qaq parent
Your merchant account can be with your bank and you just use authoriz.net as a gateway. Fees might be a bit higher than stripe but in case of problems you can talk to a human and resolve your problems.
I've been in that position for many, many years and not a single time has my bank been useful to me. The gateway people usually are able to help out, depending on what the issue is. And this across a multitude of banks.
And yes, it's a better solution than Stripe, assuming you are not a high risk merchant, in which case banks won't touch you.