PowerTranz GoHighLevel Integration — Caribbean Setup Guide

Your client just got off a call with their merchant services rep at NCB, Republic, or Scotiabank. Card payments will run through PowerTranz. Only PowerTranz. The funnel goes live next week, and the GHL gateway dropdown shows Stripe, Square, NMI, Authorize.net, PayPal — nothing else.

Welcome to the most common payments-onboarding sticking point in the Anglophone Caribbean.

The good news: you can have that funnel taking live Visa and Mastercard payments through PowerTranz tonight, with recurring billing, dashboard refunds, and 3-D Secure 2 handled cleanly. We've shipped this exact integration for merchants in Kingston, Port of Spain, and Bridgetown over the past 18 months, and the moving parts have settled. You'll need a GHL sub-account with admin access, the API credentials from your acquiring bank's welcome pack, and about 15 minutes (45 the first time).

The Genius Checkout payment form as buyers see it inside a GoHighLevel funnel page. Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx accepted; 3-D Secure handled in-flow without bouncing the buyer to a separate domain.

#PowerTranz is what FAC became — same processor, new name

If you've worked with Caribbean merchants longer than two years, you knew this gateway as First Atlantic Commerce, usually shortened to FAC. The company rebranded to PowerTranz in 2020 after being acquired into the Carta Worldwide group. The acquiring rails didn't change. Bank onboarding kits — especially anything printed before about 2023 — still slash both names: "FAC / PowerTranz", as if hedging.

So: FAC is the historical name. PowerTranz is the current one, the API endpoint, the merchant portal at merchant.powertranz.com, and the brand on the docs at powertranz.com. Same merchant ID, same secret key, same settlement bank account. If your bank sent you a "FAC Merchant ID", paste it where Genius Checkout asks for the PowerTranz ID. It's the same value.

#Which Caribbean banks route through it

Almost every Anglophone Caribbean acquirer eventually lands on PowerTranz for card processing. The ones we see most often, in roughly the order they show up in our support inbox:

If the acquirer is on this list, the gateway behind the merchant ID is PowerTranz. If it isn't — for example a few Trinidadian and Barbadian banks have moved to Mastercard Payment Gateway Services — see our companion guide for MPGS-acquired Caribbean banks. Both routes are supported; you pick the matching one and the rest of this guide stays the same.

#How GoHighLevel handles a gateway that isn't on its default list

GHL ships with Stripe, Square, NMI, Authorize.net, PayPal. None of them are licensed to acquire in the Caribbean for a local merchant. That's the whole reason your client's bank pointed at PowerTranz in the first place.

GHL's answer, added in 2024, is the Custom Payment Provider slot. One integration point that lets a third-party gateway behave like one of the natives: it shows up in the payment-method dropdown on funnels, order forms, calendar bookings, communities, memberships, and invoices. The buyer never leaves the funnel. The gateway integration handles authorisation, 3-D Secure, callbacks, and subscription renewals quietly in the background.

The catch — and it's a meaningful one — is that GHL exposes exactly one Custom Payment Provider slot per sub-account. You don't install five gateways. You install one bridge that brokers to whichever gateway the merchant uses. That's where Genius Checkout fits.

#Where Genius Checkout sits between GHL and PowerTranz

Genius Checkout is a payments orchestration layer. We occupy the single Custom Payment Provider slot inside the GHL sub-account, and behind the scenes we route to whichever acquirer the merchant is connected to — PowerTranz, MPGS, Wompi, others. From GHL's perspective there's one connected provider. From the merchant's perspective every gateway they're approved on is suddenly available.

For a Caribbean PowerTranz merchant the flow is:

1. Buyer clicks "Pay" on a GHL funnel page.
2. GHL hands off to Genius Checkout via the Custom Payment Provider hook.
3. We render a PCI SAQ-A payment form. Card data goes straight to PowerTranz — never touches GHL infrastructure, never touches the merchant's server.
4. PowerTranz returns the authorisation; we relay success or failure back to GHL.
5. GHL fires its own automations — order confirmation, contact tagging, workflow triggers, fulfilment.

The merchant logs into their Genius Checkout dashboard for transaction history, refunds, subscription management, and exportable reports. Contacts, marketing, funnels, and fulfilment stay inside GHL. Each tool does what it's actually good at.

