How to Take Card Payments as a Mobile Detailer (and What It Really Costs)

The job's done. The customer walks around the car, says it looks better than when they bought it, and then: "Do you take cards?" If the honest answer is "Venmo me?" or "I'll send you an invoice tonight", you've just turned a finished job into a receivable. Some of those get paid in five minutes. Some take three weeks and two reminders.

Taking card payments as a mobile detailer used to mean a card reader, a separate app and a separate account. Here's how Brilla does it without any hardware, and exactly what it costs, because the fee is the part most payment pitches get vague about.

How detailers get paid today

• Cash. Still common, no fee, but it's a deposit run and a bookkeeping gap.
• Venmo, Zelle, Cash App. Fast, but it's not connected to the job or the invoice, and business use of personal accounts has its own rules.
• A card reader with a separate app. Works, but now the payment lives in one system and the job in another, and you're matching them up at the end of the month.
• An invoice by email, paid later. Convenient for the customer, slow for you.

Collect payment: a QR code instead of a card reader

On any invoice in Brilla, tap Collect payment. Your phone shows a full-screen "Amount Due" with a QR code. The customer points their own phone's camera at it and pays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card on their own screen. Nobody hands a card to anyone. Brilla checks for the payment every few seconds, and when it lands, your screen switches to "Payment Received" with the amount. The invoice is marked paid on its own.

If they'd rather pay cash, there's a "Paid with Cash" button on the same screen. It asks you to confirm the amount first, so a stray tap in a wet glove doesn't mark a $300 invoice paid. Other methods (Zelle, Venmo, check, whatever you take) can be recorded against the job from your own list of payment methods, which you can edit.

The same card payment link also goes out with emailed invoices, so customers who weren't home when you finished can pay from the email. Pair that with unpaid invoice reminders and the late-payer problem mostly goes away.

The fee, stated plainly

Card payments through Brilla are processed by Whop, into your own Whop account. Each card payment costs 3.0% + $0.30, taken from the payment. That's two parts:

• Whop's card fee: 2.7% + $0.30.
• Brilla's fee: 0.3%.

The customer pays the invoice total, nothing extra. You receive the total minus the fee. Here's what that looks like on real job sizes:

One more cost to know about: when you move money from your Whop balance to your bank, Whop's own payout fees apply. Those are Whop's, not Brilla's, and they depend on how you withdraw, so check them in your Whop account.

Getting paid before you pack up

The best time to collect is during the walk-around, while the customer is standing next to the car they're happy with. A few habits that help:

• Send or open the invoice before you start packing towels, so the total is ready when they walk out.
• Say the number out loud: "It came to $265 with the engine bay. You can scan this to pay." Then hold up the QR code.
• If the customer isn't home (common for mobile jobs at offices or apartments), email the invoice before you leave the lot and let the reminders do the chasing.
• Record cash right away, on the spot, instead of from memory that evening.

Should you pass the fee on?

Most detailers don't add a card surcharge line, and it's simpler not to (surcharge rules vary by state, too). The cleaner way is to build card fees into your prices the way you build in product and drive time. If you price off real costs, as in our pricing framework, 3% is just another line in the cost of a job.

What Brilla doesn't do for payments (yet)

To be straight about it: there's no physical card reader, no Tap to Pay on your phone, and no bank (ACH) payments. The QR code covers the in-person case for nearly every customer with a smartphone, but if you need a reader for a fleet account or a customer without a phone, that's a real gap. You can see what we're working on at the Brilla roadmap.

If you're running a mobile detailing business, the habit that works best is Collect payment in the driveway before you pack up. You leave every job paid in full. (Deposits at booking, to hold the slot up front, are on the roadmap.)