Hey @DarkLight , I definitely see where you're coming from on this, I know it would be beneficial to you and many others. Our Product Team is currently hard at work on updating our invoice feature, these kinds of suggestions and feedback are really helpful!
Hello,
I would like to let you know I love your software, and thank the Wave team for making such a great software available to the public. However, I am little concerned that Wave is trying to play a regulator role here, rather than a tool provider. Business owners in the locals where it's not allowed to pass the transaction fees can simply turn off the feature, and others who are allowed to use should be able to use it. I believe it's the business owners' responsibility to comply with the law, not Wave's.
Appreciate the feedback you've given us here @BSA_Treasurer. While we don't have any immediate plans to implement something like this any time soon -- it could be something that's added to a future roadmap when we look to improve our invoicing platform. When/if we do release any new features as such, we will be sure to let our users know.
Wave team- perhaps take a look at Bonsai's freelance invoicing system. They have a box you can check on individual invoices to put the CC processing fees on the client. Perhaps they've found a great workaround solution. I have appreciated that in their service and hope you all can implement something similar. I don't always know if a client wants to pay with CC or check, and so it doesn't always make sense or work to put the convenience fee on the invoice. With all this said - I appreciate the product you guys have developed and how much it has improved over the years. Thank you!
In the UK/EU a retailer is no longer allowed to charge extra to a customer for accepting payment by debit or credit card, except where the card used is not a personal one that is.
Hi, I am wondering if there is any update regarding the above. I am based in Australia, so it is permitted to pass on the credit card surcharge to the clients. When using Xero to issue invoices, it has the function that if the client choose to pay by card, it will automatically add a percentage so stripe will charge the client my invoiced fee plus the surcharge whilst I only receive my net invoiced fees. If the client chooses to pay by direct bank transfer, then the credit card surcharge is not applicable to them.
Hi @RYang! Thanks for your feedback on this! I can definitely see how this functionality would be handy, especially in an area where passing fees to customers is permitted. To be transparent, adding this type of function is not on the roadmap for the team right now, as this is not a widespread use case and Wave is available worldwide. Hopefully this is something we can look at adding in the future!
Hi Wave, and other peeps: I've been enjoying trying out wave, but I think at this point I will move to invoice2go. And this decision is based entirely on the ability to automatically pass on transaction fees to the customer. If this feature was implemented I would 100% stay with wave.
So I'll actually be paying the monthly fee to use the service which will end up being quite a bit less than all of the cumulative transaction fees. As others have said, I don't know whether my customers want to use credit card or bank transfer.
Hopefully I'll hear about it if wave implements this feature in the future, and I'll come crawling back 😂
I saw a couple of comments about passing on credit card fees being not legal in some countries, but I'm in Australia where it is legal, so no problems there.
Sidebar:I wonder why some countries bother to make that law.
Hey @Rydawg . I think it's important for you to do what's right for your business, so I respect the decision that's being made. Hopefully at some point in the future we can implement this feature and have you return to using Wave again .
Hi @AlexL -- I was wondering if implementing this feature is on the list of features coming soon? I am having the same issue. I really want to use Wave for invoicing, but it doesn't offer this feature. Compared to other systems, like Bonsai, which make it easy to choose for each invoice whether to pass transaction fees onto the customer or cover them yourself.
FYI, the credit card rules have changed, and passing on fees to customers is no longer a violation of terms of Visa Mastercard as I understand it. I looked for this feature a year ago, and sad to see it still has not been implemented.
@AlexL Thanks for letting me know! But darn—it's so inconvenient to have to use a different system for invoicing. I'd prefer to keep everything in Wave. But options like Bonsai have far more functionality invoicing-wise...they not only let you choose whether to pass the fees onto the customers (on an invoice-by-invoice basis), they also let you customize which payment methods you're accepting on an invoice-by-invoice basis. And they accept PayPal as a method.
But, then it's annoying because my invoicing system ends up separate from the rest of my accounting system.
From my understanding this calculation would not account for the full 2.9% fee because after applying the extra charge the 2.9% would then be based off of the number 103.30.
