Five Key Takeaways for Your Embedded Payments Solution

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Meg Heinz

Vice President, Revenue Operations

Embedded payments are fast becoming common place in today’s SaaS landscape. However, an integrated payments solution does not immediately translate to customer retention and net revenue increases. In this post, we will share five key takeaways that businesses should consider enabling to support the success of their embedded payment strategies.

These takeaways were discussed during Mainsail’s Annual Payments Summit with payment leaders in the portfolio.

Understand your customers and the merchant transaction flow. To build a successful embedded payments solution, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of your customer base and the merchant transaction flow; tailor the billing and payments experience to meet those needs first. Understanding the merchant transaction flow allows you to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. By collaborating closely with merchants, you can streamline processes, reduce friction, and further facilitate the overall payment experience. For example, do merchants bill immediately upon job completion with their customers? Does the invoicing flow aid immediate billing upon indication of job completion? Similarly, keeping the customers within your platform eliminates the need for customers to navigate to a separate payment interface, further reducing friction. How much of the overall payments management experience can be captured within your product? This customer-centric approach not only increases customer satisfaction but also strengthens your position as a trusted payments partner.
Attach at point of sale. One of the key aspects of successful embedded payments is to attach the payment function at the point of software sale. Customers cannot experience the value add of the embedded payment solution if they do not even have a merchant processing account. By introducing the payment functionality early on, you can familiarize customers with the benefits and streamline the adoption process. Merchants who are not introduced to embedded payments early in the overall software adoption process have a higher likelihood of reverting to their current method of payment collection. It is suggested to introduce the entire transaction flow change upfront; this also reduces the likelihood of attempting to attach new customers when they’ve already hit change fatigue. If this is embedded into the overall platform setup, it eliminates the feeling of being upsold immediately after purchase.
Engage early for activation. Like capturing merchant attach at point of sale, early merchant activation is crucial for maximizing customer convenience and driving revenue growth. Engage customers early in the onboarding process as it relates to their usage of embedded payments. This proactive approach helps reduce any potential friction and increase the likelihood of customers embracing the solution. Early engagement can be achieved through payments dedicated onboarding, targeted in-app communication, and proactive customer support. By ensuring a smooth activation process, businesses can begin processing as soon as they are established with the basics of the software, creating a solid foundation for long-term customer retention.
Measure data at the merchant level. The adage, you can’t manage what you can’t measure also applies to embedded payments. By capturing and analyzing transaction data, businesses gain valuable insights into the customer behavior, preferences, and trends. This data-driven approach enables businesses to make informed decisions across the company such as cost optimization, pricing determination, and forecasting, as well as individual merchant insights such as customer-level business health related to processed volume fluctuations. We can also then better segment customers to support their unique processing needs. For example, do certain businesses only process ACH transactions vs. a mix of ACH and credit card? This data in the hands of your payments and all customer-facing teams, further facilitates embedded payments growth for your business.
Turn a customer call into a payments call. Not all payments data to be collected and analyzed is quantitative. Existing customers are a wealth of knowledge and one of the best sources for qualitative feedback. A unique opportunity for businesses to strengthen their embedded payments strategy lies in turning every customer call into a payments call. By training customer support teams to identify opportunities for upselling payments or troubleshooting perceived payment issues, businesses can maximize revenue potential and drive customer retention.

Embedded payments have revolutionized the way businesses enable transactions, drive customer value, and maximize revenue potential and growth. Embracing these strategies can help unlock the full potential of embedded payments within your business. Have additional questions regarding your embedded payments strategy? Please reach out to our team.

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