FeaturesPayments and payouts
Payments infrastructure for a painting business.
Built-in checkout on the job card. Take a deposit the second a customer says yes, clear the balance in the driveway, and let the receipt, the invoice and the payout handle themselves.
Get paid
What the rails buy you
A checkout at the two moments a customer is most willing to pay — and no paperwork behind either one.
See it in action ›How it runs
- 01
Request
Deposit and balance are asked for at the moments the job earns them.
- 02
Capture
Card or Apple Pay on the driveway, no reader and no invoice to mail.
- 03
Reconcile
The payment posts against the job, not into an unlabeled deposit.
- 04
Payout
Money moves to your account and the 1% is taken from that transfer.
What you get
Higher collection rate
A one-tap checkout at booking and in the driveway removes the two places money usually stalls: the no-show and the unpaid balance.
Every way they want to pay
Card, Apple Pay, and Tap to Pay on iPhone against the back of a supported iPhone. No reader to buy, no dongle to lose, no trip back to the office.
Same-day, not same-month
Balances clear while you are still on site, so the eighteen days of float you used to finance for free stop existing.
Reconciliation that is already done
Charges, refunds and disputes post against the job they belong to — with the signed quote and change orders attached as evidence.
Security you did not have to build
Tokenized checkout on our PCI DSS-certified payments partner's infrastructure. Card numbers never live on your phone or in your files.
Priced on outcomes
1% of what we collect, taken from the payment as it settles. $0 monthly, the same 1% on every payment method, and our fee refunds with the customer's.
The long version+
Every painting shop already has a payments system. It is a checkbook, a text asking if they got the invoice, and eighteen days of float you financed for free. That is not a collection problem you fix with discipline — it is missing infrastructure. Money should be collectable at the exact moment the customer is most willing to pay, on whatever they have in their hand.
So PainterOS puts a real checkout at both of those moments. At booking: a small deposit that ends no-shows, taken online in one tap with a saved card or Apple Pay. At completion: Tap to Pay on iPhone holds the card against the back of a supported iPhone, or Apple Pay finishes in about a second, while the customer is still standing in a freshly painted room. Nothing to mail, no reader to buy, no follow-up to remember. The invoice closes itself and the receipt sends itself.
Underneath, it is boring on purpose. Card data never touches your phone's storage or ours — the checkout is tokenized and handled by our PCI DSS-certified payments partner. Every charge, refund and dispute posts against the job it belongs to, so reconciliation is a glance instead of a Sunday. Funds settle into your own bank account; we never hold your money as float.
And the pricing is the pitch. No subscription, no seat fee, no setup fee, no minimum, no charge in a slow month. We take 1% of what we actually collect for you, out of the payment as it settles — the same 1% on every payment method, because money on a job moves digitally through the checkout and that is what keeps the record clean. When you refund a customer, we refund our fee. Where surcharging is legal and the customer chooses credit, processing can be disclosed at checkout instead of eaten out of your margin — which is how $0 of processing comes out of your check on those payments.
In practice
One job's money, start to finish
Blue rows are automatic. Only two rows need you — both after the job is booked.
● You● PainterOS
Days from job complete to payment collected
Doing it by hand
With PainterOS
The easiest time to collect is while the customer is still admiring the room. Payout to your bank follows the partner's standard schedule.
Illustration of how the software works, not a promise of results.
Your side of the same moment
You read one line, not a thread.
You tap once in the driveway. The card clears, the invoice closes and the payout is scheduled before you're back in the truck.
Walk the whole job · 2 min ›How the money moves
Four steps, one of them ours
We build the invoice and the receipt. A licensed payments partner moves the funds, and they land in your bank account — not in a PainterOS balance you have to withdraw from.
- 01
You invoice from the job card
Deposit at booking or balance at completion. The invoice carries the line items the customer already approved, so nothing is retyped and nothing is disputed later.
- 02
The customer picks how to pay
Card, Apple Pay, Tap to Pay on iPhone, ACH, or a secure link. If they choose a credit card in a state where surcharging is allowed, the surcharge is shown before they confirm — itemized, not buried.
- 03
Our partner captures the money
Card data goes straight to a PCI DSS-certified payments partner and is tokenized there. It never touches your phone's storage or our servers, so a lost phone is not a breach.
- 04
It lands in your bank
The payment settles into the payment account in your own name, on the partner's standard payout schedule. Our 1% is taken as a platform fee out of the payment as it settles — you never get an invoice from us, and we never hold your balance.
What it costs
Every payment, itemized — including the part most software hides.
