2Checkout (now Verifone) Review 2024: Features, Cost, Alternatives

2Checkout processes online payments for businesses around the world and lets them choose between two payment models.
Hillary Crawford
Randa Kriss
By Randa Kriss and  Hillary Crawford 
Updated
Edited by Holly Carey

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2Checkout is a digital commerce platform for businesses that sell physical goods or digital products, such as software, online. Its global payment options and subscription billing capabilities make it stand out, but its payment processing rates can be expensive compared with domestic rates. The product is well suited for businesses that sell digital goods online, could use advanced subscription tools and accept international transactions.

Verifone acquired 2Checkout in 2020.

Overview

Price for payment processing

  • Starts at 3.5% + 35 cents for online payments with 2Sell plan.

  • 4.5% + 45 cents for online payments with 2Subscribe plan.

  • Does not offer processing for in-person payments.

Monthly fee

Free.

Hardware cost

No hardware available.

Payment processing cost

3.5% plus 35 cents per successful sale and up.

Supported currencies and countries

100; 234.

Live support

24/7 technical support for merchants through live chat or email. 24/7 phone and email support for shoppers having order or payment issues.

How does 2Checkout work?

2Checkout helps small businesses accept online credit card payments for physical and digital goods in 200 countries. The company gives clients access to more than 120 cart integrations for customizing shoppers’ checkout experience. The highest-tier 2Monetize plan includes other features, like invoice management, global tax and regulatory compliance, tools for boosting conversion rates and access to more than 45 payment methods.

Photo courtesy of 2Checkout

The platform offers two flexible payment models — a merchant-of-record model and a payment-service-provider model. You can work with the company's sales team to decide which of these options (or a hybrid of the two) is best for your business.

  • In the first option, 2Checkout serves as the merchant of record, meaning it assumes financial liability for processing your business’s transactions. As such, it also handles sales tax management, invoicing, compliance and more.

  • With the payment service provider model, on the other hand, you must cover payment management liabilities and responsibilities yourself, including sales tax collection and remittance.

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NerdWallet rating 

5.0

/5
NerdWallet rating 

5.0

/5
NerdWallet rating 

5.0

/5

Payment processing fees 

0.40% + 8¢

plus interchange, in-person; 0.50% + 25¢ plus interchange, online.

Payment processing fees 

2.6% + 10¢

in-person; 2.9% + 30¢ online.

Payment processing fees 

2.7% + 5¢

in-person; 2.9% + 30¢ online.

Monthly fee 

$0

Monthly fee 

$0

Starts at $0/month for unlimited devices and locations.

Monthly fee 

$0

Features

In addition to facilitating payments in 200 countries, 2Checkout is available in over 30 languages and offers 100 display and billing currencies. That means customers can shop in their language, pay with their preferred methods and see prices in their local currencies. U.S. merchants can accept major credit cards, Apple Pay, ACH transfers, PayPal and more.

The company has two shopping cart options: a hosted cart and an inline cart. The hosted cart, as the name suggests, is hosted by 2Checkout and directs customers to pay through its ordering engine. You can choose from a handful of hosted cart templates and further customize them for your business. The inline cart is an iFrame checkout window that opens on your website and allows customers to check out directly from there. Both carts are optimized for mobile devices.

For those who already have shopping cart functionality, 2Checkout integrates with over 100 of the top shopping cart platforms, like BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento), Shopify and WooCommerce.

Businesses can manage the entire subscription lifecycle with the 2Subscribe and 2Monetize plans by selling across channels, onboarding users, managing upgrades and downgrades and boosting renewals and customer retention. Both plans offer an advanced retry logic tool for recovering failed transactions, too. The company also provides revenue recovery tools, including an account updater that ensures billing continuity for subscriptions and increases credit authorization rates. The updater comes with all plans, and additional recovery tools, like subscription pause and multiple billing retries, are included in the 2Subscribe and 2Monetize plans.

The platform includes a commerce dashboard that lets you view preconfigured and customizable reports covering different areas of your business, including finances, marketing, customer behavior analytics and subscriptions. In addition to automating report runs and having them shared regularly through email, you can run promotions and campaigns and offer coupons and discounts. With the 2Monetize plan, you have the ability to optimize for SEO and track on-page and in-cart customer behavior.

