Payments for General Contractors: What Stripe, Square, and the Big Processors Actually Cost You

A GC's tickets are absurd by normal standards: a $5,000 deposit, a $25,000 draw, a $75,000 final payment. Stripe, Square, Adyen, Chase, Fiserv, Global Payments, and Worldpay priced their flat rates for coffee shops — then never wrote a word about what those rates do to a draw schedule. We did the math at real GC ticket sizes, with rates checked October 2026. Also see General Contractors, AI for General Contractors, and Tech for General Contractors.

The fee table: what each processor actually charges you

Published rates, checked October 2026. Square: 2.6% + $0.15 in person, roughly 2.9–3.3% + $0.30 online depending on plan, ~3.5% + $0.15 for card-on-file or keyed. Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 online, 2.7% + $0.05 in person, 3.4% + $0.30 for stored cards. Interchange-plus from a real merchant account: about 0.3% markup over interchange. ACH: about $5 flat.

$5,000 deposit: Stripe online $145.30. Square in person $130.15. Interchange-plus roughly $95–$120. ACH about $5.

$25,000 draw: Stripe online $725.30. Square in person $650.15. Interchange-plus roughly $400–$500. ACH about $5.

$75,000 final payment: Stripe online $2,175.30. Square in person $1,950.15. Interchange-plus roughly $1,200–$1,500. ACH about $5.

Read that middle row again: $725 to collect a draw by card versus $5 by bank transfer. On a six-draw project, card processing at flat rate costs you more than a full-time estimator's month. GCs who take draws by card on flat-rate pricing are donating a truck payment to Stripe every quarter.

The honest footnote: interchange-plus estimates assume consumer cards. Commercial and corporate cards — common on commercial GC work — carry higher interchange, sometimes 2.5%+. That's exactly why the Level 2/Level 3 data section below exists.

The workflow checklist the big processors fail

GC money doesn't move like retail money. Here's what the big processors' generic pages never address:

• Deposits with legal caps. In California, home-improvement down payments are capped at 10% or $1,000, whichever is less. Most states have some version of this. Stripe hands you a generic payment link — it doesn't know your state's down-payment law, and it won't stop you from collecting an illegal deposit.
• Draw schedules tied to milestones. "25% at framing complete" isn't a subscription. You need invoicing that references the schedule of values and the pay-app number, not a "Pay Now" button.
• Retainage. 5–10% held until completion is standard. Your processor should track what's held and what's released. None of the big ones do this natively.
• Lien waivers with every payment. Conditional on the way in, unconditional on receipt. The waiver and the payment are one workflow in construction — every generic processor treats them as two unrelated things.
• Commercial cards and Level 2/3 data. Take a corporate card on a $75,000 commercial draw without Level 3 line-item data and you pay the highest interchange tier for the privilege. Interchange-plus accounts that pass Level 2/3 data can cut that meaningfully. Flat-rate processors just shrug.
• Wire fraud. Construction is a top target for payment-redirection scams — a spoofed email "updating" wiring instructions on a $100,000 draw. Whatever you use, verify instructions by phone, every time. No processor's fraud tools replace that phone call.

The honest verdict on each processor

• Square: fine for a solo GC doing small jobs at $10k/month in card volume. Outgrow it the day you take your first $25,000 draw — and know about the aggregated-risk account holds: a sudden $50,000 payment on an account used to $5,000 ones is exactly the pattern that triggers freezes.
• Stripe: superb API, superb docs, wrong tool for most GCs. No draw schedules, no lien-waiver linkage, no pay-app anything out of the box — and 2.9% on your ticket sizes is brutal. Fine if you're building custom billing software on top of it; punishing if you're not.
• Adyen: enterprise payments infrastructure. If you're a $50M+ GC with an engineering team, call them. Otherwise this page isn't for you and neither is Adyen.
• Chase Payment Solutions: convenient if your operating account is at Chase and you like one statement. Quote-based, no construction workflows, and "convenient" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
• Fiserv/Clover, Global Payments, Worldpay: the quote-maze trio. You'll get a rate eventually, after a sales call, with hardware you didn't ask for. None publishes GC-specific anything. Interchange-plus is available if you negotiate — which tells you the first quote isn't the price.

