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THE SIGNAL: Turning SaaS into a Payments Powerhouse with NMI | Episode 455 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the topic.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me today are two very special guests from NMI, Peter Galvin, the Chief Marketing Officer, and Luis Peña, the product director of developer experience.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you both for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Greg.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for the invitation.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: We appreciate it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: So this episode is part of our signal series, where we are cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments in FinTech.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're back with part two of our series on how SaaS is being redefined by payments.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: In the first episode, we unpacked why the subscription-only model is fading and how the next generation of SaaS winners are building full commerce platforms.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, we shift from why to how.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: We explore the real-world journey that SaaS companies go through as they grow, from simply accepting payments to managing fraud, compliance, chargebacks, omnicommerce experiences, and eventually broader financial products.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: We also dig into the challenges of switching providers, scaling payments infrastructure, and what it takes to build a true payments-first business that can support customers at every stage of their life cycle.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, Peter, Luis, let's dive in.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Peter, we're going to start with you.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't mind, just walk us through real briefly your professional journey and how you got to NMI.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, I'm happy to.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've really spent the last 25 years in technology in the technology industry, running, I really started in product management and then really running product management, marketing, business development, even business units in some organizations.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: And about 12 years ago, I started working in the SaaS space, mostly focused on SaaS security, which then led me to working with companies like different fintechs, the card networks, processors, et cetera, which then led me into the world of payments.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so for the last almost four years, I've been here at NMI as the chief marketing officer.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So Luis, same question for you.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Greg.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've spent most of my career actually in engineering, building and actually writing code and writing software.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've been doing that for pretty much the past 25 years, of which the first 15 I was doing it in the residential construction industry, touching on a few different things like Fabri of the Home and Home Alarm security, automating a lot of the processes that are in there.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Got exposed to the reseller white label model through my experience through home security and then came over to NMI just about 10 years ago now and just recently made a move from engineering into product where I get to help SaaS companies integrate payments.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you both for sharing that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Peter, back to you for a quick question.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give our audience a quick high-level overview of what NMI does?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: NMI is a payments acceptance platform for SaaS companies, for fintech professionals, for independent sales organizations, or also known as ISOs.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: And what that really means is that we allow those companies to embed or include our infrastructure as part of their overall payment solution that they might have for a POS solution, or in the case of SaaS companies, which is where we're talking about today, being able to embed payments.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: So being able to take credit cards and other types of payments for merchants and for consumers to pay.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so we really sit behind a software company as a white-labeled service, providing everything they need to be able to take payments and to be able to deliver a great customer experience for their users.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Peter, sticking with you, every SaaS platform starts in kind of roughly the same place.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to accept cards.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: How does the payments lifecycle evolve as these SaaS companies mature from sort of that early stage to mid-market to large scale?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think it I think that's an interesting journey for many of those companies.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: And it there is a, you know, I would say, you know, 10 years ago, most SaaS companies knew very little about a little about payments.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I think today you have very different capabilities around payments.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I would say that there's probably three types of growth curves that they go through.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: The first growth curve is really I'm building a SaaS product.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: I need to figure out a way to add payments into that SaaS product.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: I need to do that relatively quickly because I'm trying to get to market with my actual software.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm less concerned about maybe some of the ways that I'm integrating with that, maybe some of the ways that it's being displayed.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to have the capability of being able to add payments.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then as those organizations scale and let's, you know, and they become larger, their customers in many cases are asking for more functionality within that payment environment.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so now they may be looking for more payment services, for example, or they may want to have more control over the total experience that those customers have.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: When we talk to a lot of SaaS companies, one of the most important things that we find is that they're less worried about the mechanics of the payments and much more concerned about the merchant experience or the client experience that those customers are going to have.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so when those companies get bigger and they have more resources, really where they want to spend time is making sure that it looks and feels much more like their existing product.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so that journey also can involve kind of from a business standpoint as well.