Cheapest Card Processing for Contractors and Home Services

A contractor or home service business can take large card payments. In our made-up month, tickets run from a $150 service call to a deposit or progress payment of several thousand dollars, paid by invoice, payment link, or a card keyed over the phone or in the field. That changes which fees matter. As read on November 13, 2026, Square’s fees page lists 3.3% plus 30 cents for invoices, and Stripe’s pricing page lists 2.9% plus 30 cents with Invoicing at 0.4% (2.9% + 0.4% + 30 cents, which is 3.3% + 30 cents), so a $2,500 payment costs about $82.80. This guide walks through a made-up month, the fees that apply to deposits and keyed cards, what NPS’s study found, and how to ask for a quote on your real invoices.

The short answer

Job-size tickets make the percentage the number that matters. On a $150 service call the 30 cents is a visible part of the cost. On a $2,500 progress payment it barely registers and the percentage does the work.
Our arithmetic: at 3.3% plus 30 cents, a $150 payment costs $5.25 and a $2,500 payment costs $82.80. That is made-up math to show the method, not a promise about your account.
In NPS’s study, a model, interchange pass-through costs 19% to 31% less than flat rate for online and invoice sales across average tickets from $15 to $2,500. One example: $50,000 a month in invoices at a $150 average ticket keeps about $6,100 a year.
Keyed cards cost extra on both Stripe and Square, as listed on their own pages on November 13, 2026.
Do not rely on the study alone. It is written by a processor that sells pass-through. Get a written quote on your own invoices and compare line by line.

Why a contractor’s payments are different

Most “cheapest card processing” advice is written for a shop with a card reader on the counter. A contractor or home service business works differently, and each difference touches the fee.

Tickets vary widely. A diagnostic visit might be $150. A repair might be $600. A project payment might be $2,500 or more. One headline rate does not tell you much about all three.
Payment often happens away from a counter. The customer pays from an emailed invoice, a payment link sent by text, or a card number read to your office by phone.
Money arrives in stages. A deposit before the work starts, progress payments as it moves, and a final payment at the end. Each stage is its own card payment with its own fee.
The customer can be a homeowner or a company. A homeowner may pay with a personal card, and a property manager or business customer may pay with a business card. Interchange varies by card type, and business and commercial cards can cost more.

None of that is a statistic. It is the shape of the work, and it is the reason to price your own invoices instead of a generic example. For a wider look at service businesses billing by invoice, see our guide on cheapest card processing for a service business using invoices and payment links.

What Stripe and Square list for these payments

Every price in this section comes from the processor’s own page as we read it on November 13, 2026. Prices change and some accounts have custom terms, so open each page for today’s price.

Stripe

Stripe’s pricing page lists 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful domestic card transaction.
It lists Invoicing at 0.4% per paid invoice, on top of the card price. The page lists no other invoicing plan.
It lists an extra 0.5% for manually entered cards.
For disputes, it lists $15.00 for each dispute you receive and $15.00 for each dispute you respond to manually, refunded for won disputes, plus $15.00 for each dispute you appeal, not refunded.

Square

Square’s fees page lists 2.6% plus 15 cents for a tap, dip or swipe.
It lists 3.3% plus 30 cents for online sales or invoices.
It lists 3.5% plus 15 cents for manual entry or card on file.

Put together, an invoice or payment link comes to 3.3% plus 30 cents on either processor (on Stripe, 2.9% + 0.4% + 30 cents), and a card you type in is priced differently. Whether a payment link counts as an invoice or an online sale on your account is something to confirm in your own settings.

A made-up month for a home service business (our arithmetic)

This is made-up math to show the method, not a promise. Imagine a contractor who collects $50,000 in a month across 55 card payments:

30 service calls at $150 is $4,500.
12 deposits at $1,000 is $12,000.
8 progress payments at $2,500 is $20,000.
5 final payments at $2,700 is $13,500.

That totals $50,000 over 55 payments. We checked the arithmetic with a script. At Stripe’s listed 2.9% plus 30 cents plus 0.4% for Invoicing, which is 3.3% plus 30 cents, here is what one payment of each size costs:

$150: $5.25, or 3.5% of the payment.
$1,000: $33.30, or 3.33%.
$2,500: $82.80, or 3.31%.
$2,700: $89.40, or 3.31%.

Made-Up Month Math

Fee per payment grows with job size

Payment size	Fee at 3.3% + 30¢	Effective rate
$150 service call	$5.25	3.5%
$1,000 deposit	$33.30	3.33%
$2,500 progress payment	$82.80	3.31%
$2,700 final payment	$89.40	3.31%

Made-up math to show the method, not a promise about your account.

