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

The short version: gyms lose more money to billing than to any other line item — failed dues quietly eat 3-5% of revenue, and the card-vs-ACH choice on monthly dues is worth thousands a year. The big processors' generic pages never address recurring dues, dunning, or EFT at all. Here is what Stripe, Square, and the big processors actually cost a gym, with the dues math done. Also see Gyms, AI for Gyms, and Tech for Gyms.

The fee table: dues are where gyms bleed

Rates checked October 2026. Square: 2.6% + 15¢ in-person, 2.9% + 30¢ online, 3.5% + 15¢ keyed/stored. Stripe: 2.7% + 5¢ in-person, 2.9% + 30¢ online, 3.4% + 30¢ stored; ACH 0.8% capped at $5. Interchange-plus: ~0.3% markup, effective ~2.0% card-present. Gym EFT/ACH processors typically run $1-2 per draft or ~0.8%.

$49/mo dues × 300 members = $14,700/mo:

Card on file (Square 3.5% + 15¢ stored): $559.50/mo · $6,714/yr

Card on file (Stripe 2.9% + 30¢ online): $516.30/mo · $6,196/yr

Card on file (interchange-plus ~2.0% + 10¢): ~$324/mo · ~$3,888/yr

ACH/EFT dues (0.8%, capped): ~$118/mo · ~$1,411/yr

Read that again: $6,714 versus $1,411 a year — for the same $14,700 in dues. The card-vs-ACH decision is a $5,300/yr line item on a 300-member gym, before a single failed payment is counted. Per member per year: Square stored-card costs $22.38 in fees on $588 of dues; ACH costs $4.70.

$700 PT 10-pack (in-person): Square $18.35 · Stripe $18.95 · Interchange-plus ~$14.10 · ACH $5.00

The break-even: ACH wins dues; the fight is over the rest

For dues, there is no contest to break even — ACH wins at every volume. The break-even that matters is on the card transactions that remain (PT packs, retail, drop-ins): flat-rate versus interchange-plus.

IC+ plans carry ~$10-25/mo in fixed costs. At $5,000/mo in card transactions (PT packs + retail for a mid-size gym): Square in-person costs ~$137.50. Interchange-plus at ~2.0% costs ~$100 + ~$20 = ~$120. Savings: modest, ~$17/mo. At $12,000/mo: Square ~$330; IC+ ~$240 + $20 = ~$260. Savings: ~$70/mo, ~$840/yr. The flip is around $8,000-10,000/mo in card volume — but note the dues already left the building via ACH, so this is only the leftover card volume.

The full-service billing question: companies like ABC Fitness and Daxko bundle dues collection, dunning, and member billing into one service — convenient, and priced like it (bundled rates often land near 2.9%+ with monthly minimums and per-member fees). Run the DIY math: ACH dues at ~$118/mo + a gym platform with dunning at ~$150/mo = ~$268/mo all-in, versus the bundle at ~$430+/mo on $14,700 in dues. The bundle costs you ~$2,000/yr for the convenience of one vendor. Sometimes worth it — price it with eyes open.

The workflow checklist the big processors fail

Run every processor against this checklist before you sign:

• Recurring dues billing. This is the product. The processor must draft monthly dues, handle prorations, and retry failures on a schedule you control. Square's recurring billing exists but runs at stored-card rates (3.5% + 15¢) — the most expensive way to bill dues in this guide.
• ACH/EFT for dues. Non-negotiable. 0.8% capped at $5 beats every card rate by 4-5x. If the processor cannot do ACH dues, it is not a gym processor.
• Dunning automation. Day-zero failed-payment text with a card-update link, day-3 retry, day-7 escalation. This is worth more than 0.2% of rate — a gym recovering 50% of failures instead of 20% gains $7,200-12,000/yr on $40k/mo in dues (see the AI guide).
• Freezes and cancellations. The system must freeze billing without canceling the membership, prorate on unfreeze, and log who authorized what. "Freezes drown the front desk" is a software failure, not a staffing failure.
• Card-updater services. Account-updater (automatic refresh of expired/reissued cards) recovers a meaningful slice of failures before they happen. Ask whether it is included or a paid add-on.
• PT packs and retail. One-off large tickets ($700 packs) need interchange-plus or flat in-person rates — not stored-card rates. The $700 pack at Square's in-person 2.6% + 15¢ ($18.35) versus its stored rate is a $6+ difference per pack.