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of times organizations in the early startup mode are just not thinking, just want to have the ability to take payments.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas as organizations get bigger and they scale up and they maybe even become enterprises, they can now look at payments as a potential revenue stream.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then as a revenue stream, they can usually get different types of either what's called revenue share or different types of rates that allow them to take and make money through payments.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: As even they get more sophisticated than that, some of them want to actually take some risk.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: So as we know with payments, when you take a credit card, there is some risk involved.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: There's some risk that that person may not get paid, you may have chargebacks, et cetera.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so some SaaS companies will even want to go further and take more of the risk so that they can make more money.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, they have to get much more sophisticated in some of their compliance controls and their credit controls and their underwriting controls.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a number of different journeys, and I think it's important as they think about it is making sure that they're working with partners that can take them through all of the journeys that they're thinking about on as they grow their SaaS business and as they look at growing their payments business as well.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Luis, over to you.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: As SaaS companies grow, like Peter just said, they're going from simple processing to larger enterprise where they may be handling fraud, chargebacks, compliance.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the operational compliance challenges that these companies face as they scale?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when do they typically hit those inflection points?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks for that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean Peter set it up pretty well, kind of talking about SaaS companies and their journey.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: And at some point, it starts as an administrative function, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have people handling the chargeback.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: You have people just kind of going through and kind of processing the chargebacks and the fraud and the other activities that come around with payments.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: But at some point, there's an opportunity for it to become more of a strategic kind of a play for the SaaS company, right?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just administrative to do, but there is a way to optimize that which is happening by having payments on your platform.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, before you might be big enough to have like a head of payments, you definitely need to think about partnering with experts in payments before you become one yourself to start learning what that landscape looks like, to figure out how you can handle these chargebacks and potential fraud issues in efficient ways.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And as you start taking on more risk, ways that can ensure that you're optimizing the revenue that you're generating through payments for your platform.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And partnering before you bring that expertise in house and you get big enough to be able to afford it is key to make sure that you have a really good trajectory to become an expert in it yourself eventually as you become that enterprise and you become that large SaaS company that has a large volume of payments that you get to monetize.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, again, making sure that you have a partner who can walk you through it because you're you're not going to learn it overnight.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a lot to know, and that's what your partners are there for.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Having that partner, that's a good segue into the next question, Peter, for you.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So vendor switching or switching companies that you're working with for payments, it becomes inevitable for most of these SaaS companies as they kind of outgrow their initial setup.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are the most common signs a SaaS company has outgrown its current payments partner?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a lot of SaaS companies are uneducated about payments and not that and they probably should be.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's not surprising in the sense that that's not their main business, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: They're trying to build software for a certain clientele that delivers a certain type of value.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so in many cases, they may sign a referral agreement or agree to use some kind of more monolithic payment processing that doesn't really allow them this kind of like what we were talking about earlier, this customization to be able to really be able to take advantage of payments and really turn payments into another line of business.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: So if you think about SaaS, right, you've got subscription dollars coming in, you also want to have other lines of business, and payments can truly be another line of business where they can when they can make money.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think part of that is as they start to see one, what does it cost them in some cases to be able to take payments, they gain more expertise around payments and understand the different capabilities that you can get from embedding payments and using payments?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: They're working with a you know, a lot of times if you're working with a more professional, well-known and expert organization around payments, that helps to get them educated.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then they'll be looking at, hey, what are the other things that we can do to be able to generate more revenue through payments?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: And also, what are the other product offerings that we may want to offer to our customers that they may want to offer to their customers that help provide better stickiness and customer satisfaction, give them more options on what can be sold, and make their software itself more valuable.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's really a number of those different things that take place along that curve.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: I would say that, you know, as we've said before, payments can be very complicated.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so really gaining more expertise in payments becomes more and more important.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: And depending on how much value they want to extract, will also determine how much they invest themselves versus leveraging a partner that can provide them, you know, really that journey from just simply taking payments to being able to do very complex functions or adding additional financial products to their portfolio.