The pattern: every big processor sells you payment acceptance. A GC needs payment operations — draws, retainage, waivers, ACH. Buy the second one. ClaroPro.ai handles the invoicing-and-collection side — draws billed on schedule, payment links by text, waivers attached — while your actual processing runs underneath at sane rates.

Notes from Finix's public docs: ACH, card-on-file, surcharging

Finix publishes its developer docs openly at docs.finix.com, and they're the clearest blueprint for how GC payment operations should actually be wired:

• ACH for draws. A $25,000 draw costs about $5 by ACH instead of $725 by card. Finix's docs walk through ACH origination with proper timing and returns handling — the part everyone skips until a draw bounces. For scheduled draws, ACH is the default that flat-rate card pricing hopes you never discover.
• Card on file — tokenization. Keep the owner's card vaulted as a token for the deposit and the final walkthrough balance. You never store the number; the token charges when the milestone hits. Finix's tokenization docs are the reference implementation.
• Level 2 and Level 3 data. On commercial work paid with corporate cards, passing line-item detail (Level 3) drops you into lower interchange tiers. On a $75,000 commercial draw, that's real money — hundreds per transaction — for data you already have in the pay app.
• Surcharging, done legally. Passing the card fee to the client is legal in most states with rules: credit cards only (never debit), capped around 3%, disclosed before payment. On a $25,000 draw, a compliant surcharge is the difference between eating $725 and collecting it. Check your state's current rules — they change.

The through-line: Finix is payments infrastructure you (or your software) build on, priced like infrastructure — which is why it undercuts every flat-rate brand on GC ticket sizes. That's the whole game at $25,000 a draw.

The draw-collection playbook: a month in the life

Here's how a tight GC runs the monthly cycle:

• Day 1: the pay app goes out. Line items against the schedule of values, conditional lien waivers from every sub attached, payment link included. The owner can't approve what they haven't received — day 1 beats day 12 every time.
• Day 5: the waiver chase fires automatically. Any sub missing a conditional waiver gets the text. No waiver, no check — and the subs learn the rhythm within two cycles.
• Day 10: approval and payment. The owner approves; the draw arrives by ACH (about $5) instead of by card ($725). The payment method decision is made once, as policy — not negotiated per draw.
• Retainage: calendared, not hoped for. The 10% held on every draw is the most-forgotten collection in construction. At substantial completion, the final pay app goes out with final conditional waivers; the retainage release gets its own calendar reminder. Unconditional waivers are exchanged for the final check — never before it.

Two-account discipline helps: draws land in the project account, subs and materials get paid from it, and your operating money never mingles with the client's. The GCs who get into trouble aren't the ones with thin margins — they're the ones who spent draw 4 on job B's materials.

FAQ

What's the cheapest way to collect a $25,000 draw? ACH bank transfer — about $5, with 3–5 day settlement. On a scheduled draw you saw coming a month ago, the wait costs nothing and the card fee costs $725.

Should I surcharge the card fee on draws? Where legal, yes — credit only, disclosed upfront, capped around 3%. Many GCs quote "3% discount for ACH/check" instead, which is the same math with better manners.

Will switching processors interrupt my draws? Not if you overlap: keep the old account live for 30 days while new draws run on the new one. Never switch mid-draw.

Can I take a deposit by card legally? Usually yes, within your state's down-payment cap — and get it in writing that it's non-refundable to the extent the law allows. The card receipt isn't a contract.

The rule: card for the deposit if you must, ACH for every draw, and never flat-rate anything over $5,000. Then read Tech for General Contractors — the right project-management stack is what makes the draws, the waivers, and the change orders happen on schedule instead of on memory.