QuickBooks Payments fees in 2026: rates and a worked month

QuickBooks Payments fees are a flat percentage of each payment, and the percentage depends on how your customer pays. Intuit's US rates page, checked October 19, 2026, puts card and digital wallet payments at 2.99% and ACH bank payments at 1%. The same page, checked October 19, 2026, lists 2.5% for in-person card reader payments and 3.5% for keyed-in cards. It also says there are no setup costs or monthly fees.

That's a short price list, which is the point of flat-rate pricing. What it can't show you is how those percentages compare with what each card actually costs to process. Below we run one month of invoices at Intuit's rate and show the same month on an interchange-plus statement. We also cover an option that's easy to miss: keeping QuickBooks Online for invoicing and changing only the processor.

What does QuickBooks charge for credit card processing?

QuickBooks charges a percentage of every payment, set by payment type. Card payments on invoices fall in the first row, and typing a card number in by hand costs the most. Each row comes from Intuit's US rates page.

The rates page also says the listed rate is what you pay whatever the card brand. That's the flat-rate deal in one line: a debit card and a premium rewards card cost you the same.

Want your own month broken out line by line? Send a recent statement for a free statement review, and we'll work out your effective rate and price that month on interchange-plus.

Two cautions before you plug these numbers in. Intuit has a separate page for accountants that describes discounted rates for clients who sign up through an accountant. And the rate on your account is the one that counts, so check it inside QuickBooks first.

Other QuickBooks processing fees and terms to know

A few charges and settings sit outside the main table. Most only apply if you turn them on.

• Instant Deposit. Getting a payment deposited instantly adds 1.75% to that payment (Intuit rates page, checked October 19, 2026). On a $10,000 batch of invoice payments, that's $175 extra.
• Cards issued outside the US. Intuit's invoicing page notes an extra fee on internationally issued cards. If you bill clients abroad, read that line before you quote them a price.
• Fees your customer pays. QuickBooks has settings that put a surcharge or convenience fee on the customer. We cover those in the section on passing fees on.

Contract terms are simple. Intuit's QuickBooks Payments page says the service has no separate monthly fees, no minimums and no long-term contracts, and that you can cancel anytime.

Closing the account happens outside QuickBooks Online. Intuit's cancellation article says an admin signs in to the Merchant Service Center, opens Account Profile and selects Close Account. Intuit says you can still sign in for up to 12 months after canceling to download reports, statements and tax forms. Grab them anyway before you switch, so your year-end records sit in one folder.

A worked month: $40,000 of invoices on QuickBooks Payments

Take a made-up marketing agency in Austin. It bills 40 clients $1,000 each in one month. Every client pays online by card from the invoice email, nobody uses a card issued abroad, and the agency waits for standard deposits.

At 2.99% (Intuit rates page, checked October 19, 2026), each $1,000 payment costs $29.90. Forty payments cost $1,196.00 for the month. At the same volume, that's $14,352 over a year.

Small changes to how clients pay move that number a lot. The table uses Intuit's 2.99% card rate, 1% ACH rate and 1.75% Instant Deposit fee (Intuit rates page, checked October 19, 2026).

Inside QuickBooks, moving clients to bank payments does the most good. A $1,000 client paying by ACH costs the agency $10.00 instead of $29.90. Instant Deposit does the opposite: used on everything, it adds $700 to the month.

What QuickBooks credit card processing fees look like as an effective rate

Your effective rate is total processing fees divided by total card sales, times 100. On QuickBooks Payments, if every payment is an invoice paid by card, your effective rate equals the listed rate. No math required, and that predictability is a big part of the appeal.

The catch is that a flat rate ignores what each card really costs. The card networks set interchange by card type, and the spread is wide. On Visa's US schedule effective April 18, 2026, a commercial card paid online carries 2.70% plus 10 cents (Visa).

Debit from a large bank sits at the other end. Under Regulation II, issuers with $10 billion or more in assets can charge at most 21 cents plus 0.05%. A 1 cent fraud-prevention adjustment can sit on top (Federal Reserve).

Put those on a $1,000 invoice. A client paying with a big-bank debit card generates about 72 cents of interchange. A client paying with a corporate card generates $27.10. In the worked month, both payments cost the agency the same $29.90.

So a flat rate is priced to cover the costly cards. Clients who pay with debit or basic cards make up the difference. Our effective rate calculator works out your number from any statement. The guide to the merchant discount rate walks through the formula.

How the same month looks on an interchange-plus statement

On interchange-plus, each payment carries its own interchange at cost, and the processor's markup and the network fees appear on separate lines. To compare, we kept the agency's 40 payments of $1,000 and gave them a card mix.

Our assumptions: every card is a Visa, every payment is made online, and each qualifies for its standard card-not-present rate. The markup of 0.30% plus 10 cents per payment is hypothetical. It isn't a Clearo price or any processor's quote.