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, Louis, sticking with that kind of switching theme, switching platforms or providers, as we all know, can be very painful both technically and operationally.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are some best practices that help SaaS companies navigate a payments migration with minimal disruption?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we talk about that customer experience all the time.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, kind of navigating that migration with minimal disruption to the merchants and to the developers.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, and that that's super important.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, you don't want to disrupt what you have going with what you've built.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: So the the first thing I would I would definitely advise out there is not to expect to have like a rapid overnight cutover.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't already built payments as a modular piece of your software, I would highly recommend you you kind of evaluate and get ready for that so that you can start looking at a transition plan in which you migrate your portfolio over time and you can switch to your new provider without disrupting the existing experience.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you can do it very deliberately and carefully.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: So first, just kind of make sure that every interaction you have with your existing payments provider, you have a modular way to choose a different provider and direct it toward the a new solution.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: After that, you then want to make sure you're aligning all of your user flows and your experiences.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So when the switch happens, you're either going to get the same or an improved experience for what you're providing right now.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's a good chance that the provider you're selecting isn't just for a better cost, but for also a better experience for the users, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So you're not going to degrade the overall journey, but you're going to make sure that what you're doing is going to improve it.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then just a lot of testing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just make sure that as I've probably mentioned before, you test all negative cases, all positive use cases, and you train all of your merchants as to any differences they may have as to the way that they're managing the payments that are coming through.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: So just getting everybody ready and then being able to deliberately migrate the portfolio over time and not expect a rapid overnight cutover.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, Peter, back to you.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So not all SaaS companies are e-commerce first.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Many deal with in-person transactions like companies in the field services vertical that we've talked about in prior episodes.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they operate or they operate in this kind of hybrid or omnichannel environment where they have both online and in-person.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, how should SaaS leaders think about card present strategies as part of a modern full commerce offering?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, a lot of people think that all of um all of payments is really around e-commerce, and especially for SaaS companies.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: If you start to really look at the evolution of SaaS companies from being more horizontal companies to being more verticalized, you know, we talked a little bit about civil services, but you have, you know, medical and dental, you have hair salons, you have pet bets, you have boarding services, those kind of things.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And in many cases, you probably are using a hybrid method of payment.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so that becomes super important to have what we would call an omni-channel approach to payments.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: And that means being able to absolutely offer e-commerce capabilities and being able to take payments either through a website, you know, through a mobile device, those kind of things.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: But it also requires some kind of ability to take card present capabilities.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so really when you're you know at a hair salon or something like that, they may have a point of sale terminal.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: So that makes it very easy for you to use that product offering.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: But when you think about things like field services or where people may come to your, may be come to your residence or your place of business, they have to bring a term, quote unquote, a terminal with them.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the advantages that in technologies that is becoming most interesting is really around Tap2Pay, which is the ability for one of those people to bring either what's known as a small puck, which is a device that can either be contactless and take a payment, or what's more being much more fastly adopted are things like Tap2Pay, which is really using your existing device, whether that's you know a phone, for example, as a payment terminal, and then being able to just be able to take a credit card payment or a digital wallet payment directly from that device.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so being able to have and think about the multiple ways that a consumer wants to pay, I think is the most critical, and making sure that it's it's very frictionless because you know, even card present strategies, you want them to be very, very frictionless.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: So even online strategies, you want to be very frictionless.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, when you start to think about subscriptions and subscription management for like gym services and things like that, you know, you also may want to keep a card on what we call card on file, which allows for, oh, I went to the restaurant at the gym or I took an extra class at the gym.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: I can just I don't have to re-enter all of my information again.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: That information is already tokenized at the location and it's secure.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: My payment information is secure.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so all I might have to do is do some kind of biometric capability to be able to allow for that payment to be taken.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so, really an omnichannel focus, and then also thinking about how many different ways the consumer may want to pay and being able to accept all of those different consumer offerings based on the software that you're providing to your customer or their customer's customer.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, Louis, sticking with sort of the card present or the omnichannel experiences from a technology standpoint, what tools, devices, and APIs matter the most for the SaaS platforms that need to support both card present and online experiences?