Wave Accounting
Process in-person and online payments for your Wave Accounting invoices with Helcim.
About Extension
Wave Accounting is a popular billing and accounting platform for small businesses, offering invoicing and basic financial tools. With the Helcim Payment Extension, Wave users can now accept both online and in-person payments—a capability Wave does not offer natively—while benefiting from Helcim’s transparent interchange-plus pricing and smoother payment workflows.
The Helcim Payment Extension is an independent productivity tool designed to help you work more efficiently across your favorite platforms. Please note that this extension is not a direct API integration and is not officially sponsored, authorized, or endorsed by Wave Accounting or the third-party software providers it supports. Instead, it acts as a smart bridge in your browser, automating the manual entry of your Helcim payment data into other apps to save you time. We are proud to offer this innovative solution to give you more flexibility and choice in how you manage your business data!
Rate comparison
In-Person Payments
1.79% + 8¢ Average
Online Payments
2.31% + 25¢ Average
Wave Accounting's processing fees
In-Person Payments
N/A
Online Payments
2.9% - 3.4% + 60¢
Watch demo
Install Extension
Features
Helcim allows Wave users to take in-person card payments using Helcim’s card readers—something Wave’s own payment tools do not support.
Reduce your cost per transaction by using Helcim’s transparent interchange-plus pricing instead of Wave’s built-in payment processor. You also have the ability to pass on your processing fees for card-present transactions effectively removing the processing fees for the payments.
All Helcim transactions—online and in-person—sync to your Helcim dashboard for simple tracking and clearer reporting.
Already have your customer’s card data with another provider? Helcim offers free card data migration, allowing you to securely transfer your existing customer card information so you can use it with the Payment Extension.
Need to process payments without creating an invoice? POS mode lets you accept custom payment amounts, combined totals, and payments that don’t originate from your third-party software, directly within the Extension.
How it works with Helcim
Wave Accounting with the Helcim Payment Extension gives your business in-person payment capabilities Wave does not provide. Wave continues to handle invoicing and billing, while Helcim, through the Payment Extension enables both online and in-person payment acceptance using card readers and manual entry (Virtual Terminal). Payments sync back to Helcim for reporting and deposits. Since this integration is payment-focused, invoice amounts and customer details remain managed within Wave. Refunds and payment reconciliation may require manual steps, and multi-currency invoices must match your Helcim account currency.
Requirements
Setup
Create a free Helcim account. If you already have one, you can skip this step.
Install the Helcim Payment Extension to your browser from the Chrome Store.
Follow the guide that appears after downloading the extension. It will prompt you to log in to your Helcim account to sync the extension, and then select a currency.
If you have a Card Reader Gen 3 or Smart Terminal, you can pair it by copy-pasting your 4-digit device code onto your Payment Extensions tab in Wave.
FAQs
Yes — Helcim’s interchange-plus pricing is often much cheaper than Wave Accounting’s built-in payment fees.
Yes — you can integrate Helcim with Wave Accounting using the Payment Extension.
You get lower fees, ability to process card-present transactions, faster workflows, and reduced manual reconciliation across your invoices.
Not necessarily. You can still use your Wave Accounting as part of your workflow. However, the extension replaces Wave Accounting's built-in payment processor so you can save on costs.