I applied to Heartland so I could use them for credit card payments after hearing from many that Heartland was the only credit card processor that allowed vacant land transactions. After getting all the way through the process I was denied because I was doing “inhouse loans”. This is extremely confusing and frustrating after hearing over and over that Heartland was the only way to go for land when it came to CC payments. Clearly, if someone wasn’t doing inhouse loans they wouldn’t need to use credit cards for land payments.
I am set up to use GeekPay and already set up for ACH via Actum. I was just waiting on Heartland. I know at one point I heard there was “a guy” at Heartland that you might need to work with to get this setup. Any ideas who that guy is? Anyone else run into this same issue? I know moonclerk and strip are popular in this space but run the risk of getting canceled. What are you guys using?
We took Heartland off our Resources page a few ago because of similar experiences and hearing other stories from land investors who were either denied or their transactions were harpooned because of oddball issues.
The “guy” you’re looking for is Shay Horseman. If you submit your information through this form (as if you’re signing up for the first time) it will flow through to him. Otherwise, this is the contact information I have on him:
For what it’s worth, you could just stick to taking ACH payments. It may not give your buyers the flexibility of borrowing the money for their purchase, but in terms of ease… it’s not that dissimilar from filling out a credit card form. They’re just punching in digits from their check instead of their card (and it’s still a lot faster and easier than forcing your buyers to get cashier’s checks from their bank and send them through snail mail).
If you can take ACH payments, that’s a big step in the right direction (also note, I know several land investors who use QuickBooks payments to accept ACH payments as well). If you’re a QB user, that might be another easy way to get the job done.
I switched from Heartland to using quickbooks becuase Heartland’s fees were so high and base charges are charged regardless of whether or not you have usage during any given month. Quickbook/Intuit charges much lower % fees and does not charge a fee if you don’t have any transactions during the month.
I will say that when I got set up with Heartland, Shay Horseman was very helpful getting it done.