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: As Peter pointed out, there's a lot of different ways to be able to integrate payments into a SaaS.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really gonna be dependent on what your SaaS is doing and how it is interacting with its end users.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that will guide the type of payment experience you're gonna end up technically integrating.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, if you have that field service technician and that you're always in areas that may not have reliable internet and you're already building your software to be able to work without reliable internet, so it's on device, you're going to need to find a technology partner that can work in that environment, that doesn't need to be always connected to the internet and can integrate with a payment device to be able to accept payment that way.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Not all providers support that, not all devices can support that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to make sure that you think about these scenarios.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: If your SaaS platform is built in a way that it always needs an internet connection, then it's okay for you to also have a device that also needs an internet connection.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it may actually be able to simplify the integration because then you can pick a device that's integrated via a cloud API, RESTful API, that it your SaaS platform can natively talk to directly.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to worry about on-device SDKs or any of that, and you can just send payment requests directly to an API because your software is always on the cloud, so can the payment device.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: So being able to choose a payment acceptance method that matches your software is really key.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Additionally, the concept of having test cards and an ability to test.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: You hear me talk about test a lot, but you can't just always test in software some of these scenarios.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to need to be able to physically present payment device in order to test.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: So ensure that you understand how you can get that support, whether it's software enabled via a mobile device or you actually have physical test cards in order to test the scenarios, is something that you need to become capable in doing as well.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally, from an API perspective, as I mentioned before, there's there's cloud APIs, there's on-device APIs that'll also help you integrate.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: But there's also non-device ways to accept payment that you may want to consider as well.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: So if you are in a business that interacts a lot via mobile phones or you send a lot of messages via text, you may also want to provide a payment link via text, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: You need to think about how you're sending those texts, who your your text provider is, or if your payment provider is doing that on your behalf to send payment links via text.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: QR codes as well.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you have payments that are able to be completed via QR code, how are you working within that ecosystem that makes sense for the user journey for your software?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not always just about devices, but also alternative ways to get that info, whether it could be text or QR code.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: You just need to make sure that you can support all those and you have a partner who can as well.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, Peter, this question's for you.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: As SaaS companies mature, payments often become the gateway to offering broader financial products.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So beyond lending, which I think we've talked about, what other financial or value added products are emerging as meaningful opportunities for these SaaS platforms?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say lending is still a very important component and it comes into two kind of pieces.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: One is um just you know being able to provide working capital for the Businesses themselves who are usually the customers of the SaaS provider.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: And the second is really, you know, consumer capabilities like BNPL, for example, buy now pay later technologies.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: But there are a number of other technologies that are interesting for these kinds of SaaS companies as well that kind of allow them to be able to do different things with payments.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so those things also include things like the ability to do payouts.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: So be able to think about I have received some revenue, but I need to pay out to maybe the plumber and also the company that is taking the money.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: So being able to manage those payouts or other ways of being able to give instant payments, right?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: So usually when something is charged on a credit card, it takes, it could take some amount of time for the merchant or the actual worker to get paid.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: You can do things like instant payouts, which provide a mechanism for being able to pay out more quickly, but usually there's a price associated with that where the again the SaaS company could benefit from that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: When we start to look at other things, especially like value-added services, you know, we start to look at especially around fraud tools and really with AI coming on board, fraud is becoming a bigger problem.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: And we're also seeing more regulation.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so there are the ability to sell, depending on the type of company that you're working with, sell and and deliver more value-added services around things like fraud tools, or if you're a company that does both takes both credit cards, and also maybe you want to be able to do invoicing and billing, or be able to do text-to-pay.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Those are again additional kind of components.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then it can go as far as we've we've seen organizations want to actually issue their own credit cards or do some kind of affinity program.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: They usually need to get big enough to be able to do that.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or also there's uh different types of loyalty programs that SaaS companies can put in place that may allow them to generate additional revenue streams.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: So payments is kind of the starting point.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's a number of building blocks, whether that's other financial products or there's other, because of the type of business that they are, there's other types of services that they would need that wouldn't go beyond just processing a credit card, for example.