and get many more benefits included with your ChildFriendly account!
Lite (Free) Account
Pro (Add-On) Account
Merchant Fee: 1% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
Merchant Fee: 3.75% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
Our system empowers you to automatically pass on the merchant fee to your families, ensuring no cost to you!
Online Registration & Waitlist Management
Attendance
Staff Scheduling & Management
Communication
Billing & Payments
Online Registration & Waitlist Management
Attendance
Staff Scheduling & Management
Communication
Billing & Payments
Returned Payments: A $40 non-refundable fee will be applied for each returned payment (e.g. NSF, incorrect account info). This fee is billed monthly and can be automatically passed on to parents, similar to merchant fees.
Online Registration & Waitlist Management
Lite (Free) Account
What is included in the Lite (Free) Account:
Attendance
Staff Scheduling & Management
Family Management & Communication
Billing & Payments
1% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
3.75% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
Our system empowers you to automatically pass on the merchant fee to your families, ensuring no cost to you!
Billing & Payments
Everything included in Lite PLUS:
Pro (Add-On) Account
1% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
3.75% Fee + $0.30 per transaction
Our system empowers you to automatically pass on the merchant fee to your families, ensuring no cost to you!
Billing & Payments
Everything included in Lite PLUS:
With ChildFriendly, no more out-of-pocket merchant fees—our system handles it for you!
When parents make payments, ChildFriendly automatically calculates the merchant fee and gives you the flexibility to pass it on, ensuring your daycare retains 100% of its revenue.
Returned Payments: A $40 non-refundable fee will be applied for each returned payment (e.g. NSF, incorrect account info). This fee is billed monthly and can be automatically passed on to parents, similar to merchant fees.
With ChildFriendly, no more out-of-pocket merchant fees—our system handles it for you!
When parents make payments, ChildFriendly automatically calculates the merchant fee and gives you the flexibility to pass it on, ensuring your daycare retains 100% of its revenue.
Disclaimer:
ChildFriendly only processes PAD/ACH and Credit Cards for deposit into Canadian Banks at this time, with plans to open our services to US banks in the coming months.
For more details, see ChildFriendly's Terms of Use.
Learn more from our demo videos!
Learn more from our demo videos!
Learn more from our demo videos!
Learn more from our demo videos!
Learn more from our demo videos!
Learn more from our demo videos!
ChildFriendly has been amazing for our childcare centers. It’s packed with features that help us manage multiple programs. Our staff scheduling is significantly more efficient now too as we can easily see where staff are at all times and if we are over or under staffed at different times throughout the day so that we can plan our schedule accordingly. There are so many other features too. We are completely digital and probably the best part is that we don't have to rely on front office staff to ensure our programs stay full. ChildFriendly takes care of it automatically. Its great! They really understand the needs of organizations like ours. We’re very happy with it!
ChildFriendly is fantastic for our small preschool. It’s super easy to use and helps us keep track of attendance, milestones, report cards, fees and parent communication. The reports are great for parent-teacher meetings. Plus, their support team is always helpful. OH and their Quickbooks integration is amazing. Highly recommend!
ChildFriendly has made a huge difference in our daycares. With over 900 children across multiple centers, keeping track of everything used to be very difficult. Now we are fully digital. We were able to get rid of our filing cabinets and everything is so organized, easy to manage, and easily accessible. Fee collection is now a breeze. We used to be constantly tracking and trying to figure out which families owed, then follow up with collecting. Now all our fees are up to date in real time and at a click of the button we are able to process payments instantly for all families. It is so easy! Parents love the app too – they are able to get updates on their kids in real-time, pay from the app and more. I don’t know how we managed without it!
ChildFriendly has made a huge difference in our daycares. With over 900 children across multiple centers, keeping track of everything used to be very difficult. Now we are fully digital. We were able to get rid of our filing cabinets and everything is so organized, easy to manage, and easily accessible. Fee collection is now a breeze. We used to be constantly tracking and trying to figure out which families owed, then follow up with collecting. Now all our fees are up to date in real time and at a click of the button we are able to process payments instantly for all families. It is so easy! Parents love the app too – they are able to get updates on their kids in real-time, pay from the app and more. I don’t know how we managed without it!
ChildFriendly is fantastic for our small preschool. It’s super easy to use and helps us keep track of attendance, milestones, report cards, fees and parent communication. The reports are great for parent-teacher meetings. Plus, their support team is always helpful. OH and their Quickbooks integration is amazing. Highly recommend!
Our pricing is simple, transparent, and built with childcare centers in mind.
You can start with our Lite Account, which gives you access to core features at no cost—perfect if you’re not using online payments yet.
Once you enable online payments, you’ll automatically upgrade to our Pro Account, where a merchant fee applies per transaction:
1% + $0.30 for PAD/ACH
3.75% + $0.30 for credit cards
The best part? You can automatically pass these fees on to families, so the platform can remain completely free for your center. For example, if a parent pays $400 via PAD, they’re charged $404—$400 goes to your account, and the $4 fee is routed directly to ChildFriendly. No hidden fees, no subscriptions—just pay-as-you-go pricing that works for you.
Absolutely. We've simplified the billing process, eliminating any confusion or complexity. You won't encounter unexpected charges or hidden fees. Plus, you can conveniently view all Merchant Fees at any time through the Reports Center.
Nope. We believe in fairness and simplicity, which is why we offer a single rate for all credit cards. Whether it's Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AMEX, JBC, Apple Pay, or Google Pay, the rate remains the same across the board.
The only additional fee to be aware of is the Returned Payment fee, which applies when a family's payment bounces due to things like insufficient funds or incorrect banking information. In these cases, a $40 fee is automatically charged to your account at the end of the applicable month.
Not to worry—you can easily recoup this fee by enabling automatic Returned Payment charges to parents in your Settings, giving you peace of mind and full control.
Aside from that, there are no hidden fees. No startup fees, monthly charges, fixed costs, PCI-compliance fees, or terminal fees. We pride ourselves on transparency and honesty—with ChildFriendly, what you see is what you get.
All Credit Cards are charged at 3.75% + $0.30 per transaction. For PAD/ACH, you pay 1% + $0.30 per transaction. Remember these fees can be automatically passed onto families, leaving you with no cost for ChildFriendly at all!
Merchant fees are charged on the same day that your credit card or PAD/ACH payments are deposited into your bank account.
If you're absorbing the merchant fees, the total deposit will simply have those fees deducted.
If you're passing the fees on to families, you won’t notice a thing—the full payment amount is deposited to your account, and the fees are automatically routed to ChildFriendly.
In Canada, you can legally pass on up to 2.4% of merchant fees to your clients. ChildFriendly offers a setting to automate this process. You can adjust the fee (up to 2.4% or lower) in your settings. When families are billed, the additional merchant fee is automatically included, billed, processed, and deposited to your account without any extra effort on your part.