#Setup: GoHighLevel side and Genius Checkout side

Half the work happens in GHL and half in the Genius Checkout dashboard. Order matters here — create the GC merchant account first so you have credentials to paste into GHL when you get there.

#Step 1 — Create your Genius Checkout merchant account

Sign up at geniuscheckout.com and choose the free plan. No card required.

The Genius Checkout merchant dashboard. Subscriptions, payment links, gateways, and refunds all live in the left sidebar.

#Step 2 — Connect PowerTranz inside Genius Checkout

Open Gateways in the sidebar, pick PowerTranz, and paste two values from your bank's welcome pack:

• PowerTranz ID (sometimes labelled "Merchant ID")
• PowerTranz Password (the API password, not the merchant-portal login — see §1 of the mistakes section)

If your bank sent you a "FAC Merchant ID" instead, that's the same value. The rename hasn't fully propagated through every onboarding kit.

Supported gateways in the Genius Checkout dashboard. Connecting PowerTranz takes two fields from your bank's welcome email.

Tick Enable 3-D Secure 2. It's on by default and you should leave it on. For Caribbean acquirers, 3-DS 2 is mandatory on e-commerce — flipping it off will get transactions declined within days of going live. (Yes, even though sandbox lets you turn it off. Don't.)

#Step 3 — Connect Genius Checkout to GoHighLevel

In the GHL sub-account: Payments → Integrations, find Genius Checkout in the marketplace, click Connect, approve the OAuth handshake. That's it.

If you're operating as an agency, your end client doesn't have to do this themselves. Connecting from the agency view installs the bridge into the sub-account. We mention this because half the agencies we onboard try to send their merchant a "click here" link before realising the agency view does it in one click.

Genius Checkout configuration as it appears inside GoHighLevel after a successful OAuth connection.

#Step 4 — Set Genius Checkout as the active provider on your funnel

Open the GHL funnel or order form. In the page settings, the Payment section now shows Genius Checkout in the provider dropdown. Select it, save, publish. The next checkout on that funnel will charge through PowerTranz.

#Beyond funnel checkout: payment links and subscriptions

Funnel checkout covers the obvious case. Plenty of Caribbean businesses sell differently, though — a spa in Negril takes deposits over WhatsApp, a fitness coach in Port of Spain bills members monthly, a wedding planner in Bridgetown sends a 50% deposit invoice months out. Standalone payment links and subscription links work alongside the GHL integration. Same merchant account, same PowerTranz processor, same dashboard.

Payment links can be sent over WhatsApp, SMS, email, or printed as QR codes.

A payment link is a one-off URL. Pick the amount, currency (USD, JMD, TTD, BBD, KYD — PowerTranz supports 145+, your merchant ID is enabled for a subset), optional description. You get a link and a QR code. The transaction shows up in the same dashboard as your funnel payments.

#Recurring billing on PowerTranz

This is where most Caribbean SaaS, membership, and service businesses get the biggest lift. Set the interval (day, week, month, year), the amount, optional trial, optional setup fee, optional cap on cycles.

Subscription link creation. Trial period and setup fee are optional; interval is the only required field beyond price.

The mechanic underneath is tokenisation plus chargeToken renewals. On the first payment, the buyer enters their card and completes 3-D Secure 2 in the browser. PowerTranz returns a vaulted card token. From cycle two onwards, we send a chargeToken call to PowerTranz on the renewal date. No buyer involvement. No browser session. No challenge screen for the routine, low-risk renewals — which is the whole point.

That first 3-DS 2 authentication is what makes the rest of the subscription run smoothly. Skip it (yes, this is possible if you ignore step 2's checkbox) and every renewal counts as an unauthenticated MOTO transaction. The issuing bank will eventually decline it, usually around month three when the merchant has stopped paying close attention.

Subscription list view. Pause, cancel, or refund individual cycles from here.

#Five mistakes that have cost merchants a week each

Same handful of problems show up across enough Caribbean PowerTranz onboardings to be worth flagging individually. None are obvious from the docs.

1. Pasting the merchant-portal login as the API password. PowerTranz issues two credential sets: one for the portal at merchant.powertranz.com, and a separate API ID + password for server-to-server calls. The API one goes into Genius Checkout. If you see "Invalid credentials" on every test charge, you've almost certainly used the portal password. We promise.