Across the whole month, 3.3% of $50,000 is $1,650, plus 30 cents on each of 55 payments, which is $16.50. The total is $1,666.50 for the month, or $19,998 over twelve months. Square’s listed 3.3% plus 30 cents for invoices gives the same number on the same payments.

Now add the keyed cards. Say 10 of the 30 service calls, $1,500 in all, are cards your office types in after a phone call. Stripe’s pricing page lists an extra 0.5% for manually entered cards, which is $7.50 on that $1,500. The headline rate leaves out the fee for how the card gets taken, so it belongs on your list of things to ask about.

What the study found, and what it does not tell you

The study is “The Flat-Rate Tax,” 2026 Edition, written by Allen Kopelman, the CEO of NPS. It is a model built from published rate schedules, not a survey. NPS sells interchange pass-through, so we are not neutral. You can read NPS’s 2026 pricing study and rerun its inputs yourself.

For businesses selling online or by invoice, the model finds interchange pass-through costs 19% to 31% less than flat rate across average tickets from $15 to $2,500. Applied to our made-up month, that range would put the $1,666.50 flat-rate cost about $317 to $517 lower in a month in the model. That is our arithmetic applying the study’s range to made-up numbers, not a quote and not a promise. Your real figure depends on your card mix and the markup you are quoted.

The study’s own example is $50,000 a month in invoices at a $150 average ticket, which keeps about $6,100 a year in the model. A contractor with larger tickets than $150 would have a different result, which is why the model is a reason to ask for a quote and not an answer.

The study also lists the cases where flat rate can still win: very small tickets, around $15 and under in person, and brand-new businesses with very low volume.

Two more things to know. Interchange varies by card type, and business and commercial cards can cost more than personal debit. Level 2 and Level 3 data on a business card payment can lower interchange. And the large-bank debit cap, 0.05% plus 21 cents with a 1 cent fraud adjustment, does not apply to small-bank debit. NPS has a separate post on whether the debit cap applies to small-bank cards.

Deposits and progress payments: what to watch

Deposits and staged payments are normal in this kind of work, and a few how-to points keep them from costing more than they should.

Treat each stage as its own payment. A $10,000 job paid as four payments is four card transactions, each with a fee. Look at the per-payment fee and the percentage, not just one total.
Ask how a refunded deposit is handled. If a job is cancelled and you refund a deposit, find out in writing whether the original processing fee comes back. Do not assume it does.
Know the dispute fees. A dispute, also called a chargeback, is when a customer asks their card issuer to reverse a payment. On a large deposit it is a real event. Stripe’s pricing page lists $15.00 for each dispute received, so ask any processor what it charges and what it refunds if you win.
Keep paperwork for large payments. A signed estimate or contract, the invoice, and a record of the work help if a customer disputes a payment. That is plain good practice, not a fee.
Consider offering a bank payment for the biggest invoices. ACH is a bank-to-bank payment. NPS offers ACH and covers the details in its guide to ACH optimization.

Payments taken in the field or over the phone

When you take a card with a reader in the customer’s driveway, you are in the in-person category. When your office types in a number, or a customer pays from a link, you are not. The prices differ, as the lists above show: on Square, a tap, dip or swipe is 2.6% plus 15 cents, a manual entry is 3.5% plus 15 cents, and an invoice or online sale is 3.3% plus 30 cents.

A few ways to keep the cost down without anything complicated:

Prefer a payment link over typing the card in yourself. A customer entering their own card on a link avoids the manually entered card line. Confirm how your processor classifies it.
Prefer a reader in the field when the customer is standing there. On the lists above, the in-person price is lower than the manual price.
Count your keyed cards. If a quarter of your payments are typed in, the extra fee is no longer a footnote.

In-person pricing is a different calculation from invoice pricing. In NPS’s arithmetic from the study’s listed inputs, in-person pass-through costs about 6.5% less than Square’s 2.6% plus 15 cents at a $15 ticket and about 19% to 25% less from a $40 ticket upward. That is our arithmetic, not a finding. The tickets in our made-up month are well above $40, but the comparison shows why you should price each channel on its own.

How to ask for a quote on your real invoices

A generic quote tells you little. A quote built from your own statement tells you a lot. Here is a short process.

Gather three months of data. Pull your processing statements or your processor’s dashboard export.
Split your payments by size. How many were under $300, how many were $300 to $1,500, and how many were over that? This is your ticket mix.
Split them by how they were taken. Invoice or link, card reader in the field, and keyed by your office. Count each.
Work out your effective rate. Total fees divided by total collected. If it is near 3.3% to 3.5%, you are paying about what the listed flat-rate prices imply.
Send the same numbers to every processor you are considering. Ask each for the markup over interchange, the monthly fee, the gateway fee, any statement or PCI fee, the fee for keyed cards, the dispute fees, and the contract terms.
Ask for a sample statement. You want to see each fee on its own line.
Compare in dollars per year. Multiply the monthly difference by twelve, then subtract any one-time or monthly fee the new setup adds.