"If you want to earn $100 from a credit card payment, work backwards from that amount, which is y:
x = (y + .3) / .971
x = (100 + .3) / .971
x = ~103.30"
@WestfieldEstatesMI said:
FYI, the credit card rules have changed, and passing on fees to customers is no longer a violation of terms of Visa Mastercard as I understand it. I looked for this feature a year ago, and sad to see it still has not been implemented.
Bank Auditor here - since 2016 it does not violate Visa/MC terms, but it's prohibited in 10 states and on certain platforms (like PayPal) and there are a lot of things you have to do, and you have to notify Visa/MC that you will be doing this.
So when is Wave actually going to start allowing business to simply add the convenience fee to invoices? Having to add Credit Card Surcharges as a sales product should not be the solution. I've read a comment from the devs in April, 2019 saying this would be coming soon within the year. We're coming up on a year and it's still not here. We just want to know if this is actually coming to the platform or not. I'd imagine Wave would greatly benefit from adding this feature.
Hey @Colton, thanks for reaching out here. Unfortunately, this is not something that will be implemented in the Wave platform in the foreseeable future. This isn't to say that it will absolutely never happen, however it will not be happening soon. I'm sorry for the inconvenience here.
Connor and the Wave Team, in lieu of an automated credit card surcharge system, what workaround would you propose when one doesn't know whether a customer will pay with a credit card or bank transfer?
Your suggestion in the FAQ for "How do I pass credit card fees onto my customer?" assumes a credit card payment will be made. If I were to add that as an extra line item to the invoice, and the customer chooses to pay by bank transfer to avoid the fee... how does one deal with that from within Wave? I'm a new business owner and have minimal to zero knowledge of how to handle this situation.
On the off-chance you have a register of feature requests with a voting style mechanism, please consider this a +1 to automatic credit card surcharges.
Hey @Michael2020! Thanks for reaching out here. That's a very, very good point. I'm thinking that what might make this more consistent would be to disable your customers' abilities to pay via bank transfer, as we don't really have a way to automatically swap between two rates in order to make up for your customers' choice of payments. I do apologize for the inconvenience here!
Thanks for your reply ConnorM. I note however that to "disable your customers' abilities to pay via bank transfer" results in a double inconvenience: (1) either for the customer (or us your clients) who is forced to absorb the card fees, and (2) it removes all choice when a business normally only accepts the two payment types of credit card or bank transfer to begin with. In Australia, these two are extremely common (perhaps the most common?) payment choices. Sigh.
Just my two cents here: If you disable all other payment methods than credit cards, you are balancing on a thin line of being allowed to charge convenience fees in the first place. It seems that in the states that do allow such fees, you are only allowed to charge them if payment by credit cards is considered a non-customary payment channel.
I too give my +1 to automatic credit card surcharges compatibility, as suggested by @Michael2020
Thought I would step in, as my company KMP Financial specializes in building and integrating compliant credit card surcharge programs for small to midsize businesses.
First I want to clear up the difference between a "surcharge" and a "convenience fee." Although they sound similar, there are legal differences between them (both at the state level and the card brand level). The biggest difference is that a convenience fee must be a flat dollar amount (cannot be a percentage of the invoice total), and it must be applied to all forms of payment that come in through one given channel (ex, via invoice, but not "in person" payments). We wrote a detailed blog on the difference here:
The other point I'll make is that a compliant surcharge program must be able to identify whether a 16 digit card number is credit or debit prior to the customer clicking "submit." Two reasons for this: the surcharge can only be applied to credit cards (not debit), and the amount must be calculated and displayed as a separate line item on the payment page when it is a credit card. Finally, the surcharge amount must not be greater than your true cost of processing the payment. And the surcharge amount must never hit your bank account (ex, if you apply a 3.5% surcharge on a $100 sale, the processor should automatically claw back the $3.50 surcharge resulting in a net deposit of $100 for you). Here is another blog post that goes deeper into the difference between so-called "cash discounts" and "surcharge" requirements:
Until Wave completes the technical and compliance requirements needed for its users to stand up a compliant surcharge program, the best option would be to use a 3rd party payment processor that can provide a hosted payment page which accomplishes everything I discussed in this post.
100% agree and have suggested it already.
