T1 Payments Review
18
Jun 2026
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T1 Payments Review
T1 Payments is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based merchant account provider that positioned itself as a specialist in high-risk payment processing for eCommerce businesses operating globally. Founded around 2010 to 2012, the company built its market identity around serving merchant categories that mainstream processors routinely decline, including CBD and hemp products, nutraceuticals, adult content, firearms and ammunition, online gaming, travel, and subscription-based businesses. The platform offered international payment processing across more than 160 currencies, integration with over 175 shopping carts, and a stated 99.9% approval rate for applicants with no credit check required. Lets read more about T1 Payments Review.
This review cannot be written without being direct about what the research record shows. T1 Payments became the subject of a significant volume of lawsuits in 2021, including an eight-count complaint filed by Diamond CBD alleging fraud, conversion, theft, breach of contract, and wrongful retention of 649,311 dollars in reserve funds.
Multiple other merchants filed similar claims alleging the company withheld millions of dollars owed to them. In July 2021, T1 Payments’ listed phone number was disconnected, its office was vacated, its website was taken down, and its CEO Donald Kasdon stopped responding to press and client inquiries. Independent payment industry analysts who reviewed the company described it at that point as having shut down or operating in the shadows.
Despite this history, the company appears to have resumed some form of online presence and operation under its original brand. Any merchant evaluating T1 Payments today needs to understand the full documented history before proceeding. This review provides that context.
Company Background and Market Position | T1 Payments Review
T1 Payments, LLC was registered as a Nevada limited liability company and operated from an office in the Summerlin neighborhood of Las Vegas. The company maintained two addresses at various points: one in Las Vegas and one in London, England at 138 Holborn EC1N 2SW, a commercial address used by many offshore or internationally structured businesses. The company operated under multiple names, including 7 Processing, which is significant context for merchants attempting to conduct due diligence on the company’s structure and history.
The founding year has been inconsistently reported across the company’s own platforms, with the Facebook page listing 2012 and the LinkedIn profile claiming 2010. Donald Kasdon was listed as the founder, president, and CEO in most public documentation and in the lawsuits filed against the company. The BBB at one point listed Debra K. King as the current manager and principal, which introduced questions about the structure of the company’s leadership and accountability.
As for T1 Payments, they claimed that they have built valuable partnerships in the industry of high-risk payment processing and differentiated themselves with personalized merchant processing. Among their key selling points was working with businesses that other processors were not interested in, worldwide bank connections, and internal customer support system. All of the above-listed characteristics are certainly true and attractive for many restricted category merchants, and I should point out that the company indeed serviced many customers effectively prior to 2021.
One interesting thing about the due diligence for a merchant processor that needs to be discussed is the following: an independent researcher mentioned that there is some connection between Brandon Chapnick and T1 Payments. The matter is that he was sued by the FTC in 2016 because of making false claims concerning his health supplements and that the same address in Europe where T1 Payments operated was associated with Brandon Chapnick. This is definitely some interesting due diligence information although it should not necessarily be seen as fact.
Core Payment Processing Capabilities
During its period of active operation, T1 Payments offered a range of payment processing services designed specifically for the needs of high-risk eCommerce merchants. The platform processed all major credit and debit cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, with the card-not-present transaction processing infrastructure that online merchants require.
Multi-currency processing across more than 160 currencies was a central feature of the international payment offering, allowing merchants with global customer bases to price and accept transactions in local currencies rather than requiring customers to transact exclusively in US dollars. This capability was genuinely valuable for high-risk merchants who had been denied by domestic processors and needed international acquiring relationships to continue operating.
The payment gateway was compatible with more than 175 shopping carts and eCommerce platforms that would encompass the different eCommerce environments used by the high-risk merchants T1 worked with. Shopify integration was emphasized since this platform was favored by direct-to-consumer eCommerce companies operating in different industries. Besides offering traditional card processing options, there was support for ACH and eChecks processing that would be particularly useful for high-risk merchants where customers preferred making payments without using their credit card or for subscriptions where bank transfer was cheaper than credit card billing. The solution offered recurring billing features.
For merchants dealing in mobile commerce, the mobile payment options offered supported smartphones and the various eCommerce processes involved in making payments using them. Payments links allow users to collect funds from customers through secure links sent via email that customers click on when paying a bill for services rendered.
Industries Served and High-Risk Acceptance
T1 Payments explicitly marketed itself to a broad range of high-risk and restricted industry categories, and its willingness to serve these sectors was its primary competitive differentiator. The platform described itself as working with nearly every high-risk industry, which is a significant claim that reflects both the commercial opportunity in this market and the operational risk management demands it creates.
