In the race to create more value with leaner teams, professional services platforms face a familiar challenge: how to grow revenue without bloating the product or sales organization. For many, that answer lies in a workflow they already support but haven’t fully monetized. Payments.
If your platform already supports core operations like client management, project tracking, and billing, adding embedded payments isn’t just a convenience. It’s a growth lever.
So how do you grow revenue without changing your processes or headcount?
Answer: Get more customers to actually use embedded payments.
TL:DR
Payments are no longer just a workflow to support but a strategic lever to unlock scalable, predictable growth. SaaS platforms are doing the hard work by building trust, powering operations, and streamlining billing. But when it comes to payments, most hand off the experience, and the revenue, to someone else.
Payment attachment is the percentage of your customers actively using your embedded payments solution.
It’s not enough to enable payments. You have to drive adoption and usage.
Top platforms don’t just integrate payments. They embed it into the product experience and align their go-to-market efforts to maximize attachment.
Why does that matter? Because platforms with high attachment:
- See payment revenue that often exceeds SaaS subscription income
- Retain users longer thanks to higher product stickiness
- Gain better data visibility into customer health and monetization
Problem: Lack of embedded payment usage
Many SaaS companies integrate payments but stop short of driving attachment. They assume once it’s live, users will adopt it.
The reality?
- Most platforms see <50% attachment without focused enablement
- That’s money left on the table and often blamed on pricing or product
Most platforms stop short of the transaction. You help users track hours, send invoices, or manage client accounts, but the moment money needs to move, they leave your product.
This creates real issues:
- Fragmented workflows that confuse clients and require manual reconciliation
- Lost visibility into real-time payment status, aging receivables, and client follow-up
- No financial upside from the transaction volume your platform facilitates
Even worse, it adds a support burden. Your customers often blame your platform for delayed or missing payments, even when the issue is actually a third-party problem.
You built a product to streamline professional workflows. Why let the most critical workflow (getting paid) be the one your product doesn’t own?
What is payments-led growth?
Instead of being adjacent to financial transactions, you become the place where they happen. That means embedding payments into the user journey so that clients can invoice, collect, and reconcile, all in one place.
Payments-led growth is a strategy where SaaS companies integrate payment processing into their platforms, allowing them to earn revenue from each transaction. This approach not only diversifies income streams but also enhances user experience by providing seamless payment solutions directly within the SaaS platform.
Embedding payments directly into your software gives you:
- A new revenue stream – applied via transaction fees alongside or above subscriptions
- Unified user experience – one login, one dashboard; branded checkout, ACH, card, wallet options
- Data insights – transaction volumes, client behavior, adoption trends—fuel smarter roadmap decisions
Payments-led growth is a repeatable strategy for generating scalable revenue and boosting retention by embedding payment capabilities directly into your software.
How embedded payments change the game
Stax Connect enables SaaS platforms to embed fully branded, PCI-compliant payments through a single API integration.
Integrating payment processing enables SaaS platforms to generate additional revenue through transaction fees. For example, Shopify earned $1.2 billion from its merchant solutions segment, which includes payment processing. These integrated solutions also improve user convenience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
That’s why execution matters. A thoughtful strategy backed by real shopper insights and smart distribution can keep your campaigns clean, effective, and aligned with your brand goals.
Before payments-led growth
- Limited customer experience, making your users juggle multiple platforms to run their business
- Decreased revenue growth without monetizing transactions or driving adoption
- Lower valuation from investors that see payments as a promising, stable source of consistent revenue
- Insufficient data on your customers’ business performance and growth
After payments-led growth
- Better customer experience with an all-in-one solution to take payments, view transactions, and manage reporting
- Unlocked revenue stream with payments as a significant component of your business
- Increased valuation with a stickier product feature that supplies a sustainable stream of revenue
- Access to useful data that gives you a glimpse into the potential of your market and customer revenue growth
Learn more about maximizing revenue potential with payments-led growth.
How it works
Embedding payments doesn’t mean becoming a payments company. But it does require thoughtful execution.
Embedded payments = the vehicle
Think of this as the how.
It includes:
- APIs to integrate payment acceptance
- Merchant onboarding flows
- Card/ACH processing infrastructure
- White-label checkout or invoicing
- Risk, compliance, and settlement tools
Stax Connect provides these building blocks.
Payments-led growth = the driver
This is the why and the what you get from it:
- Turning payments into a profit center
- Increasing platform stickiness by embedding more of your customer’s workflow
- Capturing transaction-based revenue alongside SaaS fees
- Supporting customer lifetime value through streamlined experiences
Stax Connect doesn’t just offer embedded payments, it also helps you operationalize them into a true PLG model with sales, marketing, onboarding, and GTM support.
Below is the framework that we use to get started.
- Product-led integration
Payments should feel like part of the platform, not bolted on. Think: branded UI, embedded flows, and data visibility. - Onboarding & activation
Seamless setup that allows you to build flows that help users activate payments early in their lifecycle. - Go-to-market alignment
Adoption drives ROI. Your marketing, sales, and customer success teams need playbooks to drive education and usage and Stax is here to support your team in all of these areas. - Operational support
Underwriting, compliance, and merchant support don’t scale well without a partner. Know what you want to own and what to delegate.
Choosing a partner
Payments-led growth creates company-wide alignment across revenue teams (from product to sales and marketing) around payments, a significant and scalable revenue contributor.
Instead of relying only on subscriptions alone, Stax Connect’s powerful and scalable program uses flexible technology alongside payments and adoption expertise to help vertical SaaS companies maximize revenue potential.
With Stax as a partner, you get:
- Flexible technology (via Stax Connect & Connect Plus)
- Embedded onboarding, risk, and compliance
- Sales and marketing playbooks and support to maximize attachment and adoption
You stay focused on your product. We help you turn payments into a growth engine.
Your platform already powers the workflows your clients depend on. Payments-led growth lets you monetize those workflows, deepen value, and create revenue that scales with your customers’ success.
Stax is here to help you build the strategy, integrate the tools, and activate the outcomes.
Let’s get started.