Get a Real Quote

How to ask for a quote on your own invoices

Gather three months of dataPull your processing statements or your processor’s dashboard export.
Split payments by sizeHow many were under $300, how many were $300 to $1,500, and how many were over that?
Split by how they were takenInvoice or link, card reader in the field, and keyed by your office.
Work out your effective rateTotal fees divided by total collected.
Send the same numbers to every processorAsk each for the markup over interchange, the monthly fee, the gateway fee, any statement or PCI fee, the fee for keyed cards, the dispute fees, and the contract terms.
Compare in dollars per yearMultiply the monthly difference by twelve, then subtract any one-time or monthly fee the new setup adds.

Ask for a sample statement so you can see each fee on its own line.

Before You Switch

What to ask every processor in writing

Ask for the markup over interchange
Ask for the monthly fee, gateway fee, and any statement or PCI fee
Ask for the fee for keyed cards
Ask for the dispute fees and what is refunded if you win
Ask how a refunded deposit is handled if a job is cancelled
Ask for a sample statement showing each fee on its own line

Send the same numbers to every processor you are considering so you can compare line by line.

Our guide on how to read your merchant statement explains each line, and how much you are really paying on Stripe, Square, PayPal or QuickBooks covers the same exercise across providers. For the full picture of how to compare, see cheapest payment processing in 2026, and for where flat-rate fees go, where Stripe fees actually go.

You can also run your own numbers through our savings calculator.

Who wrote this, and where NPS fits

Nationwide Payment Systems (NPS) publishes this guide. We are a payments company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in business since 2001, and we sell merchant accounts and invoicing software, so we are not neutral. We offer interchange-plus pricing, ACH, a payment gateway and Smart Invoicing, and we also offer flat-rate options. We do not publish a price list. The study we cite was written by our CEO. NPS offers a free statement review. Browse more in our payments guides.

We are not the right fit for every business. If you send only a few invoices a month, or your accounting software already handles payments well, a simpler setup may cost you less.

Bottom line

For a contractor or home service business, the cheapest card processing is the one that prices your actual mix of tickets, deposits and keyed cards, in writing. At 3.3% plus 30 cents for invoices (Square’s listed price, and Stripe’s 2.9% + 0.4% + 30 cents), as read on November 13, 2026, our made-up $50,000 month costs about $1,666.50. In the study’s model, pass-through can cost 19% to 31% less on online and invoice sales, but that is a reason to ask for a quote, not a result you can count on. Pull three months of your own data, check each processor’s current page, and compare one written quote line by line. If you would like a second opinion, you can contact our team.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest way for a contractor to accept cards?

In NPS’s study, a model, interchange pass-through costs 19% to 31% less than flat rate for online and invoice sales across average tickets from $15 to $2,500. The study is by a company that sells pass-through, so the only real test is a written quote on your own invoices.

What do Stripe and Square charge on a deposit invoice?

As read on Stripe’s pricing page on November 13, 2026, it is 2.9% plus 30 cents plus 0.4% for Invoicing, so 3.3% plus 30 cents. As read on Square’s fees page that day, online sales and invoices are 3.3% plus 30 cents. Check each page for today’s price.

What does it cost to key in a card over the phone or in the field?

As read on November 13, 2026, Stripe’s pricing page lists an extra 0.5% for manually entered cards, and Square’s fees page lists 3.5% plus 15 cents for manual entry or card on file. Prices change, so confirm on each page.

Does a $2,500 progress payment cost more than a $150 service call?

In dollars, yes. Our arithmetic at Stripe’s listed prices, including Invoicing, is $5.25 on a $150 payment and $82.80 on a $2,500 payment. The percentage is close to flat on larger payments, so the dollars grow with the job size.

How much could a contractor save per year?

The study gives one example: $50,000 a month in invoices at a $150 average ticket keeps about $6,100 a year in the model. Your result depends on your tickets, card mix and fees, so ask for a quote on your own invoices.

Is flat rate ever the better choice?

It can be. The study says flat rate can still win for very small tickets, around $15 and under in person, and for brand-new businesses with very low volume. If you only send a few invoices a month, a simple setup may cost less in time.

Does NPS review my current statement for free?

Yes. NPS offers a free statement review.

Cheapest Card Processing for a Contractor or Home Service Business