Buyer guide · Payment Processing
Every platform that turns an invoice into a payment link charges about the same to take a card: 2.9% plus a few cents, or 2.99% flat. Where they differ — by a factor of a hundred or more — is what they charge when the customer pays from a bank account, and whether you are allowed to make the customer pay the card fee. Those two things decide the real cost of getting paid for any business that invoices, and neither is on the headline of a pricing page. We read the rate pages of seven platforms this site reviews on 18 September 2026 and put them on one basis: a single $10,000 invoice, and a single $500 one.
The short version: a $10,000 invoice paid by bank costs $100 at QuickBooks and Wave, $100.30 at PaySimple, $7 at Stripe, $5 at GoCardless, 59 cents at BILL and nothing at Melio. Paid by card, the same invoice costs between $290 and $299 everywhere — unless you are on BILL or Melio, which let you shift that to the customer.
All figures are the published rates for a US business on the platform's entry plan, read on 18 September 2026. 'Bank' means the customer pays the invoice by ACH debit from their account. Card means Visa, Mastercard or Discover; American Express differs at Wave and is noted.
Three of the seven price ACH as a straight percentage with no ceiling. Four price it as a percentage with a cap, a flat fee or nothing. On a $500 invoice the difference is trivial: $5 against $2.55 or 59 cents. On a $10,000 invoice it is $100 against $5. On a $40,000 invoice it is $400 against $5. A business that bills a handful of large invoices a month and whose customers pay by bank is paying, at the uncapped platforms, a card-sized fee for a payment that costs the platform a fraction of that to move.
QuickBooks is the one where history matters. Its rate page shows 1% and no cap. Replies from Intuit staff in its community forum say the cap was removed for accounts opened on or after 6 September 2023 — 'New QuickBooks Payments accounts opened on or after September 6, 2023, will follow the no-cap ACH plan' — while older accounts keep a cap that was raised to $15. If you have had QuickBooks Payments since before that date, the $10,000 invoice costs you $15 and switching accounts would cost you $85 an invoice. That is a reason not to close and reopen an account casually. Our guide to pay by bank covers what the rails underneath these fees actually cost and why ACH stays reversible for months.
Wave and PaySimple are simpler: 1% is 1%, and PaySimple adds 30 cents. Both publish the figure plainly, and neither offers a cap. If your customers pay by bank and your invoices are large, both are expensive for the payment and should be chosen, if at all, for the accounting or the service-business tooling around it.
The card rate is close to identical everywhere, so the second lever is whether the platform lets the customer carry it. BILL builds it in: an admin can set 'You'll pay the processing fee' or 'Your customer will pay the processing fee' for the account or for a single invoice, at up to 2.9% of the payment. BILL's own example is worth reading twice. A $100 invoice with a 2.9% convenience fee charges the card $102.90; BILL then takes its 2.9% on $102.90, not on $100, so you receive $99.91. Passing the fee on costs you nine cents on every hundred dollars. Melio's pricing page says the same 2.9% 'can be covered by either you or your customers'. Both help pages warn that convenience fees are prohibited in some states and governed by network rules; our guide to credit card surcharge rules sets out which states and what the networks require, and it applies to an invoice link exactly as it does to a checkout.
QuickBooks, Wave, PaySimple and Stripe publish no such switch on the rate pages we read. At those platforms the card fee is yours. You can still price for it — a lower price for paying by bank is a discount, not a surcharge, and needs no acquirer notification — but you cannot flip a setting and have the platform add 2.9% to the customer's card.
Card money lands sooner than bank money on every platform that publishes a schedule. QuickBooks' help article on payment holds says payments processed before 3pm Pacific are deposited the next business day, after it in two, and that a new account's first batch takes up to five business days. Wave states one to two business days for cards and one to seven for bank payments. PaySimple's documentation describes a three-business-day card cycle. BILL's standard ePayment timing is four banking days, cut to about two once BILL moves an account to accelerated timing at its discretion. GoCardless markets two-day payouts as a feature of its Advanced plan and does not publish the Standard figure. Each sells an instant option: 1.75% at QuickBooks, 1% at Wave and Melio, 1% with a $9.99 minimum and $100 maximum at BILL, 1.5% at Stripe. Our piece on what instant payouts cost as a loan shows why 1% for one day is not a small number.
Most of these platforms hold your money in transit as an aggregator or a licensed money transmitter rather than settling to a merchant account in your own name, and the site's reviews of Wave, QuickBooks Payments, Melio and BILL each record the same dominant complaint: an account frozen, or a payment shown as sent but not arrived, with the money held while the platform reviews it. The fee table does not protect you from that and a no-contract plan does not shorten it. Our guide to reserves and holds explains the mechanics; the practical advice is the same at every price point — keep a second way to be paid configured before you need it.