The CBD and hemp industry was one of the sectors most prominently associated with T1 Payments, and it was CBD merchants who were most vocally affected by the events of 2021. CBD payment processing is a genuinely difficult category because the regulatory status of hemp-derived CBD products shifted significantly with the 2018 Farm Bill but remained complex for payment processors navigating card network rules and bank appetite for the category. T1 Payments served major CBD brands including Diamond CBD, which became one of the plaintiffs in the 2021 lawsuits.
Additional industries served included nutraceuticals and dietary supplements, online gaming and gambling-adjacent businesses, adult entertainment, firearms and ammunition dealers, travel and vacation services, credit repair businesses, multilevel marketing companies, and subscription box businesses. The nutraceutical and supplement category is another sector where high chargeback rates create structural processing challenges, and the MLM category introduces its own risk profile related to business model scrutiny and dispute frequency.
For merchants in these categories who are evaluating any high-risk processor, the fundamental dilemma is real: mainstream processors will not serve them, the market of willing providers is smaller and includes companies with widely varying levels of reliability and integrity, and the consequences of choosing a bad processor are severe because fund withholding and account termination directly threaten business viability.
Fraud Prevention and Risk Management Tools
T1 Payments marketed a suite of fraud prevention and risk management tools as part of its merchant offering, which is particularly important for high-risk merchants whose transaction profiles generate elevated fraud exposure. The company described these tools as a full suite of chargeback and credit card fraud mitigation tools designed to protect merchants from both fraudulent chargebacks and the growing problem of friendly fraud, where customers dispute legitimate transactions.
Chargeback management support is one of the most operationally important services a high-risk payment processor can offer, because chargeback rates in high-risk categories are structurally elevated above the levels that mainstream processors tolerate, and the consequences of exceeding card network chargeback thresholds include account termination and placement on the MATCH list, which can make obtaining payment processing extremely difficult in the future.
Integrated risk management tools within the gateway allowed merchants to configure fraud rules, velocity limits, and transaction screening parameters to identify suspicious activity before it results in chargebacks. The ability to customize these rules to the specific transaction profile of a high-risk business is more useful than applying generic retail fraud rules to a business whose transaction patterns look different from standard retail by design.
Reserve accounts are a standard feature of high-risk merchant processing arrangements, where the processor retains a percentage of processed volume as a security deposit against potential chargebacks and refunds. The reserve mechanism is legitimate and appropriate for high-risk accounts, but the management of reserves became one of the central issues in the 2021 lawsuits, where multiple merchants alleged that T1 Payments retained reserve funds beyond the contractual terms and failed to return them when the processing relationship ended.
The 2021 Collapse: What Happened
The events of 2021 represent the most important information any merchant evaluating T1 Payments needs to understand, and they deserve detailed documentation rather than a brief mention. In the first half of 2021, T1 Payments began accumulating legal actions from multiple merchants simultaneously. Diamond CBD, a major hemp CBD brand operated by First Capital Venture Co., filed an eight-count complaint in Clark County, Nevada on May 14, 2021, naming T1 Payments and Donald Kasdon personally as defendants.
The complaint alleged fraud, conversion, theft, breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, and sought declaratory relief. Prior to filing, Diamond CBD had sent a written demand for the return of 649,311.73 dollars in reserve funds that the company alleged T1 had wrongfully retained. The defendants admitted to holding the funds but failed to return them.
The MLM-style firm Vida Divina filed another suit against T1 concerning the sum of 233,424 dollars in connection with termination fees. In total, there were additional suits filed by many merchants in Nevada and Florida, which altogether amounted to the description of the withholding of money in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars among all the merchants.
At some point in or around July 2021, the 800-number for T1 Payments ceased working. The Summerlin office was abandoned by the company, along with its website. Donald Kasdon stopped responding to any media contacts as well as to its clients. The firm itself was described as a business that either shut down or went into hiding, leaving cannabis businesses with their processing relationships frozen and money withheld.
According to one of the reports, which appeared in connection with the suits filed, the firm might be a part of the network of shell companies stretching over to the foreign land, as indicated by the company’s use of the London address.
Post-2021 Status and Current Operation Questions
Following the apparent shutdown in mid-2021, the situation around T1 Payments became less clear and more concerning from a due diligence perspective. The company’s website, t1payments.com, reappeared at some point after the initial disappearance. The current listing on the site includes two addresses: the original Las Vegas address at 10161 W Park Run Dr Suite 150 and the London address at 138 Holborn EC1N 2SW.
