USAePay was one of the original independent gateways, sold by thousands of merchant services resellers through the 2000s and 2010s. In 2021 NMI bought it. If you are on USAePay you probably got it from a local processor years ago and have not thought about it since. This page covers what it is today, what it should cost, and when to leave it.
What USAePay is
A payment gateway: virtual terminal for keyed transactions, hosted payment forms for websites, a customer vault for tokenized cards and bank accounts, recurring billing, Level 2 and 3 data, ACH and eCheck, a mobile app, an API with SDKs, and integrations with shopping carts, invoicing and vertical software. Sold through resellers, never direct.
The NMI acquisition
NMI announced the purchase on February 23, 2021, describing it as expanding NMI’s omnichannel payments capabilities. For merchants:
- Accounts and logins continued. The console remains at its own address, separate from the main NMI gateway login.
- Existing SDKs, APIs and integrations kept working. Partners could keep building on USAePay.
- USAePay technology was folded into NMI’s platform, and USAePay merchants gained access to some NMI tools (risk monitoring, the Merchant Central partner CRM) through their reseller.
- New development has concentrated on the unified NMI platform. USAePay is maintained, not where the new features land first.
usaepay.com now redirects to nmi.com.
What it should cost
No published pricing. Reseller ranges are the same as NMI: $10 to $25 monthly, 5¢ to 15¢ per item, sometimes a batch fee. Processing is a separate line from the merchant account provider, and that line is where USAePay accounts sold in 2014 tend to be badly out of date. Pull the two statements and do the arithmetic on the gateway pricing page.
Stay, consolidate or switch
| Situation | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Integration works, processing re-priced recently | Stay. Nothing to gain. |
| Integration works, processing never re-priced | Keep the gateway, re-price the merchant account. The gateway does not have to change. |
| Multiple gateways across locations or channels | Consolidate on NMI: same company, vault migrates cleanly, one login for all MIDs. |
| Need invoicing, modern interface, Amex routing | accept.blue. Vault migrates through encrypted export. |
| Need direct sign-up and published pricing | Authorize.net, accepting a higher gateway line. |
Migration paths
USAePay to NMI. Same parent company. Vault data moves with reseller coordination; integrations switch to NMI’s endpoints or plugin; schedules recreated. Usually the least disruptive move.
USAePay to accept.blue or Authorize.net. Encrypted vault export from USAePay, import on the new side, ID remapping, plugin swap, live tests, cutover. Two to four weeks with stored cards.
Keeping USAePay, changing processors. Because NMI-family gateways support multiple processors, a reseller can move the merchant account behind the gateway without touching your integration. Ask whether your reseller can, and if they cannot, that is a reason to find one who can.
What we do
Re-price processing behind an existing USAePay account, or place NMI or accept.blue with the vault migrated, on interchange-plus, month to month, one bill. The comparison across all the gateways we work with is on the Authorize.net alternatives page, which covers the same decision from the other direction.