What Is A Pay Link & How Do You Make One?

Stripe’s features focus heavily on eCommerce, international sales, and API functionality, but the company has recently been improving its in-person processing options with Stripe Terminal and Tap-To-Pay for Android and iPhone. Additional features include:

• Stripe Payments integrated payments platform
• Stripe Virtual Terminal
• Stripe Radar anti-fraud protection
• Stripe Terminal API and card readers for card-present transactions
• ACH processing included with every account
• Extensive library of APIs and developer tools
• Broad support for international payments and local payment methods
• Many ancillary services for establishing and running your business

Payment links happen to be one of the easiest Stripe features for the average merchant or contractor to use. You won’t need any programming skills to implement payment links; it can all be done from your Stripe dashboard.

Stripe offers a basic account with no monthly fee while standard transaction fees start at 2.9% + $0.30 which includes transactions completed through pay links.

It will cost you $10/month if you want to create a custom domain (or use your existing one) for your payment link URLs.

Post-payment invoices that provide proof of transaction for your customers after a one-time purchase cost 0.4% of the transaction total and are capped at $2 per invoice.

Read our full breakdown of Stripe’s pricing for more info.

Like all payment service providers (PSPs) you may run into issues with account stability and fund holds/freezes. Customer support is another complaint that is mentioned by users, but it isn’t an overwhelming trend.

You won’t need to worry about long-term commitments, early termination fees, or losing your customer data if you decide to stop using Stripe. The company will help you export your data and take it with you when you go.

While Stripe can seem complex, it is a very transparent payment processor which makes it easy for you to research before signing anything.

Wave offers a lot of useful functionality for freelancers, though some features are paywalled:

• Credit card processing
• ACH processing
• Unlimited invoicing
• Unlimited estimates
• Contact management
• Expense tracking
• Accounts payable
• Inventory
• Reports
• Payroll (premium)
• Bookkeeping (premium)
• Tax services (premium)
• Coaching (premium)

After you’ve created a Checkout page that contains your products and services, you can generate either a Checkout button or a hyperlink that you can drop into the appropriate site or messenger app.

Like Stripe, Wave offers a basic account with no monthly fee. The main difference between Wave and the other PSPs on this list is the transaction fee structure.

Wave charges two different transaction fees based on the card being processed.

• 2.9% + $0.30 per Visa, Mastercard, or Discover transaction
• 3.4% + $0.60 per American Express transaction

Wave also charges 1% per ACH transaction (min. $1).

While the starter plan is free, Wave does offer a Pro plan that costs $16/month and includes automated features like importing bank transactions and late payment reminders. Check out Wave’s website for more detailed pricing information.

Where Wave is lacking is in the integrations category. It does support a Zapier integration which allows users to connect to 1,000+ add-ons, but these are not considered to be true integrations and come with the hiccups and syncing issues to prove it.

If you choose to pay for the Wave Payments Pro plan, you’ll be looking at either a monthly or annual commitment to Wave, but there are no early termination fees to worry about!

Square offers one of the most generous feature packages one can get without a monthly fee (and even more if you do pay one).

In addition to payment links, this includes:

• Credit and debit card processing
• Mobile card reader (magstripe-only) included with an account
• EMV and NFC-capable card readers are available
• Square Register POS system available
• ACH processing included with every account
• Square Online Store for eCommerce businesses
• Analytics and reporting available through Square Dashboard
• Create milestone-based payment schedules (Invoice Plus)
• Send batch invoices (Invoice Plus)
• Custom invoices (Invoice Plus)

Square Messages is a feature new businesses using payment links may find especially useful. Accessible from your Square dashboard, Square Messages functions as a single channel you can use to communicate with your customers as well as create and send payment links.

Square has no monthly, setup, or application fees. You can pay a little more for plans like Invoice Plus ($20/month) that have extra features like custom and batch invoices.

There is no monthly payment to use Square Payment Links. Like Stripe and Wave, Square charges an industry-standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

It’s important to note that Square Payment Links are only available for domestic sales. You’ll have to look into Square Online if you want to sell online internationally.

Like Stripe, Square also receives negative reviews about account/fund holds and freezes. Square’s support for cryptocurrency and currency conversion is somewhat limited as well, but that’s usually not a dealbreaker for new businesses.

With no early termination fees, long-term contracts, or sticky usage terms, Square is a great option for easy-to-use and affordable payment links for new businesses!

PayPal supports payment links through its PayPal.Me feature, which has both business and personal versions. Additionally, PayPal’s Venmo brand can be used for invoicing.

Additional features include:

• PayPal integrated payment platform
• Payment buttons and hosted checkout pages
• Virtual terminal
• Recurring billing

PayPal’s payment link fees can vary depending on your account. PayPal’s pricing model has become rather complicated, so you’ll want to check out our PayPal pricing guide to get a sense of what you’ll pay.