Analysts from the independent payment industry who examined the company in their reports as recently as March 2026 characterized T1 Payments as either being shut down or continuing its operations in secret and emphasized that merchants must exercise extreme caution when dealing with the company. Given the nature of the recommendations issued in the latest report, it appears that the concerns that arose following the events of 2021 have not been effectively addressed by the company.
The complaint history of T1 Payments is evident from the BBB listing for the organization. The earlier mentioned A-plus BBB rating that was given to T1 before 2021, and which is cited in some of the older reviews, no longer holds true following the complaints of 2021.
In the absence of up-to-date information on the outcome of the 2021 lawsuits, the status of T1 Payments’ operations, its new management, and the measures taken by the organization to address its past issues, there is an obvious lack of due diligence that can only be addressed by more information than what is available to merchants today.
Pricing Structure and Contract Terms
T1 Payments described its pricing model as flat rate billing, which is positioned as providing transparency without unpleasant surprises. The company did not publish specific rates on its website, instead requiring merchants to go through the onboarding process to receive a quote. This lack of published pricing is standard in the high-risk processing industry where rates are customized based on industry category, chargeback history, processing volume, and the specific risk profile of the merchant.
Independent reviews noted that T1 Payments uses flat rate pricing rather than interchange-plus pricing. For high-risk merchants, the choice between flat rate and interchange-plus is less determinative of overall cost than in standard merchant processing, because the risk premium charged on top of the card network interchange cost is the dominant cost driver rather than the specific markup structure applied to the interchange itself.
Reserve requirements are a standard and expected component of high-risk merchant account agreements, and the reserves that became the subject of litigation in 2021 were initially established within contractual terms that merchants had agreed to. The dispute was not about the existence of reserves but about the failure to return them when the processing relationship ended and the contractual release conditions were met.
Contract terms, including the length of the agreement, the cancellation notice requirements, and the early termination fee structure, were not disclosed publicly on the T1 Payments website. The Vida Divina lawsuit specifically involved 233,424 dollars in termination fees, which suggests that the exit cost provisions in T1’s standard agreements were material rather than nominal. Merchants considering any high-risk processor should request complete written contract documentation and have it reviewed carefully before signing, paying particular attention to reserve requirements, release conditions, and early termination fee provisions.
Security and Compliance Infrastructure
T1 Payments described its security infrastructure as PCI compliant and incorporated end-to-end encryption for transaction data protection. For a gateway processing card-not-present eCommerce transactions, PCI DSS compliance is the baseline expectation, and the representation that T1 maintained this standard is consistent with operating a legitimate payment processing business.
The fraud prevention tools marketed by T1 Payments, including velocity checks, AVS verification, CVV matching, and configurable transaction screening rules, represent standard high-risk gateway security features rather than proprietary capabilities. The emphasis on proactive fraud prevention in the company’s marketing was genuine in the sense that chargeback management is existentially important for high-risk processors, whose business viability depends on keeping merchant chargeback rates within card network thresholds.
The international processing infrastructure described by T1 Payments required relationships with acquiring banks across multiple jurisdictions, each with their own compliance requirements. The claim of processing in over 160 currencies implies bank relationships across multiple regions, which in the high-risk processing space often involves offshore or non-US acquiring banks with different regulatory frameworks than US-domiciled processors. The nature and stability of these banking relationships is a relevant context for any merchant evaluating the reliability of the processing infrastructure, but is not information that T1 Payments disclosed publicly.
Customer Support Model
T1 Payments marketed in-house customer support as a differentiator from processors that outsource support functions, and some user reviews noted responsive and personalized support as a positive aspect of the relationship. The personalized approach to merchant processing cited in the company’s marketing reflects the account-relationship model common in high-risk processing, where merchants in specialized categories often have questions and issues that require knowledgeable, category-specific support rather than generic service desk responses.
The documented complaint pattern, however, tells a more complicated story. Independent analysis identified complaints describing poor customer service that was characterized as rude in some cases, difficulty resolving billing disputes, and the failure to return funds after account termination that became the basis for the 2021 lawsuits. The disconnect between the marketed personalized support model and the experiences described in complaints suggests that support quality was inconsistent and may have deteriorated as the company’s financial and operational difficulties escalated.