Having the ability to pay with a credit card is suppose to simplify the processes of doing business yet the way this feature is setup most of the time does the opposite. I don't know whether or not my customer will pay with a credit card and I shouldn't have to contact them to find out.
I think every business owner will agree that most customers will not spend any extra time out of their day to find out if cc payment is available (& They shouldn't have to.) If I don't enable it then customers, especially new ones, either don't know its an option or think it's no longer available. Which means I'm either waiting for a check or sending reminders to pay invoices.
However, if I enable it, I'm forced to deal with a discouraging set of issues. One I already posted here
Another issue is if I enable cc payments and don't add a line item calculating the charge and the customer pays with cc, the 3% fee Wave takes from me. Plus I have to take another %1 hit for an instant payout on top of that.. (Which just happened to me costing me $125 out of my own pocket) Might as well just wait for a check in the mail because If I don't do instant payout I have to wait 4 days for it to hit my account. (I imagine that money sits in some slush account for those 4 days with all the other "payments in holding" acrruing interest.) If we can be charged a processing fee by Wave why can't we do the same? I can't agree when I get charged "convienence" or "processing" fees when I use my debit or credit card for utilities, concert tickets, atm withdrawls... everything. The entire system is riddled with fees and the Credit Card Companies are the worst yet they don't want to adhere to the rules they created.
Where I'm sitting, it appears that the reason there is no rush to implement this because it's all about $$$. It's a lose-lose for me. I either add a line item and calculate the cost that increases the invoice total. (%3 on a $515 invoice brings more money than on a $500 invoice. Then, if you factor the # of Wave users + the # of invoices processed... that equals a whole lot of extra money). Or, of course, if I don't add the line item then I foot the entire bill (Wave, or whoever processes the %3, still gets all their $ though). I know that I don't have to use the feature at all. But c'mon, it's 2020... Having the ability to accept credit card payments shouldn't be an option it should be standard. I've been using Wave for 7 years, I've loved it and referred people to use it many many times but in the future I'm going to have to think twice because this is not a practice I agree with or would allow in my business and it's one that should have already been resolved.
Is Wave charging the 2.9% +$0.30 on the gross invoice total? In other words, Is wave charging 2.9% +$0.30 on the HST that I have to collect and pay the government? So now I have to pay another 3% to the Feds?
Also, the formula above to add the convenience fee to the invoice will never work out, as there will be a 2.9% charge on the new gross total including the convenience fee.
There is nothing convenient about this setup.
Hi @JC1 , thanks for your message. To clarify, yes - Wave is charging a 2.9% + $0.30 fee for credit card payments on the income total. So however much you request the customer to pay, Wave is taking a 2.9% + $0.30 fee. For example, if your invoice was $100.00 plus a 7% tax, making the grand total $107.00, Wave would take 2.9% + $0.30 of $107.00.
Since 2.9% + $0.30 of 107 = 3.4, you can add this amount to the invoice to have the customer essentially pay this fee. I appreciate that this isn't perfect, and not the simplest approach, so I appreciate your honest feedback on this. This is not currently something our team is working on building out new usability for right now, but we will definitely let the Community know if this feature is ever expanded.
I will have to agree with K3Tech here. Wave, please can you upgrade your system so that we as users of Wave can choose if we want to pass the credit card fees onto the customer or not. It would be as simple as a drop down menu during our registering to accept credit cards. Here we would have to choose if we will absorb the costs of credit card transactions or pass them onto our customer.
What would be essential to me as a businesses owner, would be that when the client is choosing which payment method they would like, if they select the credit card side of things, then a message pops up and lets them know that the credit card processing fees will be xxx amount (do you wish to continue). Would make my life easier, and that is the goal of your platform is it not??
It is something that our team is considering as we update the backend of our invoicing platform. Once we've updated everyone to our new invoicing we can begin to roll out new features easily! Thanks for your +1 in the community.
SherlocksEscapes hit it right on the button for what would be great for my business also. Has there been any update to this? I see June was the last posting. It's a real PITA to try to pass on the fees now. The drop down menu with a note to the customer would be a great way to handle it.
Comments
Hey @DarkLight , I definitely see where you're coming from on this, I know it would be beneficial to you and many others. Our Product Team is currently hard at work on updating our invoice feature, these kinds of suggestions and feedback are really helpful!
