1 in 5 Bank Transfers Arrive More Than a Week After the Visit

1 in 5 bank transfer payments for a pet visit arrive more than a week after the visit. We measured it across paid Petboost visits, from the moment the visit ended to the moment the money was in. A card saved on file, charged at the end, came in at a median of 48 minutes.

So how your customer pays decides when you see the money. More than almost anything else you do once the dog has gone home.

How long each payment method takes

Here's the median wait after the visit for the four methods most businesses lean on.

And all six, side by side:

The card reader is the only method where every payment was in within a day. Which makes sense, because the customer is standing at the counter when it happens.

Cash and other EFTPOS terminals look quick on the median, and mostly they are. But the time we see for those is when someone recorded the payment in Petboost, and the tail is long: 8% of cash payments and 7% of other-terminal payments were recorded more than a week after the visit. Some of that is a customer who paid later. Some of it is a payment taken on Tuesday and written down on Friday.

It holds business by business too. The typical business waits about 5 days on its own bank transfers. On a saved card, 85% of businesses are typically paid within 2 hours of the visit.

Why bank transfers drag

A bank transfer only happens when the customer does something. They get the invoice, mean to pay it, open their banking app, find your BSB and account number, type a reference and send it. Any one of those steps can wait until the weekend, and plenty do.

Then someone on your side has to match it up. The transfer lands as a line on your bank statement with whatever reference the customer typed. Could be the dog's name, could be their surname, could be blank. Until somebody ticks it off against the right booking, the visit still shows as unpaid, and that lag is part of the wait in the table.

Most of these customers do pay. Nobody is dodging you. It just takes a while, and you carry the gap while it does.

What a week's gap does to cash flow

A small pet business pays out before it gets paid. Wages go out on payday whatever the bank balance says. Rent is due on the first. Shampoo, food, poo bags and fuel for the van are bought before the visits they get used on.

Say a quarter of your regulars pay by transfer. On these numbers, one in five of their payments is still sitting in someone else's account a week after you did the work, and you're waiting days on the rest. For a business with one or two staff that can decide whether this week's wages come out of takings or out of the overdraft.

It costs time as well. Chasing a transfer is a text, then another text, then a slightly awkward chat at the next drop-off.

Our interest, plainly

We build Petboost, and its payments run on Stripe. Petboost earns a platform fee on card payments taken through it, so we would rather you took cards through us. Read the rest with that in mind. For what it's worth, 76% of paid visits on Petboost already settle through Stripe, and the table above is the reason we keep pushing that number up.

Card on file and auto-pay: paid within the hour

The quickest method is the one where the customer does nothing at the end. Their card is saved when they book, the visit finishes, and the invoice charges itself.

In Petboost that's two switches under Automatic Actions. Auto-finalise appointments builds the final invoice 30 minutes after the scheduled end time. Auto-pay invoices then charges the card on file as soon as the invoice is finalised, and retries if the card declines. Both can be set per service as well as for the whole business, so if one service isn't charging, check that service's Automatic Actions tab.

That's how card on file gets to 92% paid within a day, with only 1% still out after a week.

Moving regulars onto a saved card is the slow part. Most will do it if you ask once and tell them why. We wrote up how to switch clients to automatic payments, including what to say.

Deposits and pre-auth for the bookings that don't show

A slow payment is one cash-flow problem. A no-show is the other one, where the table, pen or van space sits empty and nothing comes in at all.

A deposit takes part of the price when the customer books. You can set it per service, so a week of boarding can carry one while a nail trim doesn't.

Pre-hold funds works differently. It places a hold for the appointment amount on the saved card 72 hours before the service without charging it, so you find out the card is good before the day rather than after it. It's on Pricing & Payments, and per service on the service's own Pricing & Payments tab. There's more in our guide to booking deposits and in reducing no-shows.

The card reader at the counter

Not everyone wants a card saved, and drop-off at a daycare or a boarding kennel is a natural moment to pay. Petboost runs the Stripe Reader S700 at the counter. The payment lands against the appointment as it's taken, so there's no matching up later, and that's why the reader showed 100% paid within a day.

If you already use a Square, Zeller or Tyro terminal, it'll keep working and you can record those payments in Petboost as another terminal. You just do the matching yourself, and the 7% recorded more than a week out is what that looks like across the board.

Payment links for customers without a saved card

For the customer who won't save a card and isn't at the counter, a payment link is the next best thing. Petboost texts a secure Stripe link, they pay on their phone, and the appointment is marked paid when the money comes in. Median wait: 3.6 hours, against 28.5 hours for a transfer. Payment links are on the Business Pro, Business Flex and Business Max plans.

On a big bill, like a fortnight of boarding over the school holidays, you can switch on Afterpay and Zip for payment links so the customer can spread it out while you're paid upfront. They're off by default. Turn them on under Payment links in your payment settings, then switch them on in your Stripe Dashboard too. Afterpay covers links up to $4,000, and a larger link offers Zip and card.

From Stripe to your bank and into Xero

Being paid in Petboost and having the money in your account aren't the same moment. Stripe pays out on the schedule you choose, and daily automatic payouts are the one to pick for cash flow. On a daily schedule, a payment taken on Monday before Stripe's cutoff typically reaches your bank on Wednesday.

If you use Xero, add Stripe as a bank feed. Each Stripe payment then arrives in Xero on its own instead of as one lump deposit you have to pull apart, and in Petboost it's already sitting against its booking.

The surcharge ban and your prices

Since 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can't add a card surcharge to the bill, American Express included. If you used to pass the card fee on, that fee now comes out of your margin unless it's in the price. That pushes some businesses back towards bank transfers to save the fee, and the table above shows what that does to how fast you're paid.

The better move is to build the fee into your prices once. In Petboost, open Services, then Pricing Assistant, then Build Fees Into Pricing. It shows the before and after on every service and applies the lot in one go. The surcharge ban guide walks through it.

How we measured this

We took paid Petboost visits and measured the time from the end of each visit to the moment its payment was recorded. For card on file, the card reader and payment links, that's when the payment went through. For cash, bank transfer and other terminals, it's when someone marked the visit paid in Petboost. We measured from the visit, not from an invoice due date. Only times and percentages are published.

If you want to see how card on file, deposits, the reader and payment links fit together, start on Payments in Petboost.