The complete disappearance of customer support channels in mid-2021, when the phone line was disconnected and the website was taken down, represents the most severe possible failure of customer support and directly contributed to the harm experienced by merchants who had unresolved fund disputes at that point.
Strengths, Limitations, and Who It Is Best For
Presenting a balanced strengths-and-limitations assessment of T1 Payments in 2026 requires honesty about what the documented record shows. The strengths that T1 Payments offered during its operational period, including international multi-currency processing, high-risk industry acceptance, rapid account approval without credit checks, shopping cart integration breadth, and an in-house support model, addressed real and specific needs of merchants who had limited processing options.
The limitations, as documented across court filings, investigative reporting, and independent payment industry analysis, are severe and go beyond the standard friction points that characterize most payment processor reviews in this series. The pattern of fund withholding across multiple merchants, the filing of lawsuits alleging fraud and conversion, the apparent operational shutdown in 2021, the subsequent reappearance under unclear ownership and leadership, the connection to other entities with concerning regulatory histories, and the continued caution expressed by independent analysts as recently as 2026 combine to create a risk profile that most merchants should treat as disqualifying rather than manageable.
Any merchant considering T1 Payments in 2026 should treat the due diligence requirements as substantially higher than for any other processor reviewed in this series. Independent legal verification of the company’s current ownership, corporate structure, and status of the 2021 litigation is the minimum appropriate precaution before any commercial engagement.
FAQs
Q1. What happened to T1 Payments in 2021, and is the company still operating?
In 2021, T1 Payments became the subject of multiple lawsuits filed by merchants alleging fraud, conversion, theft, and wrongful retention of reserve funds. Diamond CBD filed an eight-count complaint seeking the return of 649,311 dollars in allegedly withheld reserves. Vida Divina filed a separate lawsuit over 233,424 dollars in termination fees.
Multiple other merchants filed similar actions in Nevada and Florida courts. Around July 2021, T1 Payments’ phone line was disconnected, its Summerlin office was vacated, its website was taken down, and CEO Donald Kasdon stopped responding to communications. Investigative reporting described the company as having disappeared, with CBD operators specifically left in limbo with frozen accounts and withheld funds.
Subsequently, T1 Payments’ website reappeared, and the company appears to have resumed some form of online presence. Whether the company is fully operational, under current legitimate management, and whether the 2021 litigation has been resolved are questions that cannot be definitively answered from publicly available information as of early 2026. Independent payment industry analysts reviewing the company as recently as March 2026 continue to advise extreme caution.
Q2. Is T1 Payments the same as 7 Processing, and why does the company use multiple names?
T1 Payments has been reported to operate under the name 7 Processing as an alternate brand. The use of multiple operating names in the payment processing industry is not inherently unusual, as companies sometimes operate different brands for different market segments or geographies. However, in the context of T1 Payments’ documented history, the multiple operating names and addresses are factors that make due diligence more complex rather than less.
The London address shared between T1 Payments and other entities concerning regulatory histories, combined with the alternate 7 Processing brand, means that merchants should independently verify the full corporate structure, registration details, and beneficial ownership of any entity they are considering contracting with before providing banking information or entering a merchant agreement. Researching both T1 Payments and 7 Processing separately through court records, BBB filings, and payment industry complaint databases will provide a more complete picture than researching either name alone.
Q3. What should a high-risk merchant who genuinely needs specialized processing consider instead of T1 Payments?
High-risk merchants who need payment processing for categories like CBD, nutraceuticals, subscription businesses, or other restricted industries have legitimate payment processing needs that deserve to be met by reliable providers. The documented history of T1 Payments does not mean that specialist high-risk processing is unavailable from credible sources. When evaluating alternative high-risk processors, merchants should prioritize several due diligence criteria.
First, verify the processor’s banking relationships, specifically asking which acquiring banks are involved and whether those banks are US-regulated institutions with documented compliance programs. Second, request complete contract documentation before signing, with particular attention to reserve requirements, release conditions, and early termination fee provisions.
Third, search court records, BBB complaints, and independent payment industry review sites for the specific processor name and any alternate names it operates under. Fourth, ask specifically about the processor’s chargeback management tools and what support is available when chargeback rates approach card network thresholds. Fifth, establish clear written protocols for fund settlement timing and reserve release at contract end, confirming these in the signed agreement rather than relying on verbal assurances. Reputable high-risk processors with documented positive track records include companies like PaymentCloud, Host Merchant Services, and Durango Merchant Services, which are regularly cited by independent payment industry analysts as credible options for merchants who have been declined by mainstream processors.
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