Hello,
I would like to let you know I love your software, and thank the Wave team for making such a great software available to the public. However, I am little concerned that Wave is trying to play a regulator role here, rather than a tool provider. Business owners in the locals where it's not allowed to pass the transaction fees can simply turn off the feature, and others who are allowed to use should be able to use it. I believe it's the business owners' responsibility to comply with the law, not Wave's.
Please consider making it as a dynamic option.
thank you,
BSA_Treasurer
Appreciate the feedback you've given us here @BSA_Treasurer. While we don't have any immediate plans to implement something like this any time soon -- it could be something that's added to a future roadmap when we look to improve our invoicing platform. When/if we do release any new features as such, we will be sure to let our users know.
Wave team- perhaps take a look at Bonsai's freelance invoicing system. They have a box you can check on individual invoices to put the CC processing fees on the client. Perhaps they've found a great workaround solution. I have appreciated that in their service and hope you all can implement something similar. I don't always know if a client wants to pay with CC or check, and so it doesn't always make sense or work to put the convenience fee on the invoice. With all this said - I appreciate the product you guys have developed and how much it has improved over the years. Thank you!
In the UK/EU a retailer is no longer allowed to charge extra to a customer for accepting payment by debit or credit card, except where the card used is not a personal one that is.
@chadnicol Thanks for the suggestion to check out Bonsai and for the kinds words! I'll have our product team look into this.
@MerlinAccounts_UK Thanks for letting us know! I'll pass this along to our product team as well to make sure they are aware.
Hi, I am wondering if there is any update regarding the above. I am based in Australia, so it is permitted to pass on the credit card surcharge to the clients. When using Xero to issue invoices, it has the function that if the client choose to pay by card, it will automatically add a percentage so stripe will charge the client my invoiced fee plus the surcharge whilst I only receive my net invoiced fees. If the client chooses to pay by direct bank transfer, then the credit card surcharge is not applicable to them.
Thank you!
Hi @RYang! Thanks for your feedback on this! I can definitely see how this functionality would be handy, especially in an area where passing fees to customers is permitted. To be transparent, adding this type of function is not on the roadmap for the team right now, as this is not a widespread use case and Wave is available worldwide. Hopefully this is something we can look at adding in the future!
So I'll actually be paying the monthly fee to use the service which will end up being quite a bit less than all of the cumulative transaction fees. As others have said, I don't know whether my customers want to use credit card or bank transfer.
Hopefully I'll hear about it if wave implements this feature in the future, and I'll come crawling back 😂
I saw a couple of comments about passing on credit card fees being not legal in some countries, but I'm in Australia where it is legal, so no problems there.
Sidebar:I wonder why some countries bother to make that law.
Hey @Rydawg . I think it's important for you to do what's right for your business, so I respect the decision that's being made. Hopefully at some point in the future we can implement this feature and have you return to using Wave again
.
Hi @AlexL -- I was wondering if implementing this feature is on the list of features coming soon? I am having the same issue. I really want to use Wave for invoicing, but it doesn't offer this feature. Compared to other systems, like Bonsai, which make it easy to choose for each invoice whether to pass transaction fees onto the customer or cover them yourself.
FYI, the credit card rules have changed, and passing on fees to customers is no longer a violation of terms of Visa Mastercard as I understand it. I looked for this feature a year ago, and sad to see it still has not been implemented.
Hi @MFMDC . This feature is not on our short-term roadmap at the moment.
@AlexL Thanks for letting me know! But darn—it's so inconvenient to have to use a different system for invoicing. I'd prefer to keep everything in Wave. But options like Bonsai have far more functionality invoicing-wise...they not only let you choose whether to pass the fees onto the customers (on an invoice-by-invoice basis), they also let you customize which payment methods you're accepting on an invoice-by-invoice basis. And they accept PayPal as a method.
But, then it's annoying because my invoicing system ends up separate from the rest of my accounting system.
From my understanding this calculation would not account for the full 2.9% fee because after applying the extra charge the 2.9% would then be based off of the number 103.30.