The honest verdict on each processor

Square — wrong-shaped for dues. Fine for PT packs and retail at the counter. But recurring dues at 3.5% + 15¢ stored is the most expensive dues billing in this guide — $6,714/yr on a 300-member gym versus $1,411 on ACH. Steelmanning Square: zero monthly cost and the simplest countertop setup for a new gym's first 90 days.

Stripe — good pipes, no gym. Excellent for ACH dues (0.8% capped at $5) and card payments via API — but there is no dunning, no freeze logic, no attendance-linked anything out of the box. You are building the gym on top of the pipes. Great if you are building custom software; a science project at the front desk.

ABC Fitness / Daxko full-service billing — convenient, priced like it. They bundle collection, dunning, and support into one throat to choke. The catch: bundled pricing near 2.9%+ with minimums and per-member fees runs ~$2,000/yr more than DIY ACH + platform on a 300-member gym. Worth it if billing admin is truly drowning you; otherwise it is the most expensive convenience in the building.

Interchange-plus via a gym-savvy ISO — the quiet winner for card volume. ~2.0% effective on PT packs and retail, ACH for dues, proper dunning. The catch: you assemble it (processor + gym platform), and the sales process involves an actual human quoting you.

Adyen, Chase Payment Solutions, Fiserv, Global Payments, Worldpay — absent. Quote-based enterprise sales with zero gym-specific content: nothing on dues, dunning, freezes, or EFT. Not competing for your business.

How a gym actually wires this up: notes from Finix's public docs

ClaroPro pairs bilingual voice-to-agreement with payments — the same-day PT close (speak the pack, text the agreement, paid before the parking lot) runs on one system instead of three.

For the billing plumbing, Finix's public docs are the right reference even if you never touch the API. The patterns map directly: recurring billing primitives for monthly dues with proration and retry schedules you control; ACH transfers as the default dues rail at 0.8% capped instead of card rates; tokenized payment instruments for card-on-file PT packs; webhooks on failed payments that trigger the day-zero dunning text automatically; and separate merchant accounts per location so location two's January surge does not re-trigger risk review on location one. Standard payment-infrastructure patterns, documented at docs.finix.com. Knowing they are commodities is how you judge whether a gym platform's "billing module" is real infrastructure or a markup wrapper.

FAQ

Should all dues go on ACH? As many as possible. Offer a small discount for bank draft ("$47/mo on ACH vs $49 on card") — the $2/mo you give up saves you far more in fees, and members barely notice.

What about members who insist on cards? Take the card — a paying member at 2.9% beats a lost member at 0%. But default every signup flow to ACH first.

Can I surcharge credit cards on dues? State-dependent; several states restrict or ban it, and recurring-billing surcharge rules are stricter. The ACH discount is cleaner than the card surcharge in every state.

How do I handle the January joiner who quits in March? Your agreement's cancellation terms, the attendance record showing they stopped coming, and the confirmation texts are your three documents. Processors and courts both side with the gym that has all three.

Do I need a separate account for dues payouts? Yes. Dues in one operating account, everything else elsewhere. Commingled payouts are how "where did the dues go" becomes unanswerable.

The order: 1) move dues to ACH/EFT this quarter — it is the single biggest billing decision in the business. 2) Dunning texts on every failed draft, day zero. 3) Interchange-plus for the card transactions that remain. 4) Price the full-service billing bundle against the DIY math before signing. Then read Tech for Gyms — the platform is where dunning either happens automatically or does not happen at all.