If you’re a software provider looking to boost revenue, streamline operations, and deliver more value to your users, ISV integrated payments can be a game-changer. Embedding payments directly into your platform can unlock tremendous benefits both for you and your users.
The best part? You stay in control of the customer journey while reducing friction at every step.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through what ISV payment integration is, why it matters, and how to do it right—so you can turn your platform into a powerful growth engine for both you and your customers.
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Understanding ISV Integrated Payments
Integrated payments let users pay for goods or services directly within your software—no third-party redirects or handoffs. It’s seamless, secure, and built for better user experiences.
For ISVs, integrating payments isn’t just a convenience—it’s a strategic move.
The Basics of Integrated Payments
At the core, integrated payments connect your software to a payment processor through APIs. These APIs enable your users to accept credit cards, debit cards, ACH, and other payment options without ever leaving your platform. Everything—from the payment form to transaction processing—happens under your brand.
Behind the scenes: key components of integrated payments
In order for integrated payments to work, you’ll typically integrate with a payment gateway or payment facilitator (PayFac). This involves:
- Merchant onboarding: Collecting business details and verifying accounts so your users can start accepting payments.
- Payment processing: Authorizing and settling transactions in real time.
- Payouts and reporting: Ensuring funds reach the merchant’s bank account and offering tools to track and manage transactions.
The Benefits of Payment Integration for an ISV or SaaS Platform
From monetization to user experience, the benefits of integrated payments extend across your business and your customers’ operations.
New revenue streams
With integrated payments, you’re no longer just a software provider—you’re also part of the transaction flow. That opens the door to revenue streams like:
- Payment processing fees – Earn a share of every transaction processed through your platform.
- Subscription upgrades – Unlock premium features tied to payment tools that drive more value for users.
- Value-added services – Offer extras like fraud protection or chargeback management to increase revenue per customer.
All of these can help you grow your bottom line without adding new customers.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
A seamless, in-app checkout experience makes it easier for your users to run their businesses. Fewer tools to juggle, less manual entry, and faster payment collection means happier customers who are more likely to stick around (and refer others!)
Streamlined business operations
An integrated payments system can simplify your internal workflows, too. With payments built into your platform, you reduce dependencies on third-party systems, minimize support overhead, and gain better visibility into transactional data. It can also make it easier to manage compliance, automate reporting, and scale operations.
Competitive edge for ISVs
Offering integrated payments can set your platform apart from the competition. It shows that you’re invested in solving real customer pain points and evolving your product to meet their needs. It’s not just a feature, it’s a differentiator that strengthens your market position.
Choosing the Right Payments Partner
The success of your integrated payment initiatives will hinge largely on the partner you choose to power your merchant services. Here’s how to select the best provider.
Industry experience and credibility
Payments are complex, regulated, and fast-moving. Choose a provider with a proven track record of working with ISVs and SaaS platforms. Look for:
- Years of experience in the payments space
- Existing partnerships with platforms similar to yours
- Strong references and customer success stories
Bonus: If your provider has experience in your industry niche, they’ll better understand your customers’ needs and expectations.
Developer-friendly infrastructure
Your dev team will thank you for this one. A modern, well-documented API and SDKs across languages will make it faster to build and maintain your integration. Key things to assess include:
- RESTful APIs and sandbox environments
- Clear, up-to-date documentation
- Responsive technical support
Look for a provider that sees developers as partners, not an afterthought.
Flexible monetization models
One of the biggest advantages of integrated payments is the revenue opportunity. But how you earn depends on the provider’s pricing model and revenue-sharing structure. Ask questions like:
- How is revenue shared between the ISV and payment provider?
- Are there white-label or PayFac-as-a-Service options?
- Can you set custom pricing for your merchants?
The right partner will give you the flexibility to build a monetization strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Tools for scaling and insights
As your platform grows, your payments volume can too. Choose a partner that can scale with you and offer the data visibility you need to optimize performance. Look for:
- Real-time reporting dashboards
- Multi-tenant support
- Custom branding and onboarding workflows
You want a partner who’s in it for the long haul and has the infrastructure to prove it.
A true strategic partner
More than a vendor, your payments provider should act as a strategic collaborator—one that understands your roadmap and works with you to grow. They should offer:
- Dedicated account management
- Go-to-market support
- Co-branded marketing opportunities
The best partners don’t just process payments—they help you turn them into a competitive advantage.
Pro tip: Stax Connect ticks all these boxes and more. From seamless API integrations to flexible revenue-sharing models, Stax Connect empowers ISVs to launch, scale, and monetize embedded payments. Learn more.
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How to Deliver Better Integrated Payments Experiences for Your Software Users
Already have integrated payments up and running? Great! Here are six practical ways to optimize the experience, boost adoption, and drive more value—for both your users and your business.
