localpayments.io · built on Nuvei

Keep more of what you earn. Get found without paying rent. Get paid with a receipt no one can re-write.

Most small operators bleed in two places at once: 3–10% to a payment processor, then another 15–30% to Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, Houzz, or Google Ads just to be found. localpayments.io collapses both costs into one transparent rail — built on Nuvei (Montreal, 2003 · 200+ payment methods · 150+ currencies) — and adds AI-generated local SEO so customers can find your real, verified profile without you renting attention every month.

The cost-out, in plain math

A two-person trades business doing CA$240,000 a year in card revenue, with a $1,200/month Yelp + Angi + Google Ads stack, currently spends roughly $19,000 a year just to take money and be findable. Moving to interchange-plus on Nuvei and AI-generated local SEO drops the all-in number to roughly $7,000 — a recovered margin point of about 5% of revenue. That math is real, the rails are real, and it's the whole point of the site.

What's the typical cost stack today?

Stripe runs 2.9% + $0.30 per online card charge. Square runs 2.6% + $0.10 in person. Yelp ads bill out at $300–$1,500/month for a single trade in a single city. Angi (formerly Angie's List) and Thumbtack charge $15–$100 per lead — most of which never close. Google Ads for "plumber near me" in any major metro is $15–$50 per click. The processor and the discovery tax are two separate businesses on the same revenue line.

Sources: Stripe/Square published pricing · Yelp/Thumbtack rate cards (2025)

What changes on the Nuvei rail?

Nuvei offers interchange-plus (cost-plus) pricing — the card network's actual interchange fee, plus a small disclosed margin — instead of the flat 2.6%–2.9% mark that Stripe and Square use. For a typical small business mix of debit and consumer credit in Canada or the US, the effective rate lands closer to 1.6–2.1% all-in, depending on card mix. On CA$240k of card volume, that alone returns several thousand dollars a year that currently goes to a processor.

Source: Nuvei "Understanding Merchant Pricing" — cost-plus pricing structure

What rails do we actually support?

Through Nuvei: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, Interac Debit and Interac Online (Canadian real-time bank transfer), Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, SEPA, and 200+ alternative payment methods across 150+ currencies — so a Montreal contractor can also take payment from a client in Berlin or São Paulo without a second processor.

Source: Nuvei APM catalog · Interac Combined documentation

AISEOified — getting found without paying rent

The other half of the bleed is the discovery tax. Yelp, Angi, and Google Ads charge you every month for the right to appear in front of someone searching "drywall near me." localpayments.io treats discovery as a built-in feature, not a separate subscription, by generating a real, indexable local-SEO page for every verified business — automatically.

What does "AISEOified" actually mean?

Every verified business gets a permanent profile page that the network generates from the real receipt and review history. The page ships with proper LocalBusiness and Service schema.org markup, a unique meta title and description tuned to the business's actual service area, an FAQ section built from real customer questions in past receipts, and city-level service pages auto-generated only for places where the business has signed receipts. Google indexes it. Customers find it. No monthly ad spend buys the spot.

Standards: schema.org/LocalBusiness · Google Search structured-data guidelines

Why is the SEO durable instead of spammy?

Because every claim on the page is anchored to a signed, real-world receipt. Google has spent a decade learning to demote programmatic SEO that's not backed by real activity. Pages backed by verified transactions, named reviewers, and an actual physical service area are exactly what their guidelines reward — and exactly what Yelp and Angi don't have, because their content is detached from any verified payment event.

The four mechanics

Each is a permanent URL on the network so it can be linked, cited, and audited by anyone — journalist, regulator, lawyer, or customer.

1. Verified receipts

Every transaction produces a receipt signed by both the buyer's and the seller's VID and pinned to the public identity registry on allannott.tech (/i/{vid}). The seller can't re-issue it. The buyer can't deny it happened. The receipt is the source of truth for reviews, disputes, taxes, and warranty claims — and it's the legal artefact a regulator will actually accept.