"If you want to earn $100 from a credit card payment, work backwards from that amount, which is y:
x = (y + .3) / .971
x = (100 + .3) / .971
x = ~103.30"
Sorry that it's not in the works at the moment, @MFMDC , but I totally understand and thank you for the context.
@fellowwaver That's correct, as with the calculation, you'd be left with $100 as income.
Bank Auditor here - since 2016 it does not violate Visa/MC terms, but it's prohibited in 10 states and on certain platforms (like PayPal) and there are a lot of things you have to do, and you have to notify Visa/MC that you will be doing this.
So when is Wave actually going to start allowing business to simply add the convenience fee to invoices? Having to add Credit Card Surcharges as a sales product should not be the solution. I've read a comment from the devs in April, 2019 saying this would be coming soon within the year. We're coming up on a year and it's still not here. We just want to know if this is actually coming to the platform or not. I'd imagine Wave would greatly benefit from adding this feature.
Hey @Colton, thanks for reaching out here. Unfortunately, this is not something that will be implemented in the Wave platform in the foreseeable future. This isn't to say that it will absolutely never happen, however it will not be happening soon. I'm sorry for the inconvenience here.
Connor and the Wave Team, in lieu of an automated credit card surcharge system, what workaround would you propose when one doesn't know whether a customer will pay with a credit card or bank transfer?
Your suggestion in the FAQ for "How do I pass credit card fees onto my customer?" assumes a credit card payment will be made. If I were to add that as an extra line item to the invoice, and the customer chooses to pay by bank transfer to avoid the fee... how does one deal with that from within Wave? I'm a new business owner and have minimal to zero knowledge of how to handle this situation.
On the off-chance you have a register of feature requests with a voting style mechanism, please consider this a +1 to automatic credit card surcharges.
Hey @Michael2020! Thanks for reaching out here. That's a very, very good point. I'm thinking that what might make this more consistent would be to disable your customers' abilities to pay via bank transfer, as we don't really have a way to automatically swap between two rates in order to make up for your customers' choice of payments. I do apologize for the inconvenience here!
Thanks for your reply ConnorM. I note however that to "disable your customers' abilities to pay via bank transfer" results in a double inconvenience: (1) either for the customer (or us your clients) who is forced to absorb the card fees, and (2) it removes all choice when a business normally only accepts the two payment types of credit card or bank transfer to begin with. In Australia, these two are extremely common (perhaps the most common?) payment choices. Sigh.
Just my two cents here: If you disable all other payment methods than credit cards, you are balancing on a thin line of being allowed to charge convenience fees in the first place. It seems that in the states that do allow such fees, you are only allowed to charge them if payment by credit cards is considered a non-customary payment channel.
I too give my +1 to automatic credit card surcharges compatibility, as suggested by @Michael2020
Thought I would step in, as my company KMP Financial specializes in building and integrating compliant credit card surcharge programs for small to midsize businesses.
First I want to clear up the difference between a "surcharge" and a "convenience fee." Although they sound similar, there are legal differences between them (both at the state level and the card brand level). The biggest difference is that a convenience fee must be a flat dollar amount (cannot be a percentage of the invoice total), and it must be applied to all forms of payment that come in through one given channel (ex, via invoice, but not "in person" payments). We wrote a detailed blog on the difference here:
https://www.kmpfinancial.com/convenience-fees-vs-surcharging
The other point I'll make is that a compliant surcharge program must be able to identify whether a 16 digit card number is credit or debit prior to the customer clicking "submit." Two reasons for this: the surcharge can only be applied to credit cards (not debit), and the amount must be calculated and displayed as a separate line item on the payment page when it is a credit card. Finally, the surcharge amount must not be greater than your true cost of processing the payment. And the surcharge amount must never hit your bank account (ex, if you apply a 3.5% surcharge on a $100 sale, the processor should automatically claw back the $3.50 surcharge resulting in a net deposit of $100 for you). Here is another blog post that goes deeper into the difference between so-called "cash discounts" and "surcharge" requirements:
https://www.kmpfinancial.com/zero-fee-credit-card-processing
Until Wave completes the technical and compliance requirements needed for its users to stand up a compliant surcharge program, the best option would be to use a 3rd party payment processor that can provide a hosted payment page which accomplishes everything I discussed in this post.
100% agree and have suggested it already.
