QuickBooks Payments charges a per-transaction processing fee that depends on how the card is used, swiped or tapped in person costs less than a card typed in manually or paid through an emailed invoice, which costs less than a card paid through a keyed-in entry. There's no flat number that applies everywhere; it's a percentage plus a small per-transaction fee, and it varies by your QuickBooks plan. This isn't the same as your QuickBooks Online subscription price, that's a separate monthly charge for using the software itself.
1. Card swiped, tapped, or dipped in person. The cheapest category, since a physical card present at the time of sale carries less fraud risk for the processor. This applies if you're using a card reader with QuickBooks Payments.
2. Card paid through an emailed invoice. A customer clicking Pay now on an invoice and entering their card themselves costs more than an in-person tap, since the card isn't physically present, but it's still a customer-initiated payment.
3. Card keyed in manually by you. Typing in someone's card number yourself, over the phone for instance, costs the most of the three categories, again because of fraud risk: a typed-in card is the easiest category to fake.
4. ACH bank transfer. A separate, usually cheaper option if the customer pays directly from their bank account instead of a card. Often capped at a flat maximum fee rather than a straight percentage, which can make it meaningfully cheaper on larger invoices.
5. Check your actual rate. Exact percentages and per-transaction fees depend on your QuickBooks plan and change periodically. The accurate current numbers live on QuickBooks' own payments pricing page and inside your account under Settings, then Payments, not on a one-size-fits-all number repeated across the internet.
The headline percentage isn't where most businesses actually lose money on processing fees. It's in which category a payment lands in without anyone choosing it on purpose, a customer who could've tapped a card in person instead getting sent a keyed-in charge over the phone, or invoices that default to card payment when a cheaper ACH option would've worked just as well for that customer.
Nobody sits down and decides that's how it should work. It's just the path of least resistance for whoever's taking the payment that day, and it adds up over a year of transactions without anyone noticing the pattern.
Invoices over a certain amount default to showing the ACH option first, or a reminder goes out encouraging a bank transfer instead of a card, shifting volume toward the cheaper processing category without making the customer do extra work.
A monthly rollup of what was actually paid in processing fees, broken down by payment category, so it's visible instead of buried inside a bank deposit total nobody itemizes.
Tell us how your customers typically pay and we'll tell you if there's real money sitting in which payment method gets used.
Tell us how your payments typically come in, in person, by invoice, over the phone, and we'll tell you if a cheaper mix is realistic for your business. And if processing fees aren't where the money's actually leaking, that's fine too, n-frames looks at whatever's manual or costly in a business, not just this one line item.
Let's talk →No, they're entirely separate charges. The subscription is a flat monthly fee for using QuickBooks Online itself. The processing fee only applies when a customer pays you through QuickBooks Payments, and it's a percentage (plus a small flat fee) of that specific transaction.
Merchant account fees are the broader category that credit card processing fees fall under, the cost of accepting electronic payments through a payment processor. With QuickBooks Payments, it's built in rather than a separate merchant account you manage elsewhere, but the fee concept is the same.
Typically a lower percentage than card payments, often with a flat maximum cap per transaction, which is why ACH is usually the cheaper option for larger invoices specifically. The exact rate is set by Intuit and shown in your account's payments settings.
Whether you're allowed to varies by state and by your merchant agreement, so check both before turning it on. Where it's allowed, QuickBooks has a setting to add a surcharge to card payments so the customer covers some or all of the fee rather than it coming out of your revenue.