If you run a SaaS platform that serves merchants, you’re not comparing payment processors in the same way a merchant would.

A merchant wants to know what they’ll pay per transaction. Your SaaS platform needs to know what merchants will pay, what the payment provider will charge you, and how much of the remaining margin you can keep.

That’s why simply picking the lowest advertised rate isn’t enough.

Two providers can put a similar processing rate in front of your merchants while leaving your platform with very different economics.

A headline rate like 2.9% + $0.30 doesn’t tell you:

• How much your platform pays the provider
• How much control you have over merchant pricing
• Whether your platform receives a revenue share
• What platform, account, and payout fees apply
• How much payment revenue your platform ultimately keeps

You’ll also need to compare white-label capabilities, merchant onboarding, payment channels, support, and the operational responsibilities your team takes on.

This guide explains how payment processing costs work for SaaS platforms and compares six embedded payment providers side by side.

Book a call with our team to learn how we can help you improve your platform’s payment economics.

Payment processing fees compared: six embedded payment providers*

Provider	Pricing and SaaS revenue model	Platform monthly/SaaS fee	What to watch out for
Fiska	Interchange pass-through + custom markup, with a 50/50 share of the resulting profit	$0	Model your margin against your merchants’ card mix and payment volume
Stripe Connect	Stripe-set pricing with potential revenue share, or platform-set merchant pricing	$0 when Stripe controls pricing. Platform-set pricing adds active-account and payout fees	Your account model changes your pricing control, costs, and operational responsibilities
Finix	Pass-through costs + provider markup, with merchant pricing configured by your platform	$2.50 per active sub-merchant + $5 merchant onboarding fee	Payout, dispute, account updater, and other product fees can add up
Worldpay for Platforms	Custom, quote-based pricing with configurable merchant fees	Custom	Your economics depend on the commercial agreement you negotiate
Rainforest	Interchange and network costs + a tiered buy rate, with your platform keeping the spread	No published monthly SaaS fee	Risk and usage fees apply, while flat-rate merchant pricing can create margin variability
Tilled	Contracted buy rate combined with a platform revenue share	$500 or $2,500 per month, depending on tier	Your payment margin needs to cover the fixed monthly fee before your platform becomes profitable

Pricing shown reflects publicly available US pricing as of September 2026 and is subject to change. Actual costs may vary by volume, merchant category, card mix, risk profile, payment channel, and negotiated agreement. Confirm the complete pricing schedule directly with each provider.

The anatomy of a payment processing fee

Suppose a merchant using your SaaS platform makes a $100 sale and pays a processing rate of 2.9% + $0.30.

The merchant is charged $3.20.

But that $3.20 isn’t your SaaS platform’s revenue. It covers several different costs and margins.

1. Interchange goes to the bank that issued the customer’s card. It’s generally the largest underlying cost and changes based on factors such as card type, payment channel, merchant category, and transaction data.
2. Network fees go to card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. These include assessments and other charges attached to moving the transaction through the network.
3. The payment provider’s fee covers the infrastructure used to onboard merchants, process payments, move funds, manage risk, and provide payment functionality.
4. Your SaaS platform’s margin is the amount your platform retains after the underlying costs and provider charges have been accounted for.

The merchant-facing processing rate tells you what your merchant pays. It doesn’t tell you how much your platform keeps.

To understand your actual payment economics, calculate:

Merchant processing fees − interchange and network costs − provider fees − additional platform costs = net payment revenue for your SaaS platform

Those additional costs may include active-account fees, payout charges, monthly platform fees, dispute fees, and other product charges.

Flat-rate vs interchange-plus pricing

With flat-rate pricing, your merchant pays one predictable rate, such as 2.9% + $0.30.

It’s easy for your sales team to explain and easy for merchants to understand. But if your platform pays variable interchange underneath, your margin can change based on the cards your merchants accept.

With interchange-plus pricing, the merchant pays the underlying interchange and network costs plus a defined markup.

