More than 20 days wasted, unclear requirements and onboarding terminated after asking for answers
We had an extremely disappointing experience with CardBilling / Verotel during the merchant onboarding of our company, Celtum Web S.r.l., for WeMet.club.
We spent more than 20 days on the process, submitted corporate documentation, completed the requested application, provided dedicated verified and non-verified demo accounts, adapted our platform to the compliance guidelines we were given and even completed substantial backend and frontend development for the CardBilling integration.
Despite this, we never received a substantive assessment from the Yoursafe Compliance team regarding the corporate documents already submitted. Initially we were told that Compliance would promptly inform us if anything was missing. Later we were told they were overloaded and finally that the documents would be reviewed “as soon as possible”, without any meaningful timeline.
The communication regarding fees was also inconsistent. We were initially told in writing that payment would be made after completion of the Compliance process. Later we were encouraged to pay the USD 1,000 fees because this would give our onboarding additional priority. We repeatedly asked a very simple question: if we paid the fees and CardBilling subsequently rejected the onboarding, would the fees be refunded? We never received an answer.
Additional technical requirements also emerged during the review that were not included in the compliance guidelines originally supplied to us. One example concerned restrictions on downloading/saving user media. When we pointed this out, the Account Manager acknowledged in writing that this requirement was not included in the guidelines. Later we were told that such requirements may simply be communicated ad hoc depending on the business model.
For a company developing a complex web platform, this is a serious problem. You cannot reasonably expect a merchant to invest development time and money while material technical requirements are disclosed progressively rather than clearly at the beginning.
We also asked straightforward technical questions, such as whether pre-publication moderation had to be performed manually by a human or could be handled through automated moderation systems, and what specific technical measures CardBilling considered sufficient to restrict media downloads in a normal web browser. Those questions were never answered.
When the process became increasingly unclear, we requested escalation or management review. We were specifically asked not to continue requesting escalation.
Shortly afterwards, CardBilling terminated our onboarding, stating that the decision had been made together with management and criticising, among other things, the length and content of our communications.
To be clear: our business model was not rejected as inadmissible during the preliminary review. The process was terminated after weeks of delays and after we repeatedly requested clearer requirements, a Compliance timeline, clarification about the fees and an escalation path.
We fully understand that a payment processor has the right to choose which merchants it wishes to onboard and to impose strict compliance requirements. What we expected from a company with Verotel/CardBilling's long history was a transparent, predictable and professionally managed onboarding process.
Unfortunately, that was not our experience.
We are particularly relieved that we did not pay the USD 1,000 fees before receiving clear answers, because by the time the onboarding was terminated we still had no substantive Compliance assessment and no confirmation of what would have happened to those fees if the application had later been declined.
We lost more than 20 days and a significant amount of technical and management time on a payment integration that we now have to replace.
Based on our experience, we cannot recommend CardBilling to a merchant for whom launch timing, clear communication and predictable onboarding requirements are business-critical.