Freelance work - what's the best way to take a one-off CC payment?

[WoolyMammoth55]

Hi wise money-matters MNers,

I've had a side-hustle self-employment for a few years now, during which clients have always paid my invoices via BACS.

I'm in a slightly sticky situation: one of my long-standing clients offered me work as usual, but then my contact went on long-term-sick leave. When I invoiced for the completed work, her boss announced that instead of them paying me, their client would be paying me directly.

I invoiced the new client as advised and heard nothing. Eventually I asked the boss at original client to chase payment for me. They've now told her that it will take their accounts team 90 days to set me up to make a BACS payment but that they can pay next week if I send a CC payment link.

I've incurred expenses delivering the work and can't wait 90 days!

I don't anticipate having to take CC payment ever again, so I don't want to invest in a subscription or any hardware.

I'd like to avoid fees as far as possible... Google seems to direct me to PayPal for business, but I assume they'll clobber me with fees?

Would it be acceptable to re-invoice to include a line for CC fees so that I'm not being penalised for taking payment that way?

If anyone has a great solution to recommend I'm all ears!

Thanks in advance all x

How much is the payment? If its large, you need a capped fee option, eg if the payment is £10k, 2% of that is £200 . Sometimes the new Sum Up type terminals are fairly cheap to buy and don't need subscriptions but I don't know how the fees compare to PayPal, although maybe the latter is the least worst option tbh.

I don't know if its worth taking legal advice, after all, they've broken your T&Cs by not paying directly.

After all your original client should pay you as agreed and seek payment from their client. Maybe write to them and tell them that and say if they don't pay as agreed you'll take them to the small claims court. The sick leave and arrangement they have with their client is irrelevant.

But if its an important long standing client maybe you don't want to risk rocking the boat, which is sad because standing up for yourself so they don't walk all over you shouldn't be seen as been difficult should it?

Thanks a lot for the reply @Bjorkdidit, appreciate the input!

Payment amount is £5K so 2% fees £100... Not a world-ending amount but just annoying feeling like I'm subsidising the Fortune 500 company to make their lives easier...

It's definitely shit that the client who commissioned me won't pay. I have a good relationship with my contact who is out of office, and would raise it with her no problem, but I've never met the boss IRL and don't want to piss her off and potentially lose future work if she decides I'm making trouble.

I'll look into PayPal business T&Cs today and see if I can work it out.

I think since I'll have to reissue the invoice anyway with a cc payment link, I might add the fees in as a labelled line item and hope they just pay rather than pushing back...?

My chances of repeat business from the clients-client who I'm invoicing are roughly zero anyway, so there's not much to lose being cheeky there!

Just be careful, there are rules in the UK that say businesses cannot pass on cc fees to customers.

www.gov.uk/government/news/card-surcharge-ban-means-no-more-nasty-surprises-for-shoppers

I would definitely go back to your terms and conditions, and check what you say about payment types, and payment time frames. If you don't have anything, you should consider adding it for future work.

I also agree with the pp who said its up to the commissioning company to pay you and recoup from their client. I don't think it would be unprofessional to write back to them and highlight that your contract is with them, and politely ask that they make payment as per the agreement you have with them. I appreciate you don't want to lose future business with them, but neither do you want them thinking you are a pushover when it comes to getting them to pay future invoices. Either way you probably need to tighten up your terms and conditions and your contract, to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Thanks @katmarie, that's interesting - but it's not a business/customer relationship here?

They are a big Fortune 500 company (not Barclays but similar) and they had an event which my usual clients (their PR company) hired me to - do my side-hustle at.

So if I'm making the event manager at Barclays' life easier by sending her a PayPal invoice instead of a BACS invoice, then it's not the same as a business passing on hidden card fees to customers - right?

Being a freelancer sucks sometimes! 😅

Actually I think you're right, the ban apparently doesn't include commercial credit or debit cards, so if they are paying with the company credit card, then yes, I think you can pass the fees on to them. I say go for it then, plus an admin fee to cover the time you've spent sorting it out hahaha.

Definitely add your fees onto the invoice, plus interest, if this is in your T&Cs.