card payments for tradesmen
Taking Card Payments on Site: Is It Worth the Fees?
For most trades, yes - a card reader is worth the fees. Readers like SumUp and Zettle cost roughly 1.5-1.75% per transaction with no monthly fee, and what you buy for that is getting paid on completion instead of chasing bank transfers for a fortnight. On a £300 call-out the fee is about a fiver. One avoided chase-up email pays for it.
What the fees actually are
The app-based readers changed the game for sole traders: a one-off cost for the reader, around 1.5-1.75% per tap or insertion, and nothing at all in months you don't use it - no rental, no minimums, no contract. Compare that with the old bank merchant accounts, with monthly fees and terminal rental, which never made sense for a one-van business. Money typically lands in your account the next working day.
What you get for the fee
The fee isn't buying a payment method - it's buying the end of chasing. Finish the job, tap the card, watch the confirmation, drive off paid. No 'I'll do the transfer tonight', no checking the banking app for three days, no awkward reminder texts. If you've ever added up the evening time spent chasing transfers that 'definitely went through', under 2% starts looking cheap. It also quietly protects the relationship: nobody enjoys chasing a nice customer, and nobody enjoys being chased.
The emergency-job effect
Here's the underrated part: cards help customers afford you. A burst pipe or a dead consumer unit is a bill nobody planned. Offer card payment and the customer can put £900 on a credit card and spread it their end - and paying by credit card gives them Section 75 protection, which visibly reassures people handing a large sum to a trade they met an hour ago. Trades who take cards on emergency work simply lose fewer jobs at the 'how would you like to pay' moment.
From the tools: my brother resisted a reader for years - 'why give away 1.7%?' - until an out-of-hours consumer unit replacement changed his mind. The customer couldn't do a £900 transfer on the spot, put it on a credit card instead, and thanked him for making it easy. He checked his books afterwards: bank transfers on emergency jobs had been taking around nine days on average to land, with three or four chase messages each. Now everything domestic goes through the reader before he leaves. His maths: about £15 in fees on a £900 job, versus a fortnight of waiting and the odd invoice that needed chasing into a second month.
When bank transfer still wins
Percentages scale, so on planned big-ticket work the calculation flips: 1.7% of an £8,000 bathroom is £136, and a customer with two weeks' notice can manage a transfer comfortably. The pattern that works: deposit and balance by transfer on quoted jobs; card on completion for call-outs, small jobs and emergencies. And put your payment options on the quote itself - customers decide faster when they know paying will be easy.
Quick answers
How much do card payments cost a tradesman?
Roughly 1.5-1.75% per transaction on the popular app-based readers, with no monthly charge and only the reader itself to buy. A £300 job costs you about £5 in fees, and an idle month costs nothing.
Is it worth paying card fees on big jobs?
On emergencies, almost always - the customer can pay a big surprise bill by credit card and you leave paid. On planned work in the thousands, invoice with a deposit and take a transfer instead; the percentage stops being trivial at that size.
Do customers actually want to pay trades by card?
More every year. It matches how they pay everywhere else, and credit card payments carry Section 75 protection that reassures customers on bigger amounts. On emergency work it can be what turns a hesitant yes into an immediate one.
Is a card reader better than bank transfer for a tradesman?
Run both. Cards win where speed and certainty matter - domestic jobs, call-outs, completion payments. Transfers win on invoiced work where the amounts are large and the timeline relaxed. The real enemy is neither fee nor transfer: it's the unpaid hours spent chasing.
Quotato puts payment on the paperwork - send a branded quote in seconds, take a deposit on acceptance and turn it into an invoice in one tap.
Try Quotato free →