What Your Association Is Charged: Platform and Processing Fees
Two Different Fees
Once your association collects assessments online, two separate fees are involved. They're easy to confuse, so it's worth being precise:
- The platform fee is Nestingbird's. It's a small percentage of each payment your owners make, and it's how the free plan stays free.
- The processing fee is Stripe's. Stripe is the payment processor that actually moves the money, and it charges for every card or bank transfer it handles. Nestingbird doesn't set this rate and doesn't keep any of it.
Both are charged on payments collected through Nestingbird. If an owner pays you by check, ACH bank transfer, or Zelle directly, no fee of either kind applies to that payment.
The Platform Fee
The platform fee is a percentage of each owner payment, and it's capped so a large assessment never produces a large fee. The rate depends on your plan and on how the owner paid:
- Community (free plan) — 1.20% per card payment, 1.00% per bank payment, capped at $8 per transaction.
- Autopilot (paid plan) — 1.00% per card payment, 0.80% per bank payment, capped at $5 per transaction.
Two practical consequences. First, the cap matters more than the rate for most associations: on a $600 monthly assessment paid by card, a Community building pays the $8 cap rather than 1.20%. Second, bank payments are cheaper than card payments at every tier — if you want to hold fees down, encourage owners to pay by bank account. You can also turn card payments off entirely under Settings → Invoicing → Payment Information, leaving bank transfer as the only online option.
Associations on one of our older, retired plans are exempt from the platform fee entirely and keep their original pricing.
The Stripe Processing Fee
Stripe charges a processing fee on every online payment it handles. Someone has to cover it — either the owner making the payment, or the association.
By default, the building covers it. Owners are charged their assessment and nothing else, and the processing fee is added to your association's monthly Nestingbird bill instead.
This is deliberate. The money is the same either way, but who sees it itemised is not. A processing fee broken out on a dues invoice reads to an owner like a new charge and generates complaints the board can't do anything about. Rolled into the association's own bill, it's one line the board reviews alongside everything else.
You can change this. Go to Settings → Invoicing → Payment Information and look for the Processing Fees section — the Building covers processing fees checkbox controls it. Turn it off and the fee is added on top of what each owner pays instead. Associations set up before this became the default keep whatever setting they already had; we don't change what owners are charged without the board deciding to.
Where the Fees Appear on Your Bill
Your association's monthly Nestingbird charge is itemised, so you can see exactly what each part is. Go to Settings → Billing and look at your charge history — each charge breaks out as:
- Nestingbird subscription — your plan, if you're on a paid one.
- Nestingbird platform fees — the platform fee accrued on the owner payments collected that month.
- Stripe processing fees (covered by the building) — the Stripe fees your association absorbed, if that setting is on.
The same breakdown appears on the receipt email, so you don't have to log in to see what a charge was for. Fees accrue as payments come in over the month and are billed together at the end of it, rather than as dozens of tiny charges.
What Owners See
With the default setting, an owner's invoice shows their assessment and nothing else — no platform fee, no processing fee. Neither fee is ever charged directly to an owner's card by Nestingbird; both are settled between Stripe, your association, and us.
Lowering What You Pay
- Encourage bank payments over cards — a lower platform fee rate and a much lower Stripe processing fee.
- Publish your ACH and Zelle details — payments made directly to your association's bank account carry no fees at all. Set them under Settings → Invoicing → Payment Information, and they'll appear on every invoice email.
- Upgrade to Autopilot — lower rates and a lower cap on every transaction, which for a building of any size often offsets a meaningful share of the subscription.