If you choose 2Checkout’s merchant of record business model, you’ll receive certain financial and payment management benefits. With the 2Monetize plan, the platform handles your invoicing, sales tax, value added tax, or VAT, management, international taxes and remittance, as well as global compliance. It will also manage refunds and chargebacks, reconciliation and fraud monitoring.

2Checkout’s service includes risk management and compliance capabilities to help protect your business. It uses proprietary algorithms to identify fraudulent activity through different industries and geographies, and is PCI Level 1 certified.

Merchants' shoppers have access to 24/7 international phone and email support for order and payment issues. Additionally, merchants can create a self-service portal for your customers, branded specifically to your business. For merchants, 2Checkout offers 24/7 technical support through live chat and email. You can also try solving problems by visiting the site’s developer portal, knowledge center or FAQs page. For an additional cost, premium merchant support is available, with emergency phone numbers and extended technical support.

Pricing and plans

Plan

Price

Features

2Sell

3.5% plus 35 cents per successful sale.

  • 14 payment methods, plus more available upon request.

  • 100 billing currencies.

  • Shopping cart template.

  • Checkout available in 29 languages.

  • Shopping cart integrations.

  • Risk and fraud protection.

  • Custom reporting.

  • Account updater tool.

  • Discount and order management.

  • Recurring billing.

  • Order notification.

  • Onboarding services.

  • Shopper and merchant support.

2Subscribe

4.5% plus 45 cents per successful sale.

Everything in 2Sell plus:

  • Renewal discounts.

  • Subscription management tools.

  • Subscription analysis.

  • Financial reporting.

2Monetize

6% plus 60 cents per successful sale.

Everything in 2Subscribe plus:

  • Global tax and regulatory compliance.

  • Invoice management.

  • Access to more than 45 payment methods.

  • Assistance with shopping cart customization.

  • Checkout available in 33 languages.

  • More marketing and sales tools.

  • Ability to offer trials.

The 2Monetize plan is only for digital products, not physical products.

Pros

Subscription tools

2Checkout’s 2Subscribe plan includes tools that help subscription-based businesses retain customers, manage subscription renewals and analyze subscription data. For businesses such as software companies that rely almost entirely on subscriptions, access to these features is key. There are many merchant service providers that process payments online, but not all focus so heavily on subscriptions and the sale of digital goods, as opposed to physical goods.

International reach

If you want to expand your online business across borders, 2Checkout lets you accept dozens of payment methods and currencies and offers multiple checkout languages. But when you extend your reach to different countries, you also have to keep track of regulation changes and tax rules in those countries. If you work with the platform as your merchant of record, it will do a lot of that work for you. And to keep things simple, transaction fees stay consistent worldwide except in specific countries where an additional 2% fee applies to accept payments from shoppers outside of your country.

Cons

Can only accept payments online

The platform only supports online payments, meaning 2Checkout is best for companies that only sell products and services online.

2Checkout alternatives

Stripe

Pricing:

  • 2.7% plus 5 cents for in-person transactions.

  • 2.9% plus 30 cents for online transactions.

  • 3.4% plus 30 cents for manually keyed transactions.

  • 4.4% plus 30 cents for international card transactions.

Perhaps one of the most recognizable names in payment processing, Stripe offers a variety of payment options and is known for its customizable development tools. Like 2Checkout, it allows you to accept multiple payment methods and currencies and create an integrated solution that works best for your business. You can develop your own payment form, use its embeddable checkout or integrate using Stripe API. It also includes business operations tools and offers its own add-ons, as well as third-party integration options.

Braintree

Pricing:

  • 2.59% plus 49 cents per transaction for credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets.

  • 3.49% plus 49 cents for Venmo (U.S. only).

  • 0.75% for ACH (maximum fee of $5). Discounts available for enterprise businesses.

For an option that offers payment processing with a dedicated merchant account (which Stripe does not), you might consider Braintree. It gives your e-commerce business the ability to accept multiple payment methods from major credit cards to mobile wallets, and operates in over 130 currencies and more than 45 countries. Additionally, the company has customizable checkout options and offers third-party integrations with top e-commerce providers. Other tools handle fraud, reporting and recurring billing.

A version of this article was first published on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

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