Collect payments directly in PandaDoc without the fee

You've done the hard part. You built the proposal, sent the document, and got the signature. Then comes the part nobody loves: figuring out how to actually collect the money.

For most small business owners using PandaDoc, that meant going somewhere else. You set up a Stripe account, linked it to PandaDoc, and paid 2.9% + $0.15 every time a client ran a card. And if you hadn't gone through that setup yet, collecting payment through PandaDoc wasn't really an option. So you fell back on invoices, bank transfers you tracked by hand, or payment links that had nothing to do with the document your client just signed.

That gap is now closed. Pay by Bank lets your clients pay you directly from their bank account, right inside your PandaDoc document, with no external account to set up and a fee of 1.5% per transaction.

What Pay by Bank is and how it works

Pay by Bank is an ACH payment option built into PandaDoc. When you add it to a document, your client sees a bank payment option at the point of signing. They authorize their bank through Plaid, a secure and widely used bank connection service, and the payment starts without them ever leaving the document.

You don't need to create a Plaid account or a separate gateway. Everything happens inside PandaDoc. Once the payment is authorized, funds settle to your account within 2–4 business days, which is standard for ACH bank transfers.

How the fee math actually plays out

The rate difference between bank payments and card payments isn't subtle once you run the numbers.

Pay by Bank charges 1.5% per transaction, with no cap. Card processing through Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.15 per transaction.

On a $1,000 project, that's $15.00 with Pay by Bank versus $29.15 with a card, a difference of $14.15 on a single transaction. On a $5,000 contract, you pay $75.00 with Pay by Bank versus $145.15 with a card, a difference of $70.15.

That difference compounds across every deal you close. If you send five or ten proposals a month, the annual savings are real money, not rounding errors.

Pay by Bank: 1.5%, no cap. Cards: 2.9% + $0.15 per transaction. That's a meaningful difference on every deal you close.

For clients who can pay by bank transfer, which is most B2B clients, there's no reason to absorb card fees when a lower-cost option sits right there in the same document.

Setup lives entirely inside PandaDoc

There's no external account to create, no developer setup, and no third-party dashboard to manage. You enable Pay by Bank from Settings, then Integrations, or directly when you set up payment on a template.

Once it's enabled, you can add Pay by Bank as a payment option to any document. Your client handles everything on their end through Plaid when they're ready to pay. They connect their bank, authorize the payment, and you get notified when it goes through.

If you've been avoiding PandaDoc Payments because the Stripe setup felt like one more thing to figure out, Pay by Bank removes that obstacle.

Built for founders and small agency owners

Pay by Bank is designed for the way small businesses actually operate. You send proposals, statements of work, and service agreements, documents where getting paid is the logical next step after a signature.

The manual workaround most small business owners fall back on after a document is signed adds steps for you and creates a disconnected experience for your client. A separate invoice, a payment link in an email, or a Venmo request all pull your client out of the document. Pay by Bank makes the payment a natural part of the document itself, so the person who just signed doesn't have to go anywhere else to finish the transaction.

It also matters that setup requires no prior gateway account. If you're on a Free or Starter plan and you've never set up PandaDoc Payments, Pay by Bank is the fastest path from signed document to collected payment.

Send, sign, and get paid in one place

PandaDoc has always been the place where you create and send documents. Pay by Bank extends that into the moment that matters most for your business: getting paid.

You don't need a second tool, a separate account, or a process that falls apart the moment a client misses an invoice email. The signature and the payment happen in the same document, with the same experience your client already knows.

If you're a US-based Free or Starter user, you can enable Pay by Bank in your account today. Pay by Bank is available to US-based Free and Starter plan users. ACH payments settle in 2–4 business days. The Pay by Bank fee is 1.5% per transaction.