Backs: CRA/IRS recordkeeping rules · Consumer Rights Act 2015 (UK) · ACL §54 (AU)

2. Reviews tied to receipts

Only the VID that signed the receipt can write the review. No paid reviews. No review-bombing. No anonymous five-stars from the owner's cousin, no anonymous one-stars from a competitor. A business's score is the unforgeable record of receipts and the reviews attached to them.

3. Listings without the rent

Profile pages and the AI-generated local-SEO pages are flat-cost or free. Ranking is by verified completed work and review quality, period. There is no pay-to-rank auction, ever.

4. Payment routing that survives lockouts

Payments land in the contractor's chosen destination — bank, card processor, Interac, or a regional method via https://localpayments.io/get-paid. If one rail freezes, the receipt and the customer relationship still exist; the money simply routes through another rail. The platform is not the bank, and it does not pretend to be.

Canada: Code of Conduct for the Credit and Debit Card Industry · US: Reg E (12 CFR 1005) · EU: PSD2

The real consumer-protection laws this stack invokes

If a business won't deliver or won't refund

A signed localpayments.io receipt is sufficient evidence to file under the unfair-practices statute in every jurisdiction the network operates in. The receipt also satisfies the "documentation of the transaction" requirement most regulators and banks demand before opening an investigation.

US FTC Act §5 · California CLRA §1770 · Canada Competition Act §52 · UK CRA 2015 · ACL §18

If the card network is involved (chargeback path)

Card-network chargeback rights are statutory in the US (Reg E for debit, Reg Z for credit) and equivalent in Canada under the Bank Act and the Code of Conduct for the Credit and Debit Card Industry. A signed receipt strengthens the buyer's case and also protects the honest seller from a fraudulent chargeback by proving delivery.

US: 12 CFR 1005 (Reg E) · 12 CFR 1026 (Reg Z) · Canada: Code of Conduct §C7

If the processor itself misbehaves

Funds frozen for 90+ days with no human contact is a recurring pattern with Stripe, PayPal, and Square. The Nuvei rail is acquirer-level (not an aggregator), which means the merchant has a named representative and a contractual obligation around hold periods. When a freeze does happen, the receipt history is portable and exportable — never trapped inside the processor.

Canada: Code of Conduct §C8 (statement disclosures) · US UDAP statutes

How the three sites cooperate

allannott.tech — public identity (VIDs), the Wall (human verification), advocacy when things go wrong, the permanent URL contract.
upgradeai.net — the free no-mailbox account anchored to a VID; AI tools to build a contractor's site or profile cheaply.
localpayments.io — payments on Nuvei, listings, verified receipts, reviews, and AI-generated local SEO.

A contractor's VID on allannott.tech is the same identity they use to sign receipts on localpayments.io and to publish their site on upgradeai.net. One human, one verified identity, three jobs done — and if any one site is ever attacked, lost, or compromised, the other two still hold the line.

What it costs

Listing & AI-SEO pages: free tier, with a flat low monthly for premium profile features. No auction. No pay-to-rank. Ever.
Payments: interchange-plus on the Nuvei rail with a transparent disclosed margin. Target all-in: well under what Stripe + Yelp + Angi combine to today.
Receipts and reviews: free, always.

What it refuses

No pay-to-rank advertising.
No selling buyer or seller data — ever.
No "verified" badges sold for money.
No suppressing reviews on request from the reviewed party.
No exclusive lock-in — receipt and review history is exportable on demand.

Plug in today

Claim a VID on allannott.tech — /i.
Build a free profile on upgradeai.net — https://upgradeai.net/signup.
Open a payment and listing account on localpayments.io — https://localpayments.io/get-paid.

The trinity — how the three sites fit together.
The plan — the plain-language business plan.
The laws — every statute cited above, in one place.
Permanent URLs — the URL contract that keeps every link above working forever.