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

Restoration tickets are huge and variable: $2,500 deductible, $6,000 mitigation, $20,000 full restoration — and half of it comes from insurance companies, not card swipes. Flat-rate processing at 2.9% is a $580 tax on a $20,000 job. Here is what the big processors actually charge at your ticket sizes, how the insurance-payer workflow really works (assignments, mortgage-company checks, supplement checks), and why the deductible belongs on a card on day one. Rates checked October 2026. Also see Mold & Water Damage Restoration, AI for Restoration Companies, and Tech for Restoration Companies.

The fee table: flat-rate punishment at restoration tickets

Square: 2.6%+$0.15 in-person, 2.9%+$0.30 online, 3.5%+$0.15 keyed/stored; Stripe: 2.7%+$0.05 in-person, 2.9%+$0.30 online, 3.4%+$0.30 stored. Interchange-plus estimates assume a 0.3% markup.

$2,500 deductible (in-person, day one): Square $65.15 · Stripe $67.55 · Interchange-plus ~$53

$6,000 mitigation (invoice online): Square $174.30 · Stripe $174.30 · Interchange-plus ~$128 · ACH (0.8%, capped at $5) $5.00

$6,000 mitigation (keyed in from the wet site): Square $210.15 · Stripe $204.30 · Interchange-plus ~$153

$20,000 full restoration: Square online $580.30 · Stripe online $580.30 · Interchange-plus ~$423 · ACH $5.00

$20,000 via insurance check: $0 in processing fees — which is exactly why the insurance workflow below matters more than the rate table.

$580 versus $5 — same $20,000 job. At volume: a company running $1.2M a year with 40% card-paid ($480,000): Square costs ~$13,920/year; interchange-plus costs ~$10,150/year; moving the card-paid share's big tickets to ACH where possible costs a few hundred. The processor decision is worth roughly $3,500–$4,000 a year — but the insurance-receivables discipline is worth ten times that. Every processor rides on payments infrastructure — companies like Finix build the rails moving card money from your customer's bank to yours.

The insurance-payer workflow: where the real money lives

Half your revenue doesn't touch a card processor. It moves like this — and every step is a place money gets stuck:

• The assignment of benefits (or direction to pay). Signed on day one, or you're chasing the homeowner for the insurance check later. No signed direction-to-pay, no leverage.
• The mortgage-company check problem. Big claim checks come payable to the homeowner and the mortgage company — which means endorsement, which means weeks. The companies that track this (check received, sent for endorsement, endorsed, deposited) get paid in weeks; the ones that don't find out in month three.
• Supplement checks. The job grows, the supplement gets approved, a second check comes. Each supplement is a separate receivable to track — the "one job, one check" mental model is how $8,000 supplements age into write-offs.
• Depreciation holdback and recoverable depreciation. The final 20–30% that arrives after completion paperwork. The completion certificate, final photos, and invoice go out the day the job closes — not "when the office gets to it."
• The deductible — the card-paid part. Collected day one by card or text-to-pay link (see the fee table above). The deductible that waits for claim settlement becomes a collection project.

No processor solves this — it's a receivables discipline, tracked in your job-management software (see Tech for Restoration Companies), not in Stripe. The companies that treat insurance receivables like a pipeline get paid in 4 weeks; the ones that treat it like a pile get paid in 14.

The workflow checklist the big processors fail

• Day-one deductible collection. Text-to-pay link on-site, card charged before the dehumidifiers are even placed. Neither big processor ships this as a restoration-ready workflow.
• Authorize-and-capture on big non-covered work. The $8,000 non-covered rebuild: authorize at signing, capture at completion. A refunded $8,000 charge costs you $232.30 on Stripe/Square — they keep the fee. Authorize-and-capture exists to avoid exactly this.
• ACH on big tickets. $5 flat on $20,000 versus $580. Offer it on every non-insurance invoice over $2,000.
• Account freezes on outlier tickets. Square's aggregated-risk model flags the $20,000 restoration charge on an account that normally runs $2,500 deductibles. If big jobs are the business, Square shouldn't be the processor.
• The keyed-in penalty at the wet site. No signal, dead reader, typed card: Square 3.5% + $0.15 — $210.15 instead of ~$153 on $6,000. Backup reader, charged battery.
• Partial payments and progress billing. Deposit, progress, completion — tracked on one invoice, not three spreadsheets.
• Dual pricing. A cash price and a card price, both displayed — legal in all 50 states. Straight surcharging is banned in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
• Never lease a terminal — a $300 reader at $49/month for 48 months is a $2,352 reader. Your phone is the terminal.

