FreshBooks Payments Review

FreshBooks Payments is the built-in way to get paid on a FreshBooks invoice. FreshBooks, the Toronto accounting software company founded in 2003 by Mike McDerment, rebuilt the product on Stripe Connect in 2024, retiring the WePay-powered version in the process, and now runs it as a white-labelled Stripe account you open from inside FreshBooks. It is sold only to businesses in the United States and Canada, on top of a FreshBooks subscription ($23 to $70 a month at list, or the custom Select plan). Published US pricing is 2.9% + $0.30 on domestic consumer cards, 3.5% + $0.30 on American Express and business cards, 1% on ACH with no cap outside Select, 3.5% + $0.30 on anything run through the $20-a-month Advanced Payments add-on (virtual terminal, saved cards, AutoPay), 6% + $0.30 on Affirm and Afterpay, plus 1.5% for cards issued abroad, 2% for currency conversion and $15 per dispute. Card money arrives two business days after the charge once the account is established, but every new account waits seven business days for its first payout, and Stripe's reserves and verification holds apply. There is no monthly fee, no minimum and no contract for the payments product itself. It is convenient and priced at the Stripe standard for small invoices; it is a poor fit for a business collecting large bank transfers, which pay the full 1% with no ceiling.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using FreshBooks Payments’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What it is

FreshBooks was founded in Toronto in 2003 by Mike McDerment, who ran it until 2021, and is now led by Shaheen Javadizadeh as chief executive; the company says more than 500,000 small businesses in over 160 countries have used its invoicing and accounting software. FreshBooks Payments is the product's own way of getting invoices paid. For years it was 'FreshBooks Payments powered by WePay'; on 25 April 2024 FreshBooks announced a rebuild on Stripe Connect's embedded components, opened sign-ups that summer, and ended the WePay relationship in 2024 — a since-removed support article dated the end of the WePay relationship 15 July 2024 — with saved card data migrated from WePay to Stripe. Stripe's own case study describes the change as moving from a hosted Connect integration to a white-labelled solution, with onboarding, payout tracking and Stripe's instant payouts all rendered inside FreshBooks. The product is available only to businesses in the United States and Canada; international users connect Stripe Standard or PayPal to their invoices instead.

Structurally, FreshBooks Payments is a Stripe account you open from inside FreshBooks. Sign-up asks for business and owner details — industry, website, the owner's date of birth and last four digits of the Social Security or Social Insurance number, a statement descriptor, and bank details, which for US businesses means an online-banking login. Funds sit with Stripe until paid out, the account settings link to a Stripe dashboard for payments and disputes, and reserves, verification holds and dispute procedures follow Stripe's connected-account rules. Clients can pay by credit and debit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, US ACH, Canadian pre-authorized debit, SEPA on euro invoices, and by instalments through Affirm (US and Canada) or Afterpay (US).

Pricing

The pricing page advertises 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and '1% bank transfer fees'. The fee article behind it is more specific, and worth reading in full. In US dollars: 2.9% + $0.30 applies to domestic consumer cards; American Express and any commercial, corporate or business card is 3.5% + $0.30; ACH is 1% of the invoice, with caps 'available for Select plans' only; 'managed payments' — anything charged through Advanced Payments, meaning the virtual terminal, saved cards, AutoPay and AutoCollect — are 3.5% + $0.30; Affirm and Afterpay are 6% + $0.30. On top: 1.5% for a card issued outside the US, 2% when the invoice currency differs from the account currency, $15 per dispute, $4 per failed ACH, and 1.5% for an instant payout (1% in Canada). Refunds return the money to the client but not the fee to you. There is no setup fee, monthly fee or minimum on the payments product, and FreshBooks logs each fee as an expense automatically.

Two things cost more than the headline suggests. The first is ACH. An uncapped 1% is the norm among accounting-embedded products — Wave and QuickBooks Payments, reviewed on this site, charge the same — but it is well above the 0.8% capped at $5 that Stripe itself charges on the rails FreshBooks uses, and it turns the cheapest payment method for a small invoice into the most expensive one for a large one: $250 on a $25,000 bill. The second is Advanced Payments, the $20-a-month add-on (included on Select) that unlocks card-on-file, AutoPay and the virtual terminal; because everything it touches is billed as managed payments at 3.5% + $0.30, a retainer client on AutoPay costs both the subscription and the higher rate. The subscription underneath is FreshBooks itself: Lite $23, Plus $43 and Premium $70 a month at list, Select by quote, with team members at $11 a month each and payroll at $40 plus $6 a person; introductory discounts of 80% for three months or $1 a month for the first year are routinely advertised.

Funding and holds

FreshBooks publishes its payout timings precisely. A new account's transactions are held until a first payout at T+7 business days, which the payout article says 'is for risk mitigation purposes and cannot be waived under any circumstances'. After that, card payments settle at T+2 business days, US ACH at T+4 and Canadian pre-authorized debit at T+5, on a daily automatic schedule by default. Instant Payouts — Stripe's embedded component — move an eligible card balance to a bank account or debit card within about 30 minutes, day or night, for 1.5% in the US and 1% in Canada, up to an account-specific daily maximum of $9,999; new accounts are not immediately eligible. Payouts can be paused for verification requests or reduced when Stripe holds a reserve against refunds and chargebacks. The complaints on Trustpilot are mostly about this layer: payments over a couple of hundred dollars taking five to ten days to land, a reactivated account being issued a new Stripe account with a fresh onboarding and hold, and FreshBooks support unable to move Stripe's decisions. FreshBooks replies to most of them.

Contract

There is nothing to sign. FreshBooks Payments has no term, minimum, exit fee or PCI charge, and can be turned off in settings. The FreshBooks subscription is month-to-month or annual and is cancelled from the billing page; the practical dependency is that the payments account is reached through the subscription, so a business that stops paying for FreshBooks loses its window onto the Stripe account beneath. FreshBooks is not a bank or the merchant of record: Stripe's connected-account terms govern disputes, reserves and account closure, and FreshBooks' role is the interface and the support desk.

Reputation

FreshBooks' Trustpilot profile is claimed, invites reviews, and stands at 3.7 from 1,042 reviews — 58% five-star and 18% one-star — with the company replying to 88% of negative reviews. The five-star reviews are about the software and the support line; the recent one-star reviews are disproportionately about payments since the Stripe move — holds, delayed payouts, duplicate accounts. The Better Business Bureau profile for FreshBooks (2ndSite Inc.) in Toronto is rated D- for failing to respond to four complaints and is not accredited, with four complaints in three years and two closed in the last twelve months; it is a small sample and says more about responsiveness to the BBB than about the product. FreshBooks itself points to eleven Stevie awards for customer service and a run of Great Place to Work rankings. As a processor, the honest summary is that it is Stripe with FreshBooks' support in front of it, which is good when the question is about the software and frustrating when it is about a hold.

Bottom line

FreshBooks Payments grades B-. The terms are clean — no contract, no monthly fee on the payments product, a complete published fee schedule, two-day settlement and instant payouts — and for a service business invoicing card-sized amounts it is exactly as convenient as it claims. The grade is held down by the pricing behind the headline: 3.5% + $0.30 on Amex, business cards and every automated charge, a $20 add-on for the card-on-file features that competitors include, and a 1% ACH fee with no cap outside the negotiated Select plan — standard among its accounting-software peers, but far above the $5 cap Stripe charges on the same rails. Use it for card payments and small invoices; for large bank-transfer invoices, get the cap in writing or collect them somewhere that has one.