. The Merchant Bill of Rights wasn’t just marketing — it reflected a genuine philosophy that the industry had a transparency problem worth fixing. Merchants who signed with Heartland in that era got a fair deal. Some still do. But Heartland complaints from the post-acquisition era tell a different story.

Global Payments is a publicly traded company with shareholders and margin targets. After the acquisition, the incentives changed. Fees that Heartland’s founding culture would have rejected became line items on the P&L. Reps who once competed on service started competing on retention. The Merchant Bill of Rights is still on the website.

Marcus’s Result

Marcus’s dental practice is now on interchange-plus pricing with a processor where his account rep answers the phone. His effective rate dropped by 1.4 percentage points. The infrastructure fee is gone. The PCI non-compliance fee — for an account that was always compliant — is gone. He processes $85,000 a month, so that 1.4% difference is real money. He wishes he’d looked at his statements sooner. Most merchants say the same thing.

For healthcare practices and other high-volume businesses, the cost difference between a processor that fees-creeps and one that doesn’t is not a rounding error. It compounds every month.

Frequently Asked Questions

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