2. Leaving 3-D Secure 2 off in test mode and forgetting to enable it for production. PowerTranz allows non-3DS transactions in sandbox, but every Caribbean acquirer requires 3-DS 2 on live e-commerce. Confirm the toggle is on before switching the merchant ID from test to live. A weekend's worth of declines is the usual price for missing this one.

3. Currency mismatch between GHL and PowerTranz. If your GHL funnel is priced in USD but your PowerTranz merchant ID is provisioned for JMD only, every transaction will fail with currency-not-supported. PowerTranz the gateway supports 145+ currencies; your specific merchant ID is enabled for a subset chosen during bank onboarding. Two-minute call to the bank to confirm. Worth it.

4. Skipping the live-card test on the production merchant ID. Sandbox passes don't always predict production 3-DS 2 issuer behaviour — particularly for Visa cards issued by smaller regional banks. Run a real $1 or $5 transaction on a real card. Confirm the funds settle 1–3 business days later. Then refund it from the dashboard. That's the only way to validate the full loop, and skipping it has burned us before too.

5. Sharing one Genius Checkout merchant account across multiple GHL sub-accounts. An agency with ten Caribbean clients needs ten Genius Checkout accounts, one per merchant, each with its own PowerTranz credentials. We see this one most often with agencies migrating from a single-tenant predecessor. Sharing one mixes transactions in the dashboard and quietly destroys month-end reconciliation. Don't.

#Frequently asked questions

Is PowerTranz the same as First Atlantic Commerce? Yes. FAC rebranded to PowerTranz in 2020. Bank welcome packs and most pre-2021 documentation still call it FAC. Merchant ID, API password, and underlying acquiring relationship are unchanged.

Does Genius Checkout cost extra on top of PowerTranz processing fees? Our free plan covers the GHL integration and unlimited transactions. You still pay PowerTranz's per-transaction fee directly to your acquiring bank — we don't take a slice of that. Paid plans add multi-user dashboards and premium support, but the core PowerTranz-to-GHL bridge stays free.

Can buyers pay in their local currency (JMD, TTD, BBD) inside a GHL funnel? Yes, provided the merchant ID is enabled for that currency by the bank. Most Caribbean merchant IDs are provisioned for USD plus one local currency; a few banks issue separate IDs per currency. Five-minute call to the merchant services rep before going live.

What happens to saved cards when a buyer's card expires? The PowerTranz token is tied to the original card number. When the card expires, the next renewal fails and the subscription is marked for re-authentication. We send a hosted re-auth link to the buyer's email — once they complete 3-DS 2 with the new card, the subscription resumes without you lifting a finger.

What happens to in-flight subscriptions if I disconnect Genius Checkout from GHL? Subscriptions live against the Genius Checkout merchant account, not the GHL connection. Disconnecting stops new funnel payments routing through us, but existing subscriptions keep renewing on schedule. You can still refund, cancel, and report on them.

Does this work for GHL SaaS-mode agencies reselling to Caribbean clients? Yes — it's how most of our agency customers operate. Each end-client sub-account gets its own Genius Checkout merchant account behind it. For Spanish-speaking Latin American clients, see our Colombian acquirer setup guide for Wompi, PSE, and Nequi.

Are webhooks available for downstream automation? Yes. Every transaction event — authorised, captured, refunded, subscription renewed, subscription cancelled — fires a webhook you can wire into Zapier, Make, n8n, or your own endpoint. Idempotency keys included.

#Going live

The setup ends with a real card transaction against the live merchant ID. Not a sandbox pass — an actual $5 charge that settles into the merchant's bank account 1–3 business days later. Once that money lands, the integration is production-grade.

If you'd rather not assemble PowerTranz, GHL, 3-D Secure 2, tokenisation, and subscription rails yourself, that's exactly what Genius Checkout exists to do. Create your free account and connect PowerTranz to your client's GoHighLevel sub-account in the next 15 minutes.

References: PowerTranz product documentation at powertranz.com; PCI SAQ-A scope definitions from the PCI Security Standards Council; 3-D Secure 2 specification from EMVCo.