This gives your platform more visibility into costs and can produce a more consistent markup. The trade-off is that the merchant’s effective rate changes from one transaction to another.

Some SaaS platforms use a hybrid model, offering simple flat-rate pricing to smaller merchants and interchange-plus pricing to larger or more price-sensitive accounts.

What’s important is that your merchant pricing and your provider pricing aren’t always the same. Your SaaS platform needs to understand both.

Learn more: What you need to know about pricing models in SaaS payments

Referral payments vs embedded payments: how they differ

There are two main ways your SaaS platform can offer payments to merchants.

1. Referral payments. Your platform sends merchants to a separate payment processor. The merchant creates an account with that provider, accepts its pricing and terms, and manages payment activity through the provider’s systems.
2. Embedded payments. Payment onboarding, acceptance, reporting, and management are built into your SaaS product. A payment provider still supplies the infrastructure, but the merchant experience is led through your platform.

	Referral payments	Embedded payments
Merchant onboarding	Usually happens on the provider’s website	Happens through your SaaS platform
Merchant pricing	Controlled by the provider	Often configured by your platform
Platform revenue	Referral fee or limited partner commission	Transaction-based margin or revenue share
Payment experience	Separate provider branding and login	Embedded or white-labelled inside your product
Merchant relationship	Shared with the payment provider	Led by your SaaS platform
Implementation	Faster and lighter	Requires an integration
Strategic control	Limited	Greater control over pricing, data, and experience

A referral model can work when your SaaS platform only wants to make payments available as a convenience.

But if your goal is to control the merchant experience and create recurring payment revenue, the more relevant comparison is between embedded payment providers.

Why embedded payments are a stronger choice for SaaS platforms looking to scale

A referral payment is usually fixed.

For example, a merchant might process $8,000 every month while your platform receives a one-time $30 referral fee.

Embedded payments connect your revenue to the merchant’s ongoing payment volume.

If your SaaS platform retains 0.5% of that same $8,000, it’ll earn $40 each month. Across a growing merchant base, that can become a meaningful revenue line.

Here’s why embedded payments might be a better choice for your platform:

A revenue line that scales with your merchants, not your seat count

Subscription revenue grows when your platform adds customers, seats, modules, or higher-priced plans.

Embedded payment revenue can also grow when your existing merchants process more.

That means your platform can earn more from a merchant as the merchant’s own business grows, without needing to sell another software seat.

Pricing and margin you set yourself

With the right embedded payment partner, your SaaS platform can control the rate merchants pay.

You might charge every merchant the same flat rate or create different pricing for different merchant segments.

A smaller merchant may value simplicity and accept a higher rate. A high-volume merchant may need more competitive pricing. You can also price online and in-person payments differently or include payment features in a wider software package.

Your platform can then create a margin above the underlying payment cost.

You won’t get that level of control when the merchant signs up with a payment processor directly.

A retention advantage that compounds

When a merchant’s payments run through your SaaS platform, leaving means replacing more than the software.

The merchant may also need to change its payment setup, reporting, payout process, stored credentials, and reconciliation workflows.

That makes your platform harder to replace and gives the merchant another reason to stay.

A feature merchants increasingly expect

Merchants want to take payments inside the software they already use to run their business.

They don’t want to manage one system for operations and another for onboarding, transactions, payouts, and disputes.

A SaaS platform with embedded payments feels more complete. A platform without them risks sending an important part of the merchant experience somewhere else.

6 leading embedded payment processing providers

Fiska: embedded payments specifically designed for scaling SaaS platforms

Since we’re writing this article, we’ll start with ourselves.

Fiska is an embedded payments partner built specifically for SaaS platforms that serve merchants.

Our goal is to help your platform turn payment processing into a recurring revenue stream without turning your team into payment specialists.

Here’s what you get when you partner with us.

A revenue share, with no platform fees

Fiska runs on interchange pass-through plus a custom markup.

