How we research, source and update our guides

The Clearo Payments team writes and maintains the guides, location pages, comparison lists and calculators on this site. We publish them under the team's name rather than individual bylines, and this page sets out the rules every one of them follows.

We go to the source that sets the rule. For card payments that means the card networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover), the PCI Security Standards Council and EMVCo. For bank payments it means Nacha and the Federal Reserve. For laws it means the legislature, regulator or attorney general that wrote or enforces them, such as the CFPB, the FTC, state legislatures, and federal and provincial governments in Canada.

Each fact links to its source where it appears, and each guide lists its sources at the end. If we can't confirm a fact from an official or primary source, we leave it out rather than guess.

We describe only services Clearo actually offers. Figures that come from Clearo's own records are labeled as Clearo's claims, in the same sentence as the figure. We don't promise savings, we don't promise that a fee won't apply, and we don't say Clearo costs less than a named company: what a business pays depends on its card mix, ticket size and volume, which a free statement review works out on its own statement.

Card network rules, laws and tax rates change. Every guide shows when it was published, when it was last updated and when its facts were checked, and location pages show when their rules were last checked. Time-sensitive facts carry their own date in the text ("as of October 2026"), so you can tell how fresh each one is.

When a rule a page relies on changes, or a fact turns out to be wrong, we correct the page and update its date. Before you act on a rule, confirm it with the linked source, since it may have changed after we checked it.

Clearo publishes its "best" lists and ranks itself first, and each list says so at the top, with the criteria behind the order. We haven't tested other companies' services ourselves, so what a list says about another company comes from that company's own published information, with the date we checked it.

On our comparison pages, a competitor's price appears only with a link to that company's own pricing page and the date we checked it, and we check those prices again at least every 90 days. We don't publish claims about another company's support, reliability or reputation.

Our guides explain how payments, fees and the rules around them work. They aren't legal, tax, accounting or financial advice for your business. For a decision with legal or tax consequences, talk to a qualified professional who knows your situation.

Tell us through our contact page or call 647-691-9195, with the page and the fact in question. We'll check it against the source, correct the page if it's wrong and update its date.