Card processing fees and surcharging
A card payment costs roughly 3 percent before it counts as revenue, and that fee is the easiest real cost to forget, because it never appears as a line item you wrote yourself - it is just quietly missing from the deposit. Stripe's standard rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per successful transaction. Whether to pass some or all of that back to the customer as a surcharge is a real option, but it is a legal and card-network compliance question first, and a pricing decision second - check your state and your processor's rules before adding one.
Why this fee is easy to miss
An invoice for $179 says $179. The deposit that actually lands is $173.51 once Stripe's fee comes out, and unless you are specifically looking for the difference, it reads as "got paid" rather than "paid, minus a cost." What you actually net per job walks through the full list of what comes out of an invoice before it is profit - processing fees are one of four, and the one most likely to be invisible because nothing on the invoice itself names it.
The surcharge question is legal before it is arithmetic
Adding a surcharge to recover the processing cost sounds like simple math - add roughly 3 percent, break even on the fee - but card network rules cap what you can surcharge and require specific disclosure at the point of sale, and on top of that, state law varies and changes; some states have restricted or banned surcharging outright at different points, and the list of which ones is not stable enough to publish here as a fact rather than a snapshot. The responsible version of this page is: check your card processor's current surcharging policy and your state's current law before adding one, every time, because both can change without your business being the one that notices.
A cash discount - pricing as if the card price is standard and offering a discount for cash - can land at the same net price as a surcharge without carrying the same disclosure requirements in every jurisdiction, which is why some businesses use that framing instead. The compliance details still depend on where you operate; the point here is that the two are not interchangeable paperwork, even when the arithmetic matches.
Is it worth the complexity for a solo operator?
Do the volume math before the compliance math. At $180 average ticket and 60 jobs a month, the processing fee is roughly $328 a month in total. Recovering that through a compliant surcharge is real money at scale - but it also means checking and maintaining compliance on every job, in a business that is otherwise running on flat, simple pricing. For many solo operators, absorbing the fee as a known cost - the way you already absorb product cost - is the simpler and lower-risk choice, and it is a legitimate one, not a default failure to optimize.
Worked, so the shape is concrete
A $179 job paid by card: $179.00 invoiced, -$5.49 in processing (2.9% + $0.30), $173.51 actually deposited. At 60 such jobs a month, that is roughly $329 in fees across the month - a real number worth knowing even if you decide not to surcharge for it, because it belongs in the same mental bucket as product cost and drive time when you set your prices in the first place.
What Rigsheet does with this
Every card payment through Stripe records the actual amount deposited alongside the invoice total, so the gap this page describes is visible per job rather than something reconstructed at tax time from a bank statement that never explains itself.
Whether to surcharge, and how to do it compliantly where you operate, is a decision for you and your processor - the software's job is making sure the real number, after the fee, is the one you actually see. What each plan includes. · What you actually net per job.
More in this section
About Rigsheet
Rigsheet is a job app from Baker Ventures LLC for one-to-three-person mobile service businesses: mobile auto detailers and residential cleaners first. Scheduling with drive-time gaps, quotes with vehicle and home-size pricing, deposits, "on my way" texts, before and after photos, invoices, and automated review requests. Plans start at $4 a month, with unlimited jobs, customers, quotes and invoices on every tier and no per-user fees.
It exists because the alternatives charge a solo operator team prices. A one-van business is not a small version of a ten-truck business, and pricing built around seats and add-ons makes that mistake expensive. The pricing calculators and operator guides on this site are free and need no account.
Questions and answers
How much does it actually cost to accept a card payment?
Stripe's standard published rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per successful domestic card transaction - on a typical $150 to $200 service job, that is $4.65 to $6.10 that never reaches you, disappearing before the invoice total counts as revenue rather than after.
Can you legally add a surcharge to cover card processing fees?
It depends on your state and your card processor's own rules, both of which you need to check before adding one - card networks impose their own caps and disclosure requirements on surcharging, and a handful of states have additional restrictions. This is a check-first situation, not a default-yes one.
Is a cash discount the same thing as a card surcharge?
They can produce the same net price to the customer, but they are treated differently - a cash discount frames the card price as the standard price with a discount for cash, while a surcharge frames the cash price as standard with an addition for card. The distinction matters for compliance in some states even when the arithmetic is identical.
Should a small service business bother charging a surcharge at all?
For many solo operators, no - the compliance overhead (checking state law, disclosing the surcharge correctly, applying it consistently) can cost more attention than the roughly 3 percent it recovers, especially at the job sizes typical in detailing and cleaning. It is worth doing the math on your own volume before adding the complexity.
Where does the card fee actually show up in your numbers?
Nowhere obvious - it is deducted before the deposit hits your bank account, not itemized on an invoice you write yourself, which is exactly why it is the easiest real cost to forget when pricing a job. Treat it the same way you treat product cost: a real subtraction from the invoice total, not free money that happens to arrive slightly short.
Rigsheet. “Card processing fees and surcharging.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 8, 2026. https://rigsheet.bakerventuresstudio.com/guides/card-processing-fees-and-surcharging/