Latest / Leaders In Payments / Embedded Finance Special Series: How vSaaS Turn Payments into Growth with Marni Mullikin, Maverick | Episode 516

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Embedded Finance Special Series: How vSaaS Turn Payments into Growth with Marni Mullikin, Maverick | Episode 516 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Literature Payments Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as many of you know, embedded finance has quickly become one of the most important conversations in payments and fintech.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: More vertical software companies are looking beyond their core platforms and exploring how payments and other financial products can create new revenue, strengthen customer relationships, and deliver a more seamless experience.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is also the focus of Embedify, the Embedded Finance Summit I'm hosting on October 13th in Lehigh, Utah, where vertical staff leaders, technology providers, and industry experts will come together to discuss how embedded finance is being built and deployed in the real world.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be talking not only about payments, but also lending, banking, insurance, accounting, and payroll.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn more at Embedify2026.com.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: As we lead up to the event, I'm talking with industry leaders who are helping software companies navigate the embedded finance opportunity.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Joining me today is Marty Mullikan, the Director of Platform Growth at Maverick Payments.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Marnie, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Gray.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, Marnie, before we get into embedded finance and payments, tell us a little bit about your background and the path that led you into the payments industry.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right after college, I was looking for something to dive right into.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I met some great people in the payments industry, and I became fascinated with something as simple as money movement, but also how important payments is to a business and how that will make companies operate more efficiently, create better experiences.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got to do everything.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I got to do all the sales, the onboarding, the activation, the support, all that sort of stuff.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I've seen all the phases of how a business would interact with payments.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, wow, this is really something that needs more strategy behind it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this could be actually a really great lever for other businesses.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, let's just dive in.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just kind of how I went into payments.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I started off in an early payment processing technology company and then really enjoyed working with partners, looking beyond technology, finding how payments would work for businesses.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell us about your role at Maverick today and how you work with software companies and other partners.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: At Maverick, I work closely with software companies that are developing embedded payments and a broader embedded payments finance strategies.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So my role goes beyond implementation.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I spend a lot of time helping partners think strategically about how payments fits into their business from initial planning through launch, adoption, and long-term growth.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of the very first conversations I have with them is if embedded payments is actually the right fit for their platform and what success looks like.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: We help define goals, ownership models, and the business outcomes that they're trying to achieve.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: From there, we focus on product strategy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: How does payments fit naturally into their software experience?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then how can we create a seamless workflow for users?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And how might payments become a foundation for additional financial services for them over time?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: After implementation, I've continuously work closely with them.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: We help partners drive merchant adoption, develop go-to-market plans, and optimize performance over time.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that means collaborating across their executive leadership, their product teams, their sales operations, and all their customer success teams, just to ensure there's that alignment and understanding of embedded payments.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about that role is we're not just talking about payment processing, we're helping that software company view payments as a strategic growth opportunity that can improve customers' experiences, increase engagement, and then also create new revenue streams, which is also very important for businesses.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to dive into a lot of those things in this conversation.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: But before we go there, for the listeners who may not be familiar with Maverick, can you just give us a brief overview of the company, maybe the customers and partners you serve, and maybe where Maverick fits into the overall industry?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maverick is a full service payments provider specializing in embedded payments and software partnerships.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we work primarily with vertical SaaS providers that want to embed and white label payments inside their platform.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what makes Maverick unique is that we are a unified infrastructure that connects multiple processors and banking relationships through one single API.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: That allows software companies to offer embedded payments without having to become a payment facilitator, an ISO.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to take on all that operational and regulatory complexity that comes with that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: We can handle all that internally.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: We handle the entire merchant lifecycle in-house.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that includes underwriting, risk management, onboarding, and then the ongoing customer support.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: That gives our partner one agreement, one dashboard, and one support as they grow.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And another area where we stand apart is our ability to support complex and higher risk merchant categories that many providers struggle to accommodate.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have the infrastructure, the expertise, and we can help manage those challenges, which allows our partners to support a broader range of customers.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, our partners bring the merchant relationship and the customer experience.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we provide the payments infrastructure behind the stains.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that allows software companies to focus serving on their customers while we participate in economics and strategic value that payments can create on the back end.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk about embedded finance kind of a broader view.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And as you well know, it extends beyond payments now into areas like lending and banking and insurance and payroll and even accounting.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you view that broader embedded finance opportunity for these vertical SaaS companies?