Your SaaS platform controls the pricing presented to merchants. You can use flat-rate pricing, interchange-plus pricing, or a combination of the two.

The resulting profit is split between your platform and Fiska.

There’s no platform fee, setup fee, or monthly minimum. Your SaaS platform doesn’t need to clear a fixed-cost hurdle before it starts earning payment revenue.

Keep the entire payment experience under your brand

Every time a merchant is redirected to a third-party payment page, it reminds them that part of the experience belongs to another provider.

This often happens during merchant onboarding, checkout, reporting, payouts, and dispute management.

Fiska keeps the merchant-facing experience under your SaaS platform’s brand.

Your merchants can onboard, accept payments, review transactions, and manage payouts without being sent to a separately branded payment product.

Your platform remains the relationship the merchant sees, while Fiska supplies the infrastructure behind it.

Read more: What to look for in a white-label payment solution

Offer online, in-person, and mobile payments through one API integration

A SaaS platform serving merchants across multiple channels can easily end up maintaining separate systems for ecommerce, mobile, and in-person payments.

That creates more engineering work, fragmented reporting, and harder reconciliation.

Fiska brings online, mobile, and in-person payments into one integration.

Universal tokenization also allows your merchants to recognize returning customers and securely reuse stored payment credentials across supported channels.

Read more: Omnichannel payment solutions for SaaS: A complete guide

Get hands-on support for payment issues

When a merchant has a payment problem, your SaaS support team is often the first place they turn.

A generic provider ticket queue can turn a simple issue into a long delay, particularly when the support representative doesn’t understand your platform.

Fiska gives your team direct access to Level 1 and Level 2 payment support through Slack, phone, or email.

The support team becomes familiar with your SaaS platform, merchant model, and payment setup, so your team doesn’t need to explain the business from scratch every time.

Your platform remains the merchant’s main point of contact. When an issue requires deeper payment expertise, Fiska can help your team troubleshoot it and step in directly when necessary.

Stripe Connect

Stripe Connect is a widely used payment product for platforms, with extensive developer tools and a broad range of payment features.

• Pricing model: Stripe can set merchant pricing, or your SaaS platform can set its own pricing. Standard US online card processing starts at 2.9% + $0.30.
• Platform revenue: Qualifying platforms may receive revenue share when Stripe controls merchant pricing. Alternatively, your platform can set merchant rates and collect fees itself.
• Extra fees: When your platform controls pricing, Stripe charges $2 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + $0.25 per payout. Other payment products may carry additional fees.
• White labelling: Stripe offers embedded and branded components, although the level of control depends on your account model and implementation.

Read more: How Stripe Connect revenue share works

Finix

Finix provides embedded payment infrastructure and PayFac-as-a-Service capabilities for SaaS platforms.

• Pricing model: Published standard pricing passes through third-party costs and adds 0.30% + $0.15 per card transaction. Custom agreements are also available.
• Platform revenue: Your SaaS platform can configure merchant pricing and retain the margin created above its underlying costs.
• Extra fees: Published fees include $5 for merchant onboarding and $2.50 per active sub-merchant each month. Payout, dispute, account updater, authentication, and other fees may also apply.
• White labelling: Finix offers branded merchant onboarding, dashboards, emails, and subdomains.

Finix gives your SaaS platform several ways to configure merchant pricing.

However, its full fee schedule contains a number of additional line items. Your platform should model those costs against merchant count, transaction attempts, payout frequency, and dispute volume rather than comparing the transaction markup alone.

Read more: Finix pricing review: Pricing model, extra fees, and alternatives for SaaS

Worldpay for Platforms

Worldpay for Platforms offers embedded payment infrastructure for SaaS companies with more complex or enterprise-level requirements.

• Pricing model: Custom and quote-based.
• Platform revenue: Your SaaS platform can configure fixed or percentage-based fees for individual merchants, merchant groups, or transactions.
• Extra fees: Not publicly disclosed.
• White labelling: Merchant onboarding and payment functionality can be embedded into your platform’s experience.