HOA Dues Payment Processing: ACH and Card Fees, and Who Pays Them

Last verified: October 6, 2026 · See updates

On a $401.67 monthly dues payment, taking the money as a bank debit costs between $0.60 and $7.23, depending on the platform. The same payment by card costs $11.95 to $14.56. Six of the nine platforms we checked publish no payment fee at all. This page gives every fee we could read at the vendor’s own page on October 6, 2026, who the vendor says pays it, and what the card networks and the states allow your board to charge an owner.

Three things we found

1. Only three of nine platforms say who pays the fee. PayHOA, KindHOA and Condo Control publish a who-pays statement. RunHOA, TownSq, HOA Start, Buildium, Zego and ClickPay publish none, and four of those publish no payment fee figure either.
2. The fee decision can reverse the software decision. For the 24-unit association below, PayHOA costs $788.66 a year less than KindHOA’s free tier if the association absorbs the fees, and $588.00 a year more if it passes them to owners. Same two platforms, same association, opposite answers. The worked example has the arithmetic.
3. The claim that federal law bans surcharging debit cards is wrong, and it is the rule most often quoted at boards. The Durbin Amendment, 15 U.S.C. sec. 1693o-2, does not contain the word “surcharge”. Its subsection (b)(2) is headed “Limitation on restrictions on offering discounts for use of a form of payment” and constrains card networks, not merchants. The debit surcharge ban is a Visa and Mastercard rule. See what the card networks require.

What each platform publishes, read October 6, 2026

Every figure in this table was read at the vendor’s own page on October 6, 2026. “Platform fee” means a charge the software company adds on top of the card processor’s own fee. A blank is not a free service: it means the vendor publishes nothing a board can see without asking for a quote.

Sources, each read October 6, 2026: payhoa.com/pricing and its help center article on payment fees; kindhoa.com/pricing; buildium.com/pricing-options; Condo Control’s Embedded Payments FAQ at support.condocontrol.com; runhoa.com/pricing; townsq.io/pricing; hoastart.com/pricing; gozego.com; site.clickpay.com; stripe.com/pricing.

What one payment costs, by dues amount

A flat fee and a percentage fee cross over at one dues figure, and that figure decides which platform is cheaper for your association. This table is our arithmetic on the published rates above, not a vendor quote.

Who absorbs the fee, and the four models in use

Three platforms publish a position. The other six leave it to a sales conversation, which means the board cannot model the cost before the demo.

• The resident always pays. Condo Control: “Processing fees are paid by the resident making the payment.” The board does not choose. Condo Control also states that if a payment fails it is not processed and no fees are applied, and that the corporation carries dispute fees of about $15 each.
• The board chooses, two ways. PayHOA: “You have the option to absorb these fees or charge your homeowners a convenience and service fee to offset those costs.”
• The board chooses, four ways. KindHOA splits the processor’s fee from its own platform fee and lets the board route each separately: the association absorbs everything; the association passes Stripe’s fee and absorbs the platform fee; the association passes everything and keeps 100% of collected dues; or card fees go to the resident while the association covers bank debits.
• No published position. Buildium, RunHOA, TownSq, HOA Start, Zego and ClickPay. Put the question in writing before you commit, and ask for the answer in writing.

Worked example: one 24-unit association, three fee policies

The same association the annual budget workbook and the chart of accounts ship with: 24 units, average dues of $401.67 a unit a month, which is $115,680.96 a year across 288 monthly payments. Assume every owner pays by bank debit, the cheapest method on every platform. Only the two platforms that publish both a subscription price and a bank debit fee can be modeled this way.

What the card networks require if you charge the fee to an owner

Both networks publish merchant surcharging rules on their own sites. These rules bind the business that accepts the card, through its acquiring bank, whatever your state law says.

Sources, read October 6, 2026: Visa’s U.S. Merchant Surcharge Q&A, version 02152024, and its Merchant Surcharging Considerations and Requirements, version 08142023; Mastercard’s Merchant surcharge rules page and its Merchant Surcharge FAQ dated May 2019.

What the states say, and the question none of them answers

Ten states’ positions are below, read at the state’s own code or agency site on October 6, 2026. Read the caveat under the table before you act on any row.

Taking bank debits: authorization, returns and the rulebook you cannot read

A bank debit is cheaper than a card on every platform above, so most boards want owners on it. The rules that govern it come from Nacha, which administers the ACH network. The full Nacha Operating Rules are sold, not published: the 2026 Rules and Guidelines bundle costs $135 for members and $198 for non-members, and we did not buy it. Everything below comes from what Nacha publishes free.

• You need the owner’s authorization, and Nacha does not dictate its wording. Nacha’s own guidance states that “the Rules do not require that the authorization contain specific language or be in any particular format”, and lists what a sound authorization includes: express authorizing language, the amount, the date or frequency, the account and routing number, and revocation language for recurring payments.
• Keep the authorization for two years after it ends. Nacha’s guidance gives two years from the termination or revocation of the authorization, citing Article II, subsection 2.3.2.7. If your platform holds the authorizations, ask how you get copies when you change platforms.
• An online authorization has to be authenticated. For a web-initiated debit, the originator warrants the use of commercially reasonable methods to verify the payer’s identity.
• A failed debit may be retried twice, not endlessly. Nacha’s published minor rules topics limit reinitiation to two times.
• Return rates are watched. Nacha publishes thresholds of 0.5% for unauthorized returns, 3.0% administrative and 15.0% overall. An association with many failing debits can become a problem for its own processor.
• What we could not verify. No free Nacha page we found says whether, or how much, an association may charge an owner for a returned payment. That charge is most likely set by your state’s law and your governing documents, and we did not verify that either. The delinquent dues collection workflow covers what a board may charge for late payment under its documents.

Twelve questions to put to a platform in writing

Every one of these has cost a board money somewhere in the figures above. Ask them before the contract, and ask for answers in writing so the board can compare them later.

1. What is the fee for one incoming bank debit, and is it flat or a percentage? If it is a percentage, is there a cap?
2. What is the card fee, and does it have a fixed amount on top of the percentage?
3. Do you add a platform fee of your own on top of the processor’s fee? Show both lines separately.
4. Can the board choose who pays each fee, and can it choose differently for cards and bank debits?
5. Who is the merchant of record for an owner’s payment: your company, the processor, or our association?
6. If we pass a fee to owners, which of your clients’ states have you had to turn that off in, and why?
7. What happens when a debit fails? Is a fee charged, to whom, and how many times do you retry?
8. Who pays a card dispute fee, and how much is it?
9. Does the transaction fee change with the subscription tier? Give the figure for each tier.
10. Is there a set-up charge per bank account, and how many accounts does our plan include?
11. Where are the owners’ payment authorizations held, and how do we get copies if we leave?
12. What is the all-in annual cost for our unit count at our dues amount, with your own arithmetic shown?

Your next step

Work your own number before you talk to anyone. Take your unit count, your average monthly dues, and the share of owners you expect to pay electronically, and run them through the two crossovers above: the flat fee beats the percentage above a payment of $306.25, and a higher subscription tier only pays for itself at the payment volume stated. Then decide the who-pays policy as a board, in a motion, before you choose the platform, because that decision changes which platform is cheaper.

From here: the HOA software pricing page has the subscription side of all of these platforms with its own dated sources, the software comparison scores them on more than price, the software directory lists every vendor we have verified, and the dues tracker is free if the answer is that you do not need a platform yet.