Card or bank transfer? On a $5,000 invoice it is a $140 question
Most businesses put a pay button on an invoice, the customer taps it, and nobody looks at what the tap cost. On small invoices it barely matters. On a $5,000 invoice it is the difference between keeping $140 and handing it to a card network.
The two prices
A card payment in the United States costs 2.9% plus 30 cents, with no ceiling. It is a percentage all the way up, so a bigger invoice costs proportionally more to collect.
A bank transfer — ACH debit — costs 0.8%, capped at $5.00. The cap is the whole story. Above $625 the fee stops growing, and everything after that is free to collect.
Here is the same invoice, both ways. These are the processor's published rates, read on 23 September 2026.
| Invoice | By card | By bank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | $14.80 | $4.00 | $10.80 |
| $1,200 | $35.10 | $5.00 | $30.10 |
| $5,000 | $145.30 | $5.00 | $140.30 |
| $20,000 | $580.30 | $5.00 | $575.30 |
Bank transfer is cheaper at every amount, not just large ones. On a $100 invoice it is 80 cents against $3.20. The cap just makes the gap absurd going up.
So why would anyone take a card?
Because cheaper is not the only thing an invoice has to be.
Speed. A card clears immediately. A bank transfer takes four business days to settle, and there is a faster two-day option that costs 1.2% with no ceiling — which on anything above about $420 is worse than simply waiting.
Certainty. A card payment that goes through has gone through. A bank transfer can fail after the money has shown up in your balance: insufficient funds surface late, the amount gets pulled back, and the processor charges a $4 failure fee on top.
Disputes. A card dispute can be contested with evidence. A bank debit dispute cannot — a consumer has 60 days, and a lost one is final with no appeal.
One extra step for your customer. They sign in to their bank once and authorize the debit. Most people do it without blinking. Some will not, and you do not want to lose the sale over it.
The rule we would actually use
- A few hundred dollars to somebody new? Take the card. The fee is small, the money is instant, and you have a dispute process if the job goes sideways.
- Thousands of dollars to a customer you have worked with? Take the transfer. Paying $145 to avoid a four-day wait on money you were always going to get is not a trade, it is a habit.
The important part is that both buttons are on the invoice and the customer chooses. You are not picking once for every job you will ever do.
What to put on the invoice
If you want the bank transfer taken, say so on the invoice itself, in one line, without making it a rule:
> Bank transfer is the fastest way for us to clear this and costs you nothing extra. Card is fine too.
Do not add a card surcharge to push people. Surcharging is legal in most states and not all of them, the card networks have their own disclosure rules, and a fee that is lawful in one state and not the next is a problem you do not want inside your invoicing. If the card genuinely costs you too much on large jobs, the fix is to ask for the transfer, not to punish the card.
What it costs with us
Our share is 0.9% of what you collect, and it is the same number whichever button the customer presses. We do not make more on the expensive rail, which is exactly why we will tell you to take the cheap one.
On that $5,000 invoice: $5.00 to the processor, $45.00 to us, $4,950 to you.