The four interchange lines add up to $758.32, and you can check each one against Visa's published schedule. Network fees would land on top, on their own lines, so the true total would be higher than $882.32.

The gap with the QuickBooks month is $313.68 before network fees. Most of it comes from the six debit payments and the six basic credit payments.

Card mix can flip the result, though. If all 40 clients paid with commercial cards, interchange alone would be $1,084.00. Add the hypothetical markup and the month comes to $1,208.00, more than the QuickBooks month. If your clients are mostly businesses paying with corporate cards, price your own statement before assuming a switch helps.

Our guides to Visa interchange rates and interchange-plus vs flat rate cover the categories and the trade-offs. The credit card processing fees page explains each layer of the bill.

Can you keep QuickBooks and change the processor?

Yes. QuickBooks Online is your invoicing and accounting software, and QuickBooks Payments is one way to collect on those invoices. Clearo sets businesses up with Elavon processing and Benji Pays, so QuickBooks Online invoices take card payments that sync back to QuickBooks Online. Your clients keep getting the same invoices from the same system.

One agency has already made that move. According to the Commerce Media Group case study, the Toronto marketing agency took card payments through QuickBooks Payments at 3%. It moved to Elavon processing with Benji Pays inside its QuickBooks Online invoices. By the agency's own figures, its processing costs fell by about 30% a year.

Read that as one business's result. Commerce Media Group is in Toronto, so it isn't a forecast for a US account or for your card mix.

Our pricing is interchange-plus, with no long-term contract, no cancellation fees and a dedicated rep. It can cost less than a flat rate, depending on your volume and card mix. The worked month shows both sides: debit and basic cards favor interchange-plus, and a book of corporate cards can tip it the other way. Clearo's merchant services page lists everything else we set up, including terminals and a virtual terminal.

Before you switch, work through these steps:

1. Download three months of QuickBooks Payments reports and statements while you still have easy access.
2. Count how clients pay: debit, consumer credit, corporate cards or bank transfer.
3. Ask for an interchange-plus quote priced on one of those real months, network fees included.
4. Read the new agreement's term and cancellation sections. Our guide to the merchant agreement shows what to look for.
5. Decide how clients will pay by bank. Clearo sells ACH payment processing too, and prices it by quote.

If you're still deciding how you want to be set up, our guide to payment facilitators vs merchant accounts explains the two main routes. For other flat-rate providers, see our comparisons with Square and Stripe, or browse every head-to-head on the compare page.

Can you pass QuickBooks fees on to your customers?

Sometimes, inside the card networks' rules and your state's law. QuickBooks has two settings that put a fee on the customer, and they work differently.

The first is a surcharge. Intuit's surcharge help article says you can add one to credit card and ACH bank payments on online invoices, including recurring ones. It doesn't apply to in-person or manual payments. QuickBooks sets the surcharge rates, so you can't pick your own. Turning it on removes debit cards, prepaid cards, Apple Pay, American Express and Discover as ways to pay the invoice. Intuit also says the feature is rolling out gradually, so your account may not show it yet.

The networks set the ceiling. On a $1,000 invoice, Visa's cap allows at most $30, or less if your merchant discount rate is lower. Visa also requires you to tell your acquirer 30 days before the first surcharged invoice goes out. Mastercard caps surcharges at the lesser of your average effective merchant discount rate or 4% (Mastercard). Neither network allows surcharges on debit or prepaid cards.

State law adds its own layer. Our credit card surcharging rules by state guide covers each state, and Clearo's surcharging program handles the compliance, disclosure and setup.

The second setting is a convenience fee on bank payments. Intuit's convenience fee article covers invoices sent with every online payment method turned off. According to Intuit, the customer can still pay those by ACH bank transfer, for an extra $25. Intuit says it applies to invoices over $125 and under $100,000. Intuit's surcharge article says the two can't run together. Our guide to the convenience fee explains how it differs from a surcharge.

When QuickBooks Payments is the right call

For plenty of businesses, staying put is the sensible choice. QuickBooks Payments tends to fit when:

• Your card volume is small. On $3,000 a month of card invoices, the gap between pricing models can be too small to justify a new setup.
• Most clients already pay by bank, where the ACH rate is 1% (Intuit rates page, checked October 19, 2026).
• Your clients pay mainly with corporate cards, which carry high interchange whoever processes them.
• You value one bill and one login more than the last fraction of a percent.

It's worth a second look when card volume runs steadily in the tens of thousands. The same goes if many clients pay by debit or personal cards, or if Instant Deposit has crept into your routine. If you run an agency or a consultancy, our professional services page covers payments for firms that bill by invoice.

Your next step

Export last month's QuickBooks Payments report or statement and send it for a free statement review. We'll work out your effective rate and sort the payments by card type. Then we'll price the same month on interchange-plus with QuickBooks Online invoice payments through Elavon and Benji Pays. If QuickBooks Payments comes out ahead for your mix, we'll say so. Clearo takes on merchants in every part of the United States, as well as in Canada.