Two numbers leave a payment: our 1% and the partner's processing cost, billed to you at their cost with nothing added by us. Everything else is $0 — including the lines nobody likes quoting.
- PainterOS1.0% of the invoice
- Invoice principal only. Not on sales tax, not on permits, not on materials passed through at documented cost. Collected as a platform fee out of the payment when it settles, refunded if you refund the customer.
- Card processing (online)2.9% + 30¢
- Our partner's published online-card rate, with nothing added by us. In-person taps and bank payments are priced separately by the partner, and cross-border cards or currency conversion add the partner's published extra. Where surcharging is permitted and the customer chooses credit, this is disclosed to them at checkout instead of coming out of your check.
- Monthly software fee$0
- Every feature, every crew member, support included.
- Setup, onboarding, cancellation$0
- No contract and no minimum. Export your data whenever you want.
- Payouts to your bank$0
- Standard payouts are included. Your first payout takes longer than later ones while the partner finishes verifying you, then payouts run on the partner's rolling schedule. Instant payouts, when you choose them, carry the partner's published fee.
- Refunds$0
- Our 1% comes back with the refund. Processing on the original payment may not — that is the partner's policy, not a markup.
- Disputes and chargebacksAt partner cost
- The disputed amount and the partner's published dispute fee come out of your balance. We help you assemble the evidence: signed proposal, sign-off, photos, receipt. The card networks decide the outcome.
- Failed bank paymentsAt partner cost
- A returned or insufficient-funds bank payment carries the partner's published returned-payment fee, passed through without markup.
PainterOS is a digital-payments system: job payments are collected through PainterOS and PainterOS charges 1.0% of the invoice principal on every payment collected, regardless of payment method, taken as a platform fee out of the payment as it settles. Bookings require a $25 deposit to hold the appointment, credited to the customer's job. If you refund a customer, our fee on that amount is refunded to you. Card-processing, payout and dispute fees charged by our payments partner are separate from our fee and are passed through without markup. Processing figures on this page use a published 2.9% + 30¢ card rate for illustration; your approved rate depends on the partner's underwriting and your card mix. Payment processing, payout timing, underwriting, risk decisions and card-network fees are provided by our third-party payments partner under its terms, which you accept at signup. You open a payment account in your own business's name; PainterOS is the software platform on that account and is not the merchant of record on your sales. The partner verifies your identity, business and bank details before paying out and may request documents, delay a payout, hold a reserve, or decline or close an account under its own rules. Not every applicant is approved, some businesses it does not accept, and payments features require an approved payment account.
Pass-through, honestly
Nobody makes processing free. You choose who pays it.
A compliant credit-card surcharge moves your cost of acceptance onto the cardholder who chose to use credit. It is capped, it is disclosed before they confirm, it never applies to debit, and in three jurisdictions it is not allowed at all. Pick a state and see the arithmetic.
Never applied to debit and prepaid cards, whatever this is set to.
One credit-card payment surcharge on
- Invoice principal
- $6,800.00
- Surcharge shown to customer2.90% — bound by cost of acceptance
- + $197.50
- Customer pays
- $6,997.50
- Processing cost2.90% of this ticket at 2.9% + 30¢
- − $197.50
- Covered by the surcharge
- $197.50
- Processing left on you
- − $0.00
- PainterOS (1.0%)
- − $68.00
- In your bank
- $6,732.00
The cost did not disappear — the cardholder who chose credit paid it, which is exactly what the card rules permit and require you to disclose. Debit, prepaid and ACH are never surcharged. Figures are illustrations of how the software works, not a promise of results. What you experience depends on your prices, your market and how you use the product.
What we enforce for you
The compliance work is in the product, not in a PDF
Surcharging is legal in most of the country and gets merchants in trouble anyway — usually over a cap, a debit card, or a disclosure. Those are software problems, so we solved them in software.
PainterOS is software. Nothing on this site is legal, tax, accounting, payroll, insurance or licensing advice, and nothing here is an offer, a quote, or a guarantee of a specific outcome. Consult your own professionals.
- The surcharge applies to credit cards only — never to debit or prepaid, whatever the network.
- It is capped at your actual cost of acceptance, and separately at 3% (Visa) and 4% (Mastercard) — we apply whichever is lowest.
- Stricter state caps override the network caps automatically.
- It is disclosed before the customer confirms and itemized as its own line on the receipt.
- In prohibited jurisdictions the option does not exist in your account at all — there is no switch to get wrong.
- Before it goes live we submit the required 30 days' written notice to your acquirer through the partner on your behalf; the obligation to surcharge lawfully stays yours.
- You can turn it off for one customer, one job, or permanently.
Our payments partner
We run the software. A licensed partner runs the money.
