ACH vs card fees: the math for a youth-sports club

Every time a family pays your club, a processor takes a cut. It feels small on one payment and adds up fast across a season. The single biggest lever you have on that cost is which rail the money travels on: a card, or a direct bank transfer (ACH). They're priced completely differently, and once you understand the difference you'll structure your registration around it.

The two prices, side by side

There are two ways a family commonly pays online:

• Card — credit or debit. The standard rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per payment. The percentage scales with the amount and the 30¢ is fixed, so it stings most on small payments and big ones alike.
• ACH — a direct transfer from the family's bank account. On SeasonStand this is 0.8% capped at $5. The cap is the magic: past a certain payment size, the fee stops growing.

On top of the processor's cut, SeasonStand's own platform fee is a flat 1% with no cap, with no setup fee, no monthly fee, and no per-user fee. We publish all of it on the pricing page — there's no "book a demo" wall to find out what you'll pay.

A worked example: one $300 registration

Take a single $300 season registration and run the processing cost both ways.

• Card: 2.9% of $300 is $8.70, plus the 30¢ fixed fee, for $9.00 in card processing.
• ACH: 0.8% of $300 is $2.40, which is under the $5 cap, so the cost is $2.40.

That's roughly a $6.60 difference on a single registration. It doesn't sound like much. Now register a hundred families that way and the gap is real money — money that either comes out of the club's budget or gets passed to families as a higher fee. Either way, the cheaper rail is the better deal for the people you serve.

Why the cap makes ACH dominate at scale

The percentage matters, but the $5 cap is what changes the game on larger payments. Card fees grow without limit — a $600 payment costs about $17.70 on a card. The ACH fee on that same $600 would be 0.8% ($4.80), still under the cap. Push the payment to $1,000 and the card fee climbs past $29 while ACH simply stops at its $5 ceiling. The bigger the payment — a full-season fee, a multi-kid family checking out in one sibling cart, a tournament team's bulk dues — the more lopsided the comparison gets.

So why offer cards at all?

Because some families will always prefer them, and the worst outcome is a family who can't pay. Offer both. The move is to make bank transfer the obvious default at checkout — it's a couple of taps to link an account — and keep card available for anyone who wants it. Most families, given a clearly cheaper default, take it. You don't have to lecture anyone on fees; you just have to set the path of least resistance to the rail that costs less.

One thing to know about ACH: it's not instant

A card authorizes in seconds. A bank transfer takes a few business days to clear. For registration that's fine — you're confirming a spot, not handing over goods at a register. Where it matters is your team store, if you're shipping product against a payment. Knowing the timing means you can set expectations instead of being surprised by it.

The bigger picture: fee math is a supporting benefit, not the reason a club switches. The reason is consolidation — registration, dues, the store and your books on one login instead of seven stitched-together tools. But once you're there, choosing the cheaper rail by default is free money for the club, and a treasurer who understands the 0.8%-cap-$5 vs 2.9%+30¢ difference can defend the budget without breaking a sweat. The full rate card lives on the pricing page; the mechanics are in the docs.