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Louis, so these products that Peter just mentioned, a bunch of them that can bring tremendous value and upside for these companies, but it also introduces new risks and definitely operational complexity.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So how can these SaaS platforms evaluate which financial products align with their vertical and their own internal readiness?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: So there's obviously the business proposition for a lot of these products and how they can impact a SaaS company.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Being that they're focused on their own software and the user journeys that they've created, there's definitely a need to understand how it impacts those journeys and if there is readiness to be able to consume any of these products.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, a number of these products will require a one-time onboarding for the merchant.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, how does that happen?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that built within your software?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do you already have the requisite information to be able to provide in order to board your merchants onto this?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: What gaps of information do you have?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: How will you attain it?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Do you keep it?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do you just relay it?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: So these are all types of considerations in order to be able to easily onboard your customers, your merchants, onto these additional financial products.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of this information may be reused if you have to board onto a network tokenization product or text-to-bay product, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you want to make that as easy and seamless as you can through your own software to your merchants so that you don't have to have them filling out forms for information you probably already have, or to make it burdensome that makes them kind of abandon the opportunity.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're trying to get them to consume these things and you probably want to make it as frictionless as you can and make sure that they understand the value proposition to them as well.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one-time boarding.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Additionally, how does it operationally impact the way that you're delivering your service?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is it seamless?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is there an extra step that a merchant may have to take in order to take advantage of it?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: What does that look like?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: So a product like network tokenization, there's a chance that you may need to do nothing and it's just seamless and you get the benefits from it by just simply boarding and turning it on.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Other products may be more involved and you have to readjust your existing user journeys for either your merchants or their end users in order to support the feature that you're trying to bring out.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: So really just understanding all of those points in which you need some either merchant or end user input and ways to make that as seamless and frictionless as you can from an operational standpoint?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, these are the types of considerations you need to think about.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, Peter, throughout the last episode in this one, we've really been talking about making that leap from sort of a payments-enabled SaaS company to a kind of a payments-first mentality.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, with that, what organizational changes across product, engineering, support, and go-to-market do these SaaS companies really need to be doing to be successful?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: So if you really want to become a payment-first company, you really need to start A, with a partner that gives you a level of expertise that can meet your particular needs.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then you can make certain decisions about what do you want to actually bring bring in-house.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so we've seen organizations, for example, be, you know, they hire a payment general manager.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that payment general manager who does have expertise in payments, then can start to make decisions about some of the things we talked about earlier.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: For example, about the different product offers that they want to make, the different lending components that they might have, network tokens we talked about, text-to-pay, invoicing, tap to pay.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like what are all those components that they may want to offer?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, those types of activities then require, for example, a go-to-market motion based on what they're choosing.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: It also requires maybe different types of product managers who are more focused on understanding the financial implications of the businesses that they are serving than it is about some of the other product offerings that are being there.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, when it comes to development and support, it's either making sure you have the right support organization that can support and do first-line support or working with, again, a strong partner who can take those more sophisticated payment calls, understands your business, but when it comes to payments, can be able to, you can either take those directly or offload those to another partner.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: As you're looking to take more, you know, rip more risks, for example, then you may need an underwriting group, you may need more for a compliance organization.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then when it comes to engineering, which is really Luis's domain, I would say, you know, you end up with people who need to have more experience with payments, understanding how the APIs work, what are the actually opportunities so that they can ensure that there's the best customer experience, which is really the core goal of a lot of these SaaS companies to be successful, is around customer experience.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so depending on the route they take around being payment first will impact the way that they look at and have to deal with the organizational changes that they'll they'll want to make.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: And most of the time we see that as more of a, you know, we see that as an evolution, not a revolution.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, as we kind of talked earlier in the show about, you know, starting as a startup and then growing their business, the whole business is evolving over time.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: The streams of revenue can continue to evolve between subscriber and payment revenue, and then really moving into more financial products can really help them generate even more revenue and provide more product offerings and more value to their software.