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And why has that become such an important strategic conversation?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think the biggest misconception about embedded finance is that it's about adding more financial products.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: In reality, it's more about integrating financial services into workflows in a way that solves problems for customers.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So businesses today want fewer systems to manage, fewer vendors to work with.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: They want financial services to exist where they're already doing their work.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really what's driving the growth behind embedded finance.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Vertical SaaS companies are especially well positioned because they understand their customers' industries.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: They know the workflows, the pain points, and the moments where financial services can remove friction.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So payments are usually the starting point, but over time that kicks ban, like you said, into areas like banking, lending, payroll, or expense management.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: The key is not trying to offer everything.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: The most successful platforms I've seen focus on providing the right solution at the right moment in the customer's workflow.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the platforms that win won't necessarily have the most financial products.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: They'll have the ones that are the simplest and most efficient experience for the customers.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of, I think most people know payments is often it's the first financial product the software companies embed.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be a natural for everyone, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has to accept payments.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: But why are payments such a natural starting point?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then how does it create the foundation for some of these broader financial products that we're talking about?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's just such a natural starting point.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Every business needs to get paid.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: It would be the logical way to go is like, yeah, I got to go do payments, and then I'll branch out into other financial products.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, of course, that's that universal and immediate use case that we see.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: The immediate value comes from things like faster revenue collection, so improved cash flow, greater convenience, and a reduced administrative burden.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: But strategically, payments are more important because they create ongoing engagement between the customer and the platform.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they're in there a lot more frequently.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: That generates valuable data insights.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: It strengthens customer relationships and builds trust around that money movement.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Over time, that foundation creates opportunities to introduce additional financial services where it makes sense.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I often describe payments as both a customer experience solution and a platform growth strategy.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned this earlier, some of the upfront conversations or internal decisions.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So before a software company even starts selecting technology or negotiating the deal, what internal decisions should the company be making about their payment strategy, how it affects their customer experience, and sort of how it fits with their long-term goals?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really great question.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the most successful implementations start with strategy rather than technology.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So before evaluating providers, software companies should ask themselves some fundamental questions, like what are some of the business outcomes they're trying to achieve?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is the goal new revenue, customer retention, platform engagement, or is it some kind of combination of both?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: They all should spend some time understanding your customers' needs, what payment pain points exist today, where are the workflow inefficiencies, and what experience are customers expecting?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Another important decision is determining how much ownership they want over payments.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are they looking for a referral model, a fully embedded model, or a payments-led growth strategy?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So organizations need to assess internal readiness, is one of the things I also recommend.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does leadership support the initiative?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are product sales and customer success teams aligned to this initiative?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then do these software companies have the resources required to make this program successful?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: In my experience, many of the biggest mistakes happen before a provider is ever selected.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Success starts with clarity around what the customer outcomes look like and what the ultimate business objectives are.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: This next question, I think, has been the question for many, many years.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: How should a vertical SaaS company decide which parts of the experience they want to own versus which responsibilities they want to give to their payments partner?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Generally speaking, I think software companies should own the customer relationship, product experience, and the brand experience.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Those areas are core to how customers perceive and interact with their platform.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they should remain under the software company's control.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, responsibilities like risk management, compliance, underwriting, the regulatory compliance are often better handled by a payments provider with the infrastructure expertise to manage that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So this becomes especially important when supporting more complex and higher risk mergent categories.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Building that expertise internally can be expensive, difficult, and distracting from the company's core mission.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the right partnership allows a software company to maintain control over the customer experience while relying on a trusted payments partner to manage that complexity behind the scenes.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, the question isn't simply what a company wants to own.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's what merchants they want to support and whether their payments provider can help them do that successfully.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Marnie, you've mentioned high risk a couple of times.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you maybe define that a little?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think most of our audience will know, but can you define that and maybe give a few examples?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So high risk are businesses that tend to pose a little bit more financial risk to organizations, reputational risk, things like that, that may require some additional verification or registration from the card brands.