Should You Accept Credit Cards? The Real Math on Fees vs. Faster Payments

The fee that feels like giving away money

Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. On a $5,000 deposit, that's $145.30 in fees. For a contractor who sends fifteen estimates a month, credit card fees add up to real money annually.

The objection to accepting cards almost always comes back to this number. The question worth asking is whether that fee is the right thing to be optimising against — or whether it's the visible cost obscuring larger invisible benefits.

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What you gain when you accept cards

Faster approvals. When a customer can pay a deposit instantly from their phone at the moment they approve the estimate, the deposit happens. When you require a cheque or bank transfer, the deposit happens "later" — and later has a way of not happening at all.

Higher deposit collection rates. Customers who want to pay but find the process inconvenient procrastinate. Credit card payment removes the inconvenience entirely. The difference in actual deposit collection rates between card-enabled and non-card contractors is significant.

Customers who prefer it. A meaningful portion of customers — particularly higher-income residential customers and commercial clients — prefer to pay by card for the same reason they prefer it everywhere else: points, purchase protection, convenience. These customers are your best customers. Making payment harder for them is a strange trade-off.

Faster cash flow. Card deposits settle in 2–7 business days. Cheques can take longer to arrive, get deposited, and clear. For cash flow purposes, faster settlement matters.

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The real math

Take a contractor who sends 15 estimates per month at an average value of $3,500. Say 45% close (6.75 jobs), and each closed job requires a 40% deposit ($1,400).

Current scenario (no cards, cheque deposit):

• Deposits collected: assume 80% actually get deposited before work starts (some get delayed, some get forgotten)
• Deposits collected: 5.4 × $1,400 = $7,560

With card payments (frictionless deposit in approval flow):

• Deposits collected: assume 95% get deposited at approval
• Deposits collected: 6.4 × $1,400 = $8,960
• Card fees at 2.9%: $260

Net difference: $8,960 − $260 − $7,560 = +$1,140 per month

One additional deposit collected per month more than covers the entire month's card fees. The fee is not the cost of accepting cards — the fee is the price of guaranteed collection.

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How to handle the fee

Option 1: Absorb it. Build the card fee into your pricing and treat it as a cost of doing business. At 2.9%, a 3% price increase across your estimates covers it entirely. Given the margin improvements from regular price increases, this is often the cleanest approach.

Option 2: Pass it through. Some contractors add a card processing surcharge explicitly on invoices. This is legal in most jurisdictions (check your state's rules). Some customers will choose to pay by ACH to avoid the surcharge, which also saves you the fee.

Option 3: Offer ACH as the no-fee alternative. Bank transfers via ACH typically cost $0.80–$1.50 per transaction versus 2.9% for cards. Present both options: "You can pay by card through the approval link, or I can send you a bank transfer link with no processing fee." Many customers will take the card option anyway. The ones who don't save you the fee.

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The deposit-in-the-approval-flow approach

The most effective implementation is making card payment the default at the moment of estimate approval. When the customer taps to sign, the deposit payment follows immediately in the same session.

This is how the driveway close works in practice: the estimate is presented on site, signed on the phone, and the deposit hits your Stripe account before you pull out of the driveway.

The fee is 2.9%. The alternative — finishing a job before the deposit is collected, or having deposits trickle in over a week — is a cash flow and certainty problem that costs more than 2.9%.

Accept the cards. Build the fee in. Move on.