In this episode, I spoke with Emi Keshler, Director of Partner Development at Payabli. We talked about what a successful embedded payments program looks like. We discussed buyer experience, merchant experience and everything in between.
State of Payments survey: It takes about four minutes, anonymous responses are welcome, and we will publish the results at the end of the year.
What a successful payments program means to you?
Success is having control over the program: reliable metrics, a forecast for the next quarter, and operational processes that support the payment volume.
For a first-year program, she suggests about 40% merchant attachment rate and 30–40 basis points of transaction margin as starting assumptions.
The margin figure also needs a clear definition. In Emi’s example, charging 2.9% against processing costs of 2.5% leaves a spread of 0.4 percentage points, or 40 basis points, on processed volume. A platform still needs to account for its own operating costs when evaluating the business case.
How to succeed with merchant onboarding
Track the merchant journey in enough detail to see where progress stops. A single onboarding completion rate will not show all of the important stages. An approved merchant can still need help before processing successful payments.
Onboarding applications started. Identify merchants who began the application and have not completed it. Give the team a defined follow-up process.
Underwriting pending. Watch which applications are waiting for approval and what information is missing.
Approved but not processing. Check whether the merchant has the equipment, configuration, migrated tokens, and training needed to begin.
Testing and early use. Separate small test transactions and occasional payments from regular processing.
Fully activated merchants. Define what business-as-usual usage looks like for the vertical, then measure it.
Dormant accounts. Continue monitoring merchants after activation so the team can investigate declining usage.
What it means for your team
Emi breaks the experience into three groups, each with a different reason to care about payments.
Buyers. They need appropriate payment methods and a straightforward way to pay. Repeated data entry, disconnected systems, and difficult service after the payment can affect whether they return.
Merchants. They need to take payments, issue refunds, and reconcile without unnecessary manual work. The number of clicks, training time, and movement between systems affect both efficiency and employee experience.
Back-office and finance teams. They need to understand the economics and the value to the business. Their questions concern the return on investment, the books, and the operating model.
The administrative experience deserves particular attention. Emi describes a veterinary practice employee finishing a long shift and then spending another hour looking for a small reconciliation discrepancy.
Her suggestion is to sit down and reconcile a day of activity the way an end user would. Include the payment methods they actually accept, such as cash, checks, ACH, and cards, and see where someone has to leave the workflow to find an answer.
What to do next
Walk through the full onboarding journey. Pre-fill information the platform already has, and account for the handoff between the person completing the application and the authorized signatory.
Explain the information request. Give merchants a short FAQ covering what is being collected, why it is needed, and what happens next.
Involve risk and underwriting early. Help the team understand the platform’s typical merchants before applications arrive, so it can recognize expected activity and investigate exceptions.
Prepare for activation. Start token migrations early, configure tools, and arrange training that fits the merchant’s environment. Card-present businesses may also need hands-on hardware setup.
Test the daily workflow. Check reliability under real working conditions and reconcile a representative day of transactions. Make sure the team understands refunds and other routine operations.
Assign payments ownership. Designate someone accountable for adoption, economics, and ongoing performance. Emi notes that a large platform with an existing merchant base may need a dedicated payments leader sooner than a new startup.
Questions to ask internally
Who owns payments performance after the integration launches?
How many approved merchants have reached regular processing?
Where does onboarding stop, and who follows up at each stage?
Can an employee reconcile a full day without manually combining information from several systems?
Can support demonstrate the features we sell and explain their value for the customer’s industry?
Does our business case include pay-in and payout costs, staffing, and the work required to increase adoption?
When a merchant prefers an off-platform method, have we measured the administrative work and reconciliation it adds?
Related episodes
Jo Phillips and Will Corbera, Payabli. The broader business of embedded payments for vertical software platforms. Why Vertical Software Platforms Are Becoming Payments Companies: Jo Phillips & Will Corbera, Payabli.
Joshua Silver, Rainforest. Payment models and ownership for software platforms. Payments For Platforms: Joshua Silver (Rainforrest).
