06 Revenue

Embedded payments upside

How much revenue per customer could payments add, and at what adoption do payments overtake subscriptions?

For CEOs and CFOs of software sold to small businesses, and the investors who back them. Takes about three minutes.

Your numbers

1Your software business

Currency

Customers

Who your customers are

Picking a vertical fills typical fee, cost, risk and adoption. Payment volume fills in only for US dollars. Starting points, not benchmarks.

Subscription revenue per customer, per month

2Your customers' payments

Card payments each customer takes, per month

The value of card payments their business takes from its own customers.

How you earn from payments

We run payments A partner runs them and shares revenue

Fee charged on each payment

Your cost per payment: card networks, banks and processor

Fraud, disputes and payment support

As a share of what you keep from payments.

Other financial products per customer who uses payments, per month

Cash advances, business accounts or cards. Leave at 0 to look at payments alone.

3Adoption

Customers who use your payments

Months to reach that share

The answer

1.0×

Revenue per customer

Added a year at that adoption

Adoption where payments overtake

Revenue per customer, per month

SubscriptionPayments and other financial products

Revenue per customer as adoption grows

SubscriptionPayments, average customer

Your year, in revenue

Revenue	First 12 months	A year at full adoption

Take the result with you

A PDF report with your inputs, results, charts and method. Or the same as plain text for an email.

How this tool works

What it does

Software for small businesses often sits where those businesses take payments: bookings, orders, invoices. If you process those payments, you keep a small share of a large flow. This tool shows how much that adds per customer, and how many customers must use it before payments earn more than subscriptions.

What you enter

Customers and subscription revenue. What a customer pays you for the software today.
Payment volume. The card payments a typical customer takes each month.
Fee and cost. What you'd charge per payment and what the card networks, banks and processor charge you. The gap is what you keep.
Risk. Fraud, disputes and the support payments need, as a share of what you keep.
Adoption. The share of customers who use your payments, and how many months that takes.

What you get

Revenue per customer compared with subscription alone.
The overtake point. The adoption at which payments revenue equals subscription revenue.
Coin stacks. Subscription, payments for a customer who uses them, and the average customer.
First-year revenue, with adoption ramping up month by month, next to a full year at your target adoption.

The maths, assumptions and sources

Payments revenue per customer who uses them = monthly card payments × (fee − cost) × (1 − risk share) + other financial products. Average payments revenue per customer = that × adoption. Payments overtake subscriptions when adoption = subscription revenue ÷ payments revenue per customer who uses them. In the first year, adoption grows in a straight line until it reaches your target. The tool doesn't model any effect of payments on customer retention.

Stripe survey of 200 SaaS leaders (October 2026): 34% of vertical platforms serving small businesses expect embedded finance to be their largest revenue source in 2027, against 3% of horizontal platforms. 60% of platforms say embedded finance will be very important or mission-critical to retention.
Shen, Tan, Amble and Strange (2020). Fintech Scales Vertical SaaS. Andreessen Horowitz. They estimate fintech can raise revenue per customer 2 to 5 times. Their example: about $150 a month for software and about $100 a month from payments.