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, final question for both of you.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Peter, we'll stick with you.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, looking ahead, what does the next evolution of the SaaS plus payments ecosystem look like as these platforms expand into payments, financial services, and other deeper monetization models?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there's a couple of you know kind of continuing trends within our industry that are very exciting and interesting.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, one certainly is around cyber coins, and you know, you we hear a lot about Bitcoin and Ethereum and those types of using those kind of things as payment devices.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: For the most part, those are being used as um stored value, right, which are more investment products.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: But there are people who have now, you know, have a lot of those types of assets that want to spend them on everyday things.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that merchants have a hard time accepting those types of payments and accepting that level of risk.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: So there are companies that you know you can work with and you know have partnerships with that maybe turn immediately turn a cyber cybercoin or Bitcoin, for example, into fiat currency almost immediately to the uh back to the merchant, and they do charge, they would charge a fee for that.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: The other interesting place is probably more so around stable coins and more stable coins for cross-border payments.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: So you're seeing, you know, it can be very expensive to do cross-border payments, and stable coins looks to be one of the ways that organizations um and companies who are trying to have more of a global presence may want to use or leverage stable coins as a payment mechanism.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: I also think other area that is very interesting is really around open banking and being able to really maximize and leverage the consumer, allowing them to access banking information from a variety of places and really have take more ownership over their financial life and how that might be impacted by a SaaS company.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then finally, I think the most interesting for me personally, and I think probably also maybe for Luis, is really around agenic commerce.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I think when people are talking about Agenic Commerce today, they're really thinking about oh, there's an agent and that goes kind of screen scrapes in eat, you know, a site and then allows you to pay for that.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: But really, what's the trend that I think that's getting very exciting is I as a consumer now will be able to say, hey, you know, it's it, let's say it's it's Christmas time, I want holiday lights, I need them in these different types of colors, and it needs to be eight feet long and make sure it looks, and I want to be able to see how it looks on my house.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: And Genic Agent goes out to all of these different catalogs that are out there and looks for the right set of products without ever actually going to a quote unquote website that we have today and finds me the right product.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: And using technologies, for example, like tokenization, I would then be able to just immediately pay through, pay for that through some type of biometric device.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think, you know, we're very early in the in the time of a genet commerce.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's probably the most exciting part of the market that I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves over time.
• 30:58
  unknown: Okay.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Luis, your thoughts?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't have said it better myself, Peter.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm definitely excited about the last part that I'll expand on right now.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I really see an evolution towards kind of changing the way that people consume and and purchase things.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: While right now we're in the middle of this verticalization through software, right?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: So people aren't just always manually taking payment anymore in a virtual terminal or on a key device, right?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's integrated into a software that is for a specific vertical, for whatever type of business is out there.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: What I'm excited about seeing next is how these are discovered.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And more and more AI and agents are out there being the front door to a lot of these discovery.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: And the ability to complete that transaction through that same discovery is, I think, something that we're really paying attention to, and that's really exciting.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I love Peter's analogy.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm looking forward to the time, and we were talking about this earlier.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Christmas is coming up when this is being recorded, right?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I would love to be able to like have some help with my shopping list, right?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: And if I've been talking to my agent about the things that my family and my friends like, it's already trained and knows and might even remember a conversation I had about, hey, this might be a good gift for someone.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: How about this on this side?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: I would have never found it by myself, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a way where I'm helping, it's helping me in the discovery of these products, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: So for SaaS companies, right, they're all not necessarily gonna build this themselves.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna find partners and companies that will give them access to this ability to be discoverable through these agents.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of where it's it's it's I think going through next.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: So while companies are focused on their journey and their product and they're thinking about the humans on the other end, they also got to start thinking about the agents on the other end who are also looking at their catalogs, that are also looking at their services and finding ways to make sure that they can get discovered through these new ways to shop.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you both for being on the show today.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today and doing this series with me.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: We really appreciate your time as well.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And until the next story.com, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 33:25
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