Easy Invoicing lets you receive card payments from your customers. When you set up this (via our partner, Stripe), you can add payments links on your invoices that your customers click to pay by card.
Easy Business App supports the ability to pass on the payment processing fee amount to your customer. This means they will pay the processing fee and it won't cost you a cent. Any customers who pay by international card will pay the domestic fee charged and the difference will be taken from your Stripe payout (see the FAQ below for more detail on this).
Passing on Payment Processing Fees to your Customers
A toggle in the Payments section of the Customise screen in Easy Invoicing allows you to “Pass Stripe fees on to Customer”. When this is toggled on, all new invoices will be created to pass fees on to the customer when they pay via Stripe.
The invoice itself is not updated (i.e. the total amount will remain the same), so if the user pays by another mechanism they will pay the standard invoice amount (without processing fees). However, the Stripe Checkout page will now include a new line for the payment processing fee:
This can also be toggled on/off for individual invoices by clicking “Edit Payment Method >” when creating/editing an invoice:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: If a customer pays with an international card, why is the full surcharge not paid by the customer, only the domestic amount?
A: This is a tricky one! We can't know at the point the charge is made whether the card is a domestic or international card, only afterwards, and they attract different fees. So the domestic (lesser) surcharge is used in all cases.
One option would be to let you manually specify a fixed surcharge % in Easy Business App and you could then set it at a higher percentage. Some of our competitors (like Xero) actually let you do this.
However, it is illegal in Australia to charge a payment processing fee that is more than the actual cost and where that cost is variable you must use the lower percentage. You can learn more here on the ACCC website where they state the law very clearly:
"If a business wants to set the same surcharge for all payment types, it must not be more than the lowest surcharge they would set for a single payment type."
You definitely don't want the ACCC investigating you for illegal surcharging, which is why we've decided to make it impossible for you to not comply with the law.
Q: Can I turn off Stripe payment just for a particular invoice?
A: Yes! When creating/editing the invoice, just click on Edit Payment Method> and toggle the "Accept Card Payments" off. You're always in control.
Q: Do lots of Australian customers pay with international cards?
A: Nope, it's not very common from our research. We use Stripe ourselves to collect subscription fees for Easy Business App and we see less than 0.2% of our card payments using international cards, so it's not at all common.