Having the ability to pay with a credit card is suppose to simplify the processes of doing business yet the way this feature is setup most of the time does the opposite. I don't know whether or not my customer will pay with a credit card and I shouldn't have to contact them to find out.
I think every business owner will agree that most customers will not spend any extra time out of their day to find out if cc payment is available (& They shouldn't have to.) If I don't enable it then customers, especially new ones, either don't know its an option or think it's no longer available. Which means I'm either waiting for a check or sending reminders to pay invoices.
However, if I enable it, I'm forced to deal with a discouraging set of issues. One I already posted here
https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/comment/28956#Comment_28956
Another issue is if I enable cc payments and don't add a line item calculating the charge and the customer pays with cc, the 3% fee Wave takes from me. Plus I have to take another %1 hit for an instant payout on top of that.. (Which just happened to me costing me $125 out of my own pocket) Might as well just wait for a check in the mail because If I don't do instant payout I have to wait 4 days for it to hit my account. (I imagine that money sits in some slush account for those 4 days with all the other "payments in holding" acrruing interest.) If we can be charged a processing fee by Wave why can't we do the same? I can't agree when I get charged "convienence" or "processing" fees when I use my debit or credit card for utilities, concert tickets, atm withdrawls... everything. The entire system is riddled with fees and the Credit Card Companies are the worst yet they don't want to adhere to the rules they created.
Where I'm sitting, it appears that the reason there is no rush to implement this because it's all about $$$. It's a lose-lose for me. I either add a line item and calculate the cost that increases the invoice total. (%3 on a $515 invoice brings more money than on a $500 invoice. Then, if you factor the # of Wave users + the # of invoices processed... that equals a whole lot of extra money). Or, of course, if I don't add the line item then I foot the entire bill (Wave, or whoever processes the %3, still gets all their $ though). I know that I don't have to use the feature at all. But c'mon, it's 2020... Having the ability to accept credit card payments shouldn't be an option it should be standard. I've been using Wave for 7 years, I've loved it and referred people to use it many many times but in the future I'm going to have to think twice because this is not a practice I agree with or would allow in my business and it's one that should have already been resolved.
Is Wave charging the 2.9% +$0.30 on the gross invoice total? In other words, Is wave charging 2.9% +$0.30 on the HST that I have to collect and pay the government? So now I have to pay another 3% to the Feds?
Also, the formula above to add the convenience fee to the invoice will never work out, as there will be a 2.9% charge on the new gross total including the convenience fee.
There is nothing convenient about this setup.
Hi @JC1 , thanks for your message. To clarify, yes - Wave is charging a 2.9% + $0.30 fee for credit card payments on the income total. So however much you request the customer to pay, Wave is taking a 2.9% + $0.30 fee. For example, if your invoice was $100.00 plus a 7% tax, making the grand total $107.00, Wave would take 2.9% + $0.30 of $107.00.
Since 2.9% + $0.30 of 107 = 3.4, you can add this amount to the invoice to have the customer essentially pay this fee. I appreciate that this isn't perfect, and not the simplest approach, so I appreciate your honest feedback on this. This is not currently something our team is working on building out new usability for right now, but we will definitely let the Community know if this feature is ever expanded.
I will have to agree with K3Tech here. Wave, please can you upgrade your system so that we as users of Wave can choose if we want to pass the credit card fees onto the customer or not. It would be as simple as a drop down menu during our registering to accept credit cards. Here we would have to choose if we will absorb the costs of credit card transactions or pass them onto our customer.
What would be essential to me as a businesses owner, would be that when the client is choosing which payment method they would like, if they select the credit card side of things, then a message pops up and lets them know that the credit card processing fees will be xxx amount (do you wish to continue). Would make my life easier, and that is the goal of your platform is it not??
Hey there @SherlocksEscapes
It is something that our team is considering as we update the backend of our invoicing platform. Once we've updated everyone to our new invoicing we can begin to roll out new features easily! Thanks for your +1 in the community.
SherlocksEscapes hit it right on the button for what would be great for my business also. Has there been any update to this? I see June was the last posting. It's a real PITA to try to pass on the fees now. The drop down menu with a note to the customer would be a great way to handle it.