Guides · In-person payments · Facts checked 2026-09-05
How to take card payments in person without a card reader
A QR code on your phone or a printed sign. The customer scans, pays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card, and the money goes to your own account. No hardware, no monthly fee.
A card reader is a small piece of hardware that costs money, needs charging, pairs over Bluetooth when it feels like it, and lives in the truck when you need it in the customer's kitchen. For a tradesperson finishing a job in a driveway, or a stall at a Saturday market, the reader is the thing that goes wrong. There is a simpler way to take a card in person, and it uses the phone the customer is already holding.
How QR code payment works
- You type the amount into your phone (or print a sign with your QR code on it for a stall).
- The customer scans the code with their camera. No app to install on their side.
- They see your business name and the amount, and pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card number — the same wallet they use at the coffee shop.
- The money settles into your own Stripe account and pays out to your bank on Stripe's normal schedule. It never sits with us.
- You get a notification on your phone the moment it clears, and the sale is recorded on the customer's record.
In Pocket Business this is the take-a-payment screen — the same free app that writes your invoices. Cash and check sales ring up on the same till, free, with no card involved at all.
What it costs, honestly
Two fees, both only when a card is used. Stripe, the card processor, charges its standard card rate — 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction in the US as of the date at the top of this page (check stripe.com/pricing). Pocket Business keeps 0.5% of the payment, capped at $25 per payment. There is no monthly charge for taking payments and no hardware to buy. On a $120 job that is $3.78 to Stripe and 60¢ to us; on a $3 sale it is 39¢ to Stripe and about a cent and a half to us.
That 30¢ is the part that hurts on small sales, and no app changes it — it is the processor's fixed fee. If you sell $3 items, ring up the whole basket as one sale rather than one card tap per item. Five $3 items as one $15 sale costs 74¢ in fees; as five separate taps it costs $1.94.
QR code vs buying a card reader
| QR code (Pocket Business) | A card reader | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | None — your phone | $0–$199 depending on the brand, plus batteries and a case |
| Monthly fee | $0 | $0 on most starter plans; some POS suites charge $39+/mo |
| Customer needs | A phone with a camera | Their physical card or wallet |
| Works when | Anywhere with a signal — theirs or yours | Reader charged, paired and in your pocket |
| Best for | Trades on site, stalls, pop-ups, anyone under a few hundred transactions a month | High-volume counters where every second at checkout matters |
| Tap-to-pay on your own phone | Not needed — they pay on theirs | Some providers offer it free on newer phones; it replaces the reader, not the account |
Reader prices and plan fees read from vendor pages on the date at the top; check the current page before you buy anything.
Where a reader still wins: a busy counter with a line. Tapping a card on a reader is two seconds; scanning a code and confirming a wallet payment is closer to ten. If you take two hundred card payments a day, those seconds add up and a reader is worth it. If you take twenty a week on a job site, it is not.
Customer-enters-the-amount, for a printed sign
For a market stall you can print one QR code and leave it on the table. The customer scans it, types what they owe, and pays. That is faster when you have a queue and your prices are on a board — but it means trusting the customer to type the right number, so for anything above pocket-money amounts, name the price on your own phone and show them the code for that exact sale. Pocket Business does both; the vendor-names-the-price mode is the default.
What the customer sees
Your business name, the amount, and a pay button that opens their wallet. Underneath it, a receipt they can save. It is your name on the page, not the processor's, which matters more than it sounds: a customer paying a stranger by phone wants to see who they are paying.
Setting it up
- Make a free account and connect your own Stripe account from Settings → Payments. Stripe asks for your legal name, tax ID and a bank account — the same as any way of taking cards, and it is Stripe asking, not us. Most people finish it in about ten minutes.
- Turn on in-person card payments on the same screen. Your QR code is ready immediately, on screen or as a printable page.
- Ring up the first sale. Cash sales work from the start, before Stripe is connected, so you can use the till on day one and add cards when Stripe clears you.
Common questions
Does the customer need to download an app?
No. They scan the code with their phone's camera, and it opens a normal web page. Apple Pay and Google Pay are built into the phone; a card number can be typed if they prefer.
Where does the money go?
Into your own Stripe account, which pays out to your bank on Stripe's normal schedule — typically two business days in the US for an established account, longer for a brand-new one. Pocket Business never holds it.
Can I add a card surcharge?
You can turn on a card surcharge in Business Profile, disclosed to the customer before they pay. It is off by default, because surcharging is restricted or capped in some US states — check your state's rule before you switch it on.
What about cash?
Cash and check sales ring up on the same till with no fee at all, and they work before Stripe is connected. The card side is the only part that needs Stripe.