Remember that you can’t use a personal account for business transactions, so make sure you sign up for the business version of PayPal. You’ll also need to be careful where you post your link, as PayPal has guidelines about what kind of content it can be associated with.

There have been some price hikes in the past few years, but, honestly, what hasn’t gotten more expensive in 2024?

In addition to pay by text, Helcim offers:

• Credit and debit card processing with a full merchant account
• Affordable, versatile card reader
• Good developer tools
• Strong support for international sales

Helcim lets businesses generate and send payment links right from its virtual terminal, so you won’t need any special infrastructure to get started.

• No setup or application fees
  No monthly account fees
  Interchange + 0.5% + $0.25 on card-not-present transactions, including payment links (volume discounts available)

If your business is extremely low-volume, Helcim can get expensive. That being said, if you have immediate plans to increase your processing volume and grow your business, Helcim is a great option to help you grow.

Helcim receives great reviews pretty much across the board. It seems like the biggest complaint is from merchants who aren’t approved for an account. This process, however, isn’t entirely under Helcim’s control and is mainly the responsibility of Elavon, Helcim’s back-end processor.

There are no early termination fees or penalties for closing your Helcim account, you just need to give them 30 days’ notice.

Venmo is a lightweight app but manages to do quite a bit. With its focus on QR-code scanning and payment solicitation, Venmo is a ready-made mobile platform for payment links.

Features include:

• Sending and receiving payments
• Personal QR codes
• Direct deposit
• Venmo debit card
• Venmo credit card
• Social feeds
• Buy and sell cryptocurrency

Venmo charges no maintenance fees and no transaction fees for personal accounts. We caution you against using a personal account to avoid the business account fees. The IRS has begun cracking down on using P2P platforms to avoid taxes and your account can be suspended or banned if you get caught.

The following fees apply to Venmo business profiles:

• 1.9% + $0.10 per transaction made using the Venmo app or a QR code
• 3.49% + $0.49 for purchases made online, using Braintree gateway, or PayPal Checkout

The main problem with using Venmo as your only form of payment processor is that any customer has to also have a Venmo account to pay you because the app can’t take card payments. You’re also responsible for applying sales tax, there are limited reporting and customer management tools, and transaction limits can cause issues for high-volume businesses.

That being said, if you’re a small, low-volume business that doesn’t need a lot of extra features, Venmo is a great (and cheap) option for you. You also don’t need to purchase any hardware if you already have a smartphone or tablet and you can take contactless payments with ease.

In addition to Paysley’s pay-by-text and QR code payment link processing, PaymentCloud offers:

• Credit and debit card processing
• Payment gateway access through Authorize.Net, NMI, or USAePay
• ACH and echeck processing

Paysley is a pay-as-you-go service that allows you to send payment requests to your customers over text or email.

Paysley does not use an app or any dedicated hardware, nor do customers need to sign up for an account to make a payment. Instead, you’ll either send a payment link or generate a QR code that can be displayed online or on a device.

Like most high-risk merchant account providers, PaymentCloud doesn’t disclose pricing details. This is because of the quote-based structure high-risk businesses have come to expect.

Some general pricing guidelines for high and low-risk accounts include:

• $10-$45/month software fee
• $15/month (on average) payment gateway fee
• $15-$45/month virtual terminal fee

Transaction fees are another area where PaymentCloud doesn’t disclose exact numbers due to the negotiation process involved with creating a high-risk merchant account. Here are some best estimations of what you can expect to pay:

• Low-risk Account Transaction Fee: 2% – 3,1% per transaction
• Medium-Risk Account Transaction Fee: 2,3% – 3.4% per transaction
• High-Risk Account Transaction Fee: 2.7% – 4.3% per transaction

Processing rates for high-risk accounts vary by acquiring bank/back-end processors.

Because Paysley comes as a separate feature supported by PaymentCloud, we wanted to give you a quick overview of their pricing model.

The Express plan costs $69/month, the Premier plan costs $99/month, and there is custom pricing available for the Enterprise plan. You can also expect to pay:

• $0.20/transaction
• $0.03/SMS text
• $0.05/MMS picture text
• $0.02/email

Because Paysley is billed independently of any transactions you complete through PaymentCloud, monthly fees can get expensive fast for small business owners. Unfortunately, if you are a high-risk business, you don’t have much choice in this situation.

PaymentCloud’s pricing is reasonable for the high-risk market, but low to medium-risk merchants can probably find better pricing elsewhere.

Contract terms are not publicly disclosed, but as a high-risk merchant, you can expect a two-year contract with an automatic renewal clause. There are most likely early termination fees that you can try to get waived or lowered by PaymentCloud if you choose to leave.