We had to pick a payment processor for ToolbagCRM. That sounds simple until you actually look at the options. Stripe, Square, QuickBooks Payments, PayPal, four big players, all with different fee structures, different customer experiences, and different integration stories.
Here's what we learned, both from evaluating them for our product and from watching how contractors actually use them.
Stripe
Stripe is the developer-first processor. If your CRM, booking page, or accounting tool takes payments, there's a decent chance Stripe is running underneath. We ended up choosing it for ToolbagCRM, and here's why.
The customer-facing experience is clean. A payment screen, a polite email receipt, ACH bank transfer support. On a big-ticket job, ACH is the difference between a few cents on the dollar and a few dollars total. The customer never downloads an app or logs into anything. They click a link, they pay, done.
