[jpgvm]

Standard merchant gateway that has a relationship with your business bank. Ensure you procure that relationship through your bank with someone you actually speak to, ideally face to face but atleast on the phone. You pay slightly more than Stripe and the APIs generally suck but you don't end up with these sorts of impossible situations.

[simfree]

Rates on standard merchant accounts are generally lower or significantly lower than Stripe if your processing a bit of volume ($10k+ a month).

[jpgvm]

Yeah this is true but it's heavily reliant on volume, on low volume Stripe came out on top last time I looked. I still went for a merchant account though, much less business risk and I can walk down the street and ask my small business account rep what is going on if something strange happens to it.