1. Make payment processing a standard in your package offerings
Convenient, on-the-go integrated payments processing solutions are a basic customer expectation these days, and businesses that don’t provide such flexibility are likely to fall behind the competition. Most consumers find it inconvenient to be redirected to an external site to complete their checkout.
If you can offer an integrated payment system (that supports a range of ways to process payments) as part of your native packages that don’t require consumers to use third-party payment processors, your solutions are likely to be in extremely high demand. Essentially, they can be a one-stop-shop for your customers.
Native packages with integrated payments are a great way to provide an easy, seamless user experience and controlled payment processing to your software users. There’s no need to re-enter credit card data for future purchases when using an integrated payment processing solution – this is true regardless of payment method.
Most importantly, integrated payments enables merchant clients to accept payments on their website or app directly without having to use a third-party website as a payment processor. And with features like tokenization, software users can securely process recurring payments or credit card-not-present payments without ever having to worry about handling any sensitive credit card processing and payment transaction data directly.
This is also a great way to future-proof their business. Integrated payments facilitate new modes of payment, so they can stay up-to-date with the latest in payment innovations.
2. Provide a branded customized ISV payment integration experience
Businesses today strive to provide a consistent brand experience across every marketing channel and customer touchpoint. This is because such consistency can boost loyalty and create a strong positive impression in the minds of their customers.
Allowing your business software users to facilitate integrated payments through a portal that has your branding on it can greatly elevate the customer experience. Depending upon your business needs, you can choose to provide a fully or partially branded experience to your software users.
For example, with Stax Connect’s full API enrollment, you can allow the payment enrollment to happen within your app or website itself. Your users won’t need to leave the platform at all—right from application to approval. This ensures that they have a consistent branding experience at all times. However, this typically requires significant developer resources as well as API knowledge.
Small- to medium- SaaS businesses that don’t have these resources can opt for the hybrid API method instead. This would allow you to start the payment enrollment process on your website or app and then redirect users to a co-branded landing page to complete their application.
This still allows you to provide an on-brand payment acceptance experience without using too many developer resources, unlike the full API enrollment method. Since the enrollment process is not embedded in your software, it won’t require a large team of developers.
3. Ease the payment application process
To retain their competitive edge, SaaS companies must provide a simple onboarding process with convenient and flexible enrollment features to their merchants. Despite this, some customers may still find it challenging to maneuver their way through the process.
To increase payment adoption, the application and enrollment process should be user-friendly. This can be done in two ways.
- You can allow users to fill out the applications online, or
- You could provide a white-glove service as a helping hand to your clients.
With the white-glove service, your customer-facing team can fill out the application form for users. This does not require any developer support and can be easily implemented using the platform. Although you won’t need a dedicated team of developers to provide this service, you are going to need a good customer support team.
4. Centralize all required hardware in one place
Offering hardware as part of your software company business offerings is a great way to add more value to your clients. Any company that needs to accept credit and debit cards is definitely going to need hardware in the form of payment terminals (both countertop and mobile credit card readers) that support a range of different payment methods and technologies (e.g., EMV, NFC, etc). By offering hardware that’s compatible with your integrated payments solution, you can position yourself as a one-stop-shop for all your customers’ needs.
5. Assist users in implementing a seamless payment integration
Some customers may find it challenging to onboard themselves and set up their payment processing solutions. You can add more value to your offerings by providing them with the assistance they may need. Based on the industries or businesses you cater to and the types of issues your users are most likely to face, you could offer a number of services besides your product offerings. These may include:
- Configuring the software or payment platform and terminal settings
- Integrating the software with other apps and other software
- Migrating the data to the platform
- Training their team on using the product
6. Specialized support team available for assistance
A dedicated support team that can answer and address all payment-related concerns of your users can greatly elevate the customer experience you offer. When your team is easily accessible, it adds to customer satisfaction and helps build loyalty towards your brand.
Payment processing failures are one of the biggest issues faced by merchants and this can result in serious customer churn. Of course, a merchant can manually process any failed payments after speaking to the customer, or manually input credit card payment information by manually entering credit card payment data. But this has serious implications on administrative costs, cash flow, and profitability. Not to mention the high risk of human error, and wastage of time and resources. Simplifying your process with the right integrated payment solution can eliminate many of these unnecessary credit card payment hiccups in your business operations.
Many SaaS companies that provide integrated payment solutions leverage algorithms to reduce failures and improve the success rates of payment retries. This is essentially a pre-emptive action that can help merchants avoid the huge administrative business costs that come with manually handling failed payments.
Likewise, by ensuring that your customers can reach a live person whenever they need any help with payment-related issues, you can add greater value to them. Stax Connect’s partner-centric dashboard allows you to assign unique roles to your support team members and give them access to the info they need (e.g., enrollment status, credit card processing activity, payment processing costs, etc.) to be able to resolve customers’ payment processing issues. Plus, you also have the ability to reach out to the Stax team for any additional integrated payments support, right from the dashboard.
