Wave (Wave Financial)B76
Payment Processor · Freelancers, consultants, contractors and one-person service businesses in the United States or Canada who …
Overview
Wave is the best free invoicing product a micro-business can get, and the payment processing bolted to it is priced for convenience rather than value. 2.9% plus 60 cents is thirty cents a transaction above the flat-rate norm, which is invisible on a $2,000 invoice and brutal on a $30 one — this is a platform for people who send a few large invoices, not many small ones. The bigger caution is operational: Wave is an aggregator, its public record is dense with accounts frozen and funds held for weeks, and support is email-only with slow responses. B- reflects genuinely useful free software wrapped around processing you should not depend on as your only way to get paid.
Best for: Freelancers, consultants, contractors and one-person service businesses in the United States or Canada who invoice a modest number of clients for meaningful amounts and want bookkeeping, invoicing and card acceptance in one free tool. It is particularly good value where clients will pay by bank transfer, because 1% capped-free-of-percentage-creep on a $3,000 invoice is $30 against $87.60 on a card. Anyone who currently pays for invoicing software and takes payment somewhere else should at least price this.
Strengths
- + The accounting and invoicing are genuinely free — not a trial, not a feature-crippled tier — and have been since 2010, which is why millions of very small businesses run on Wave without ever taking a card payment.
- + Every rate is published: 2.9% plus 60 cents on cards, 3.4% plus 60 cents on Amex, 1% with a $1 minimum on bank payments, and 1% for an instant payout. Nothing is quoted only by a salesperson.
- + No monthly fee on Starter, no contract, no PCI fee and no cancellation fee, so the cost of trying it is zero and the cost of leaving it is zero.
- + Bank payments at 1% are excellent value on larger invoices: a $3,000 invoice costs $30 by ACH against $87.60 by card, and the customer pays from the same invoice either way.
- + Card money arrives in one to two business days, which is competitive, and eligible accounts can pull an instant payout to a debit card at weekends for a further 1%.
- + Backed by H&R Block, which bought Wave for $405 million in a deal that completed on 1 July 2019 — an unusually stable owner for a free product.
Trade-offs
- – The 60-cent per-transaction fee is double the industry-standard 30 cents and it is not negotiable. On a $25 payment that is 3.3% all in; on a $10 payment it is 8.9%. Wave is the wrong tool for small tickets.
- – Frozen accounts and held funds dominate the complaint record, with published figures of $3,859, $7,000 and over $15,000, and reports of Wave refunding held payments to clients without the merchant agreeing. This is the defining risk of using it.
- – Support is email-only, with response times reported in weeks rather than hours. There is no phone line to escalate a hold, which is exactly when a business needs one.
- – Trustpilot is polarised rather than good — 3.3 overall but 46% of 533 reviews at one star — and the BBB file shows 232 complaints against an A- earned by answering them.
- – The Pro plan's fee relief is largely cosmetic: waiving 60 cents on ten transactions a month saves at most $6 against a $19 subscription, so you are buying features, not cheaper processing.
- – No card-present offering. There is no terminal, no reader and no real point-of-sale, so any business that takes payment face to face needs a second provider anyway.
Fees in detail
- Online rate: 2.9% plus $0.60 per transaction for Visa, Mastercard and Discover (Discover is US only), and 3.4% plus $0.60 for American Express. On the $1
- Contract: None.
Standard published rate for a domestic online card payment. Confirm current pricing on Wave (Wave Financial)'s pricing page.
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