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: So some of those high-risk verpos that we support are going to be the CDD, hemp, the smoke shops, firearms, gaming, online gaming in government.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: You see a lot of that, we would think that government is not higher risk, but because of the size of tickets, how a lot of these government municipalities are processing, things like that, government can get some additional interchange incentives based on how they're processing.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some additional verification that we do with the car brands to help support those businesses.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've worked with software companies throughout the implementation phase, through launch and through ongoing partner success.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: What tends to separate a smooth, successful launch from one that becomes slower and is more difficult than expected?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest lessons I've learned in successful launches is it's driven by business alignment more than technology.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: The strongest implementations have executive sponsorship, have a clear understanding of what success looks like.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Leadership is committed to those goals.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're defined properly, and everyone understands why that initiative matters.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Cross-functional collaboration is another key factor.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Product, sales, marketing, operations, and customer success.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: All of those teams are aligned.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: They understand how the product works, how it aligns with their merchants.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then adoption planning should start much earlier than most companies think.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Merchant communication, enablement materials, training, and support strategies.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: That all should be developed before launch, not after.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, I think the customer experience needs to be super simple.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Clear value proposition, streamlined onboarding, middle friction can make a tremendous difference in adoption rates as well as signup rates to onboarding is very important.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So the companies that treat payments as business and initiative rather than a technology product tend to see the best results.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of a follow-on question to that one, or very related.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, getting a payments program live is one thing, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's definitely a great milestone.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then how do you get customers to start using it?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole nother conversation.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, in your experience, what are the most effective things that software companies can do to help drive that adoption and make payments feel a more valuable part of the platform overall, as opposed to like a bolted-on type of product?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Getting payments program live is only the first step.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's usually what I'll tell partners, hey, you've hit the first step, but here's where comes the real work.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And adoption is really where the real value is created.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: One mistake sometimes I see with companies is talking about payments as a feature instead of a business outcome.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So customers aren't buying features, they're buying faster payments, better cash flow, improved efficiency, less administrative work.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's why the value proposition needs to be clear and practical.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Reducing onboarding friction is also critical.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned that earlier.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: The faster customers can get onboarded, signed up, and activated, the quicker they start seeing value, the higher adoption rates tend to be, is what I've seen.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then internal teams play a major role.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's two-fold customer and then the internal team.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that we've got our sales support and customer success teams need to understand the product and be able to confidently communicate its benefits to those merchants.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Most importantly, payments should feel like a natural part of the workflow.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: When payments are tightly integrated into how customers operate their business every day, adoption becomes much easier because that product feels essential rather than optional.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: As embedded finance continues to evolve, what do you believe the most successful vertical SaaS companies will do differently to turn payments and eventually other financial products into a meaningful part of their customer experience and their growth strategy?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think that again, the most successful software companies will view payments as a strategic product, not simply as a feature.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: They'll stay relentlessly focused on the customer experience and use payments data better to understand customer needs and identify growth opportunities.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: They'll expand into additional financial services thoughtfully and intentionally, because naturally they're like we've overcome the payments part.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: We understand what that looks like.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of chasing trends, companies will introduce new products with those services that solve real workflow problems for their customers.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: That will be another differentiator, will be a partner selection.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the best platforms will work with partners that can support a broad range of merchants and scale alongside their business over time.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So what I think they'll avoid is assumption that all merchants are the same.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: They'll recognize merchant approval, onboarding, and ongoing support are critical growth drivers.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, they'll remember that customers don't wake up wanting embedded finance.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: The companies that make business operations simpler, more efficient, and more accessible will be the ones that create lasting value.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And those are some of the things that I've seen as time has gone on in my career.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Marnie, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I just again wanted to thank you for being here.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know your time's super valuable.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So again, thank you for being on the show.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing your insights and really looking forward to having Maverick at the show and being there in person with the vertical SaaS people that will be there.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for doing this.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate your time.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for Halloween.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to meeting you in person.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And to learn more about Embedify and to register to attend, visit Embedify2026.com.