The Future of Integrated Payments for ISVs
As the payments industry continues to evolve, integrated payments are poised to become an even more powerful growth driver for independent software vendors (ISVs). What started as a convenience is now a core expectation—and looking ahead, innovation will center around more robust systems and better user experiences.
More embedded, branded, and seamless experiences
One major shift is the rise of branded payment experiences. Rather than handing off to standalone payment processing software, more ISVs are embedding fully customized solutions that align with their UX and visual identity. This allows for seamless transactions that feel native to the user, while reducing friction and building stronger brand affinity.
We can expect to see a decline in one-size-fits-all systems. Instead, software vendors will leverage modular APIs that let them tailor payment functionality—whether it’s recurring payments, tipping, or split payouts—to specific industries or use cases.
Data-driven growth and personalization
As more ISVs integrate payments, access to real-time transaction data will become a game-changer. Combining payments with customer relationship management and customer behavior analytics will enable SaaS platforms to surface new insights to personalize offers, predict churn, and identify upsell opportunities.
ISVs will increasingly turn to data analytics to drive product decisions and refine pricing strategies. The platforms that use this data to better serve their customers—while respecting privacy—will earn long-term loyalty.
Final Thoughts on Integrated Payment Systems.
In the current landscape, SaaS companies that can facilitate a more connected and streamlined experience for their users will always have an edge over others in the market.
SaaS business solutions with integrated payments allow businesses to process consumer payments securely and conveniently thereby improving the customer experience and ease of cash flow. But if you want to truly stand out above the competition, focusing on ways you can add more value to your offerings could be the answer. And that starts with choosing the right integrated payment systems partner to handle your ISV payment integration needs.
Stax Connect can help you provide a frictionless onboarding process for your software users while giving you greater peace of mind. With its top-notch support, pre-built enrollment platform, and enhanced risk management capabilities, Stax Connect can help you maximize revenue from integrated payments.
FAQs about Integrated Payments
Q: What is an integrated payment system for SaaS companies?
An integrated payment system for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies is a solution that enables these companies to handle their customer’s payment processes within their platform. This eliminates the need for external payment processors, providing a seamless and efficient payment experience for the end-users.
Q: Why is integrated payment processing a standard in package offerings for SaaS companies?
Integrated payment processing is crucial as it provides convenience and improves the user experience. It saves users from the inconvenience of leaving the platform to complete transactions on another site. Moreover, integrated payment processing enables secure and easy handling of recurrent and credit card-not-present payments without dealing with sensitive credit card and payment transaction data directly.
Q: What are the advantages of a branded customized payment integration experience?
A branded customized payment integration experience ensures consistency for users across all channels and touchpoints, leaving a positive impression and boosting brand loyalty. This can be achieved using different methods, such as full API enrollment or a hybrid API, depending on the resources and needs of the SaaS business.
Q: Why is easing the payment application process essential in SaaS companies?
Easing the payment application process encourages more users to adopt the software solution. This can be achieved by making the integrated payment application process as simple as possible or providing assisted services in filling out the application forms.
Q: Why is providing hardware as part of business offerings important for SaaS companies offering integrated payment solutions?
To effectively facilitate payments, users need hardware such as payment terminals that support a variety of payment methods and technologies. Offering this as part of the business offerings positions the SaaS company as a one-stop solution for all user needs.
Q: How can SaaS companies assist users in implementing a seamless payment integration?
SaaS companies can support users by configuring the software, integrating it with other apps, migrating data to the platform, and training their teams. By providing these additional services, SaaS companies can help users overcome the challenges of onboarding and setting up their payment processing solutions.
Q: How do specialized support teams enhance the customer experience in integrated payment systems?
Specialized support teams can effectively address all payment-related concerns, enhancing the user experience. They reduce payment processing failures, improve the success rates of payment retries, and provide rapid assistance for resolving payment processing issues. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Q: What is the role of integrated payment systems in improving the customer experience and facilitating cash flow in SaaS companies?
Integrated payment systems in SaaS business solutions enable secure and convenient processing of consumer payments, thereby improving customer experience and ease of cash flow. These systems also help businesses stand out from the competition by adding more value to their offerings.
Q: Why is it essential to choose the right integrated payment systems partner?
Choosing the right integrated payment systems partner is critical to ensure efficient and secure onboarding of software users. With the right partner, SaaS companies can benefit from top-notch support, a prebuilt enrollment platform, and enhanced risk management capabilities.
Q: How can Stax Connect assist in building an integrated payment system for SaaS companies?
Stax Connect can provide a frictionless onboarding process while offering peace of mind. The platform offers a partner-centric dashboard, facilitates access to essential information like enrollment status and payment processing costs, and provides additional integrated payment support as needed.
