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What is the difference if clients pay using a credit card, Automated Clearing House (ACH) or manual (physical check or cash)?
What is the difference if clients pay using a credit card, Automated Clearing House (ACH) or manual (physical check or cash)?
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Written by Gnomes
Updated over a week ago

Credit Card

Credit card payments are the easiest method to set up for food businesses, and credit card billing is processed the quickest. This helps maintain cash flow for the kitchen and ensures payments are collected without requiring extra steps. Credit card billing has a 4% platform fee associated with it, which can be internalized by the kitchen as a cost of doing business, or passed on to the food business client's bills. Note that single charges under $30 paid by credit card or debit card will have a $0.30 fee added on.

ACH and PAD

ACH payment methods (or PAD for Canadians) are more cumbersome to set up for food businesses (requires verification steps), and the billing process takes longer to reach the kitchen's account. However, the platform fee is lower than it is for credit cards, at 2% for any billed items. Similar to the credit card fee, this platform fee can be internalized by the kitchen as a cost of doing business or passed on to the client bills.

Manual

If the kitchen chooses to accept physical check or cash, they will need to manually collect and reconcile their client bills. The platform fee for manual payments is still 2%. Again, the platform fee can be internalized by the kitchen as a cost of doing business or passed on to the client bills.

The main differences

  1. ACH, PAD, and manual platform fees are less than credit card (2% vs 4%)

  2. ACH and PAD take longer than a credit card to process and arrive in the kitchen's stripe account (check out the payment timeline here)

  3. Credit card requires fewer steps to set up than ACH

  4. Manual requires kitchen billing and reconciling of client bills (vs. automatic with ACH and credit card), and may not be offered by every kitchen

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