We are not a bank and not a processor, and we never take custody of your funds. Card data is tokenized by a PCI DSS-certified payments partner at the moment of entry, which is why a lost crew phone is a hardware problem and not a breach.
- Who holds the card data
- A PCI DSS-certified payments partner. Tokenized at entry; we store a token, never a number.
- Who you contract with
- You accept the payments partner's own terms during onboarding and open a payment account in your business's name. PainterOS is the software platform on that account — we submit your application and collect our 1% as a platform fee, and we are not the merchant of record on your sales.
- Getting approved
- The partner verifies your identity, your business and your bank account before it will pay you out, and can request documents, hold funds, apply a reserve, or decline an account on its own risk rules. Not every applicant is approved, and some trades and products it will not accept at all.
- Whose bank account
- Yours. Payments settle to the account you connected — we never take custody of your funds or hold your balance as float.
- Who the customer sees
- You. Your business name on the checkout, the receipt and the cardholder's statement — you are the seller, you own the customer relationship, and you handle the work, the warranty and the refunds.
- If you leave
- Your customers, jobs, invoices and payment history export on the way out, and any pending payouts still settle to your bank. The payment account itself was opened through the PainterOS platform, so it does not move to another software platform with you — you connect a new one there. Nothing about leaving costs you a fee.
Tap to Pay on iPhone requires iPhone XS or later with a supported iOS version and an eligible payment account. Where a crew phone is not eligible, the same invoice can be paid by secure link, Apple Pay, or ACH.
When to switch it off
Three cases where absorbing the cost is the better business
We would rather tell you this than have you learn it from a customer.
Debit-heavy customers
Debit is never surcharged, so the cost is yours on those payments no matter what your setting says.
Commercial and repeat accounts
A property manager who books you monthly will notice a line item. Many painters absorb it there and surcharge only one-off residential work.
Bid-sensitive work
If you are the third bid on a $600 job, a $17 line at checkout is a reason to hesitate. Quote it in, or eat it.
Honest scope
What it will and won't do
What the software handles, and what still needs you in the room.
It does
It doesn't
Questions
Payments and payouts, answered plainly.
What painters actually ask on the first call.
What exactly is the 1% charged on?+
The invoice principal we collect for you — the labor and materials you billed. It is not charged on sales tax, and it is not charged on permits or materials passed through at documented cost. On a $6,800 repaint the fee is $68.00, taken out of the payment as it settles.
What if the customer wants to pay cash or check?+
Payments on a job are digital and run through the PainterOS checkout, and every one of them carries the same 1% — no method is cheaper or more expensive. One path for the money is what keeps the job record, the invoice and your books clean. It is set at booking: the homeowner puts down a $25 deposit to hold the appointment, credited to their job.
How fast do I get paid?+
Payout timing follows our payments partner's schedule and your verification status. Funds move to your own bank account — we never hold your money as a float.
What happens on a refund?+
We return our 1% on the refunded amount. We do not keep a fee on money you gave back.
Is my customer's card data safe on my phone?+
Card details are tokenized at checkout and handled by our payments partner's PCI-compliant infrastructure. Nothing sensitive is stored on your phone or in your PainterOS records — you see the last four digits and the brand, the same as any receipt.
What if a customer disputes a charge?+
The dispute lands on the job card with the accepted quote, signed change orders, timestamps and the receipt already attached, so responding is a review-and-submit instead of a scavenger hunt. We do not charge extra to handle it, and our 1% comes back if the money does.
Do I need a merchant account or a card reader?+
No separate application to chase. Onboarding opens a payment account in your own business's name inside PainterOS — identity, business and bank verification handled by our payments partner, which has to clear before it pays you out — and the only hardware is the phone in your pocket — Tap to Pay on iPhone uses the built-in reader on iPhone XS or later. On other phones, send the customer a secure payment link instead.
Does PainterOS mark up card processing?+
No. Card processing is billed at our payments partner's cost and PainterOS takes no share of it. Our fee is a separate 1% of the invoice principal, taken out of the payment when it settles.
How does the 0% pass-through work?+
Where the law and card rules allow it, a credit-card surcharge discloses your cost of acceptance to the cardholder at checkout instead of taking it out of your payment. It is capped at your actual cost and at 3% (Visa) or 4% (Mastercard), whichever is lower, never applies to debit or prepaid cards, and is prohibited in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico. The cost does not disappear — it moves to the cardholder who chose credit.
No monthly fee
Set up your pricing. See your first quote today.
You don't pay a cent until a customer pays you.
Get startedNo credit card. Keep your own number. Nothing new to learn.