The honest verdict on each processor

• Square: wrong tool for restoration as a primary processor — the tickets are exactly the outlier pattern its risk model freezes, and the flat rate punishes every big job. Fine for the occasional deductible at the counter, nothing more.
• Stripe: great online; for a wet-site restoration company it's a developer tool in a payments costume.
• Adyen: enterprise; no returned calls under ~$1M/year.
• Chase, Fiserv, Global Payments, Worldpay: quote-based, bank-led, zero restoration guidance. Fine if you negotiate hard; miserable if you sign unread.
• Built-in job-management payments: convenient, priced like Square. Fine for the deductible line; graduate the big tickets.
• Interchange-plus via an independent ISO: the grown-up answer at restoration volumes — past ~$30k/month in card volume, non-negotiable.

Get the ISO quote in writing; ask about statement fee, PCI fee, batch fee, monthly minimum; never sign an early-termination fee. ClaroPro pairs bilingual voice-to-invoice with payments — the deductible invoice and text-to-pay link leave the wet site on day one.

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

Finix publishes its developer documentation in the open at docs.finix.com. Translated into a restoration company's month:

• Authorize now, capture when done. POST /authorizations holds the deposit on the $8,000 non-covered rebuild — reserved, not taken. Job completes: POST /authorizations/{id}/captures. Cancels: POST /authorizations/{id}/void. No charge-and-refund — refunds cost you the original fee.
• Payment Links by text — no integration. The deductible invoice goes out as a link from the wet site. The homeowner pays from the couch while the dehumidifiers run.
• Invoices with partial payments and progress billing. Deposit, progress, completion — one invoice tracks the whole arc, and the mortgage-company check workflow stays separate where it belongs.
• Subscriptions for maintenance plans. The annual mold-inspection and dryer-vent plan bills itself: $0 authorization first (AVS/CVV check), then monthly. Account Updater refreshes reissued cards.
• Tokenization for the file. Tokenization Forms keep card numbers inside a Finix-hosted iframe; your backend gets a "TK" token and a stored Payment Instrument. The card on file for the balance-due — never a spreadsheet of card numbers.
• Webhooks close the loop. Finix fires an event when the payment settles, so job management marks the invoice paid without anyone checking a bank feed.

The catch: Finix is infrastructure — you get its rails through a provider built on top. No-code tools work from the dashboard; API flows need a developer. Test at finix.sandbox-payments-api.com first. More at finix.com; the public docs live at docs.finix.com.

FAQ

Cheapest way to take a $20,000 non-insurance payment? ACH — about $5 flat, 3–5 days to settle. Offer it on every big ticket; the $575 savings sells itself.

Should I use Square for deductibles? It's tolerable for the occasional $2,500 deductible, but don't make it your primary — the first $20,000 charge is the textbook freeze trigger.

How do I speed up insurance checks? Direction-to-pay signed day one, supplement tracked as its own receivable, completion paperwork out the day the job closes. That's a receivables discipline, not a processor feature — see Tech for Restoration Companies.

Cash discount or surcharge on a $20,000 job? Dual pricing — legal in all 50 states. A 3% card price on $20,000 is $600 the customer can see and choose.

What if the homeowner disputes the deductible charge? The photo log, moisture readings, and signed scope win it — the documentation layer from AI for Restoration Companies. Documentation isn't paperwork; it's dispute insurance.

The processor decision is worth ~$4,000 a year; the insurance-receivables discipline is worth ten times that. Collect the deductible day one, authorize the big deposits, offer ACH on everything over $2,000 — and track every insurance check like a pipeline, not a pile. Then read Tech for Restoration Companies for the stack that runs it all.