Coaches Vexed by Credit Card Fees Ponder ACH Option to Lower Expenses

Feb 4, 2025 | News

By David Gould, Staff Editor                 

Economists who study cost-sensitivity in markets of all kinds report that gasoline purchases trigger the most stress for consumers because the price to be paid rises and rises, real-time, while the consumer stares at the pump. For merchants like golf instructors, credit card fees can also trigger considerable vexation. That’s especially true when a large dollar amount is being processed, because the cost to get that money in goes way up, even though the card company is providing the same service it provides when the transaction amount is small.

Switching to payment via an ACH transaction can be a low-cost substitute for swiping the credit card, something coaches have been noticing. Proponent Group’s partner company in this service area is Cardconnect and our point person there for 10-plus years has been the highly informed Niles Crum. In a recent discussion of ACH payments, Crum acknowledged their rising popularity with B2C businesses.

“We set merchants up for payment by ACH very regularly,” Crum says. “We do a hosted payment page online that lets the merchant offer customers several simple ways to pay via ACH.” This includes a “buy now, pay now” button the golfer can click and a pre-built text that the coach can send with a link to the hosted payment page. “We also have a form the instructor can send and their student can fill out, saying they give the coach the right to hit that golfer’s bank account for their lesson fee.”

Crum’s firm charges 35 cents to process one of these transactions, whether the payment amount is “$50 or $5,000.”

In his view, customers who get asked to pay via ACH aren’t likely to just shrug it off, although they will feel more accepting than if they’re stuck with a surcharge to cover the credit card fee.

“When they pay with their card, they get points or they get cash back,” he says, “and that’s got some real value they can appreciate—and they won’t get that when they pay by ACH. Also, they can pay $600 for four golf lessons by credit card even if their bank account balance is less than $600 at that moment, which is not the case with an ACH payment.” A third sticking point, according to Crum, is the threat of fraud. There’s basically zero responsibility and zero disruption when fraudulent charges hit a credit card. When they hit a bank account (through the ACH process), multiple checks or debits that are in process can be fouled up by an insufficient bank balance no one saw coming.

A quick but realistic basis for evaluating your options goes like this: Payment by check is mildly annoying to the student and the coach alike. Payment by ACH is a convenience for the coach and a mild (or not-so-mild) inconvenience for the student. Payment by credit card is a mild annoyance for the coach and a convenience for the student—although this latter statement gets turned around if the coach surcharges the student to cover the card processing fee.

Best practice, in his view, is to take credit card processing fees and lump them with your costs for rent, range balls, website hosting and whatever else and build it all into your rack rate. Or, in cases where the purchase price is way above a normal one-hour lesson fee, ask the student to write a check for it.