The modern consumer, as ServiceTitan's Chris Hunter and Angie Snow note, wants options. What those options look like is shifting fast.
In 2015-16, Visa data shows, 59% of home service spending was paid by check. By 2024-25, that had fallen to 36%. Credit card payments, meanwhile, climbed from 27% of jobs to 37% over the same period. The trends point in one direction: Credit cards will soon be the dominant payment method in home services, and contractors who aren't ready for that shift will feel it.
The data behind that shift is striking. Visa figures show that 94% of home service customers own a credit card, and 90% of those cardholders use theirs regularly. Home service customers also put a higher share of their total spending on cards, 48%, than the broader population at 42%. According to Synchrony, which counts one in four Americans among its credit card customers, 81% of major purchase shoppers use credit cards to earn rewards, 75% for purchase protection, and 72% to take advantage of unique benefits.
"Checks are a hindrance to companies now, where before we expected the majority of our payments to be made by checks," Snow says. "We need solutions to make it easier for technicians to accept credit card payments."
ServiceTitan's best practice guidance addresses the fee question directly. Snow recommends that contractors build financing and credit card processing fees into flat-rate pricing rather than listing them as surcharges on the invoice, because a surcharge could discourage customers from using the payment method most convenient for them. Contractors can then offer a cash or bank payment discount, framing it as a benefit rather than a penalty.
How contractors collect that payment has expanded considerably. Tap to Pay turns a technician's mobile device into a card reader — no additional hardware needed, supporting physical cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay. It's the most secure way to capture card information in the field, because the card never has to be handed over or manually keyed in, and it shifts transactions to the "card-present" category that carries lower processing costs.
Text-to-pay, processed through payment partners TSYS or Adyen, lets customers settle a deposit or balance through a link in an automated text, useful when the technician has left the job or the customer prefers to pay later on their own device.
Stored payment puts a card or bank account on file for current and future use, and ServiceTitan's Membership Renewal Protection automatically updates outdated cards tied to memberships so billing doesn't lapse.
Two newer options extend the reach further. Pay by Bank gives customers an instant, direct connection to their bank account — the customer enters their bank login credentials, and the system automatically connects the account and confirms the available balance before processing the payment. Unlike traditional ACH bank transfers, which require manually entering routing and account numbers and can result in returns if funds aren't available, Pay by Bank verifies in real time. It's also a cost-efficient option for contractors: Because it bypasses card networks entirely, processing fees are lower.
Contractors can offer a modest discount to customers who choose Pay by Bank or ACH, which ServiceTitan's fintech team suggests framing as a customer benefit rather than a credit card penalty.
"The conversation changes between the tech and the consumer," says Ammar Ahmed, ServiceTitan's payments lead. "'Oh, you're giving me a discount' versus, 'Oh, you're penalizing me for using a credit card.'"
Online payment is the option growing fastest among younger customers. Currently, 16% of home service payments are made online overall. Among Generation Z customers ages 18 to 29, that figure jumps to 27%. Snow sees a broader shift coming.
"My generation, we were a little hesitant to attach our bank account to businesses for payment, but we're getting used to that," Snow says. "What type of payments can I automate? I look to automate as much as I can, so I don't have to worry about it."
To thrive now and in the future, Snow says, trade businesses have to embrace digital payment solutions and track where their own customers are trending.
Hunter has watched those companies that have gotten it right pull away from the ones that haven't.
"Some companies are just crushing it," Hunter says. "You talk to them and you hear that nothing's changing. People are still buying the best."
Those are the companies, Hunter says, that offer multiple options — on solutions, on financing, on how the bill gets paid. The ones that are struggling, he says, report that no one is buying and customers only want repairs. The difference isn't the market.
"It's just a matter of a business's practices," Hunter says. "And how effective the leadership is at pushing through and saying, 'Here's our standard, we're going to offer these things.' And rock and roll."
Getting the five-star review
The job is done. Payment is collected. And there's one more step before the technician walks out the door.
ServiceTitan automatically fires the review request the moment the technician marks the job complete, in the form of a text or email with a direct link to the review site of the contractor's choice. The ask has already happened face to face. The automated message makes it easy to follow through.
For contractors not yet using Marketing Pro, ServiceTitan's core customer notifications feature handles the basics, says Jess Kralemann, co-founder and CEO of Titan Advising Gurus.
"When you're building out those customer notifications, you have your booking communication, your reminder, and an after-job-completion notification," Kralemann says. "That's where you would ask for that review. You can even put in your Google link. With that core feature, you are able to reach out and get those reviews flowing in as soon as possible."
When building a brand or growing a reputation, Kralemann says, encouraging reviews and responding to all of them, the good ones and the bad, is essential. For a large business, that can mean dozens of reviews in a day.
"Don't try to gatekeep your reviews," Kralemann says. "As a consumer, if you have nothing but five stars, I'm not going to believe it. There have to be a couple of negative ones in there that I'm going to look at, but I'm not just looking to see what went wrong. I'm looking to see how you responded to it and how you handled it."
When a negative review comes in, Kralemann's advice is to stay professional and stay out of the comment section wars.
"Be very professional with it," he says. "Answer any lingering questions that they may have put in that review, explain what happened, and ask them to contact the office further so it can be resolved. As long as you don't get defensive and start an online war with that person, I think you're OK."
With multiple review platforms to manage, such as Google, Angi, Meta, and Yelp, it's easy to spread attention too thin. Kralemann recommends picking two or three and committing to them.
"You can be the master of a few, or you can just do a poor job at many," he says. "If you're overwhelming a customer with too many options, they're just not gonna do it."
Marketing Pro Reputation automates the process end to end, sending review requests; matching reviews to technicians, customers, and jobs for reporting; resending requests if the customer doesn't respond; and allowing contractors to manage responses across all connected platforms from a single interface.
Autoresponses can be configured for four- and five-star reviews, pulling from a set of responses the contractor builds or selects, so the acknowledgment goes out immediately without anyone having to type a word. Kralemann uses autoresponses for four- and five-star reviews and handles anything with three stars or below herself.
"When you set it up, you can pick 10 different responses from what ServiceTitan has in there, or you can build your own," she says. "And then if it's a five-star review, it's gonna pick through one of those 10 responses and push it out."
Patrick Fee, co-founder and co-owner of Mr. Drain Plumbing in Sacramento, Calif., uses ChatGPT, built directly into Marketing Pro's review response tools, to make sure responses go out fast and on-brand.
"Respond quickly because, positive or negative, speed is of the essence," Fee says. "You can just automate all that stuff, and then you can set up alerts within ServiceTitan. You can fully automate all these systems and set it and forget it, which is a beautiful thing and allows you to respond quicker than anyone else in your area."
Kralemann sets concrete benchmarks for review volume — aiming to collect reviews on 5 to 10% of completed jobs — and trains technicians to ask in person rather than just leaving a card with a QR code.
"You need to have reviews," she says. "They're important. Don't shy away from negative reviews. If you're getting a lot, reevaluate what's going on. But it's OK to have some bad ones. Don't gatekeep, and just collect as many as you can."
That's the best-case outcome: payment collected, review requested, customer relationship intact. But not every job ends with a signed estimate. For the calls where the technician leaves without a sale, the work isn't over, it's just entering a different phase. Automation can be a game-changer when that's the case.
The full ServiceTitan Automation Playbook is coming soon, a practical guide to end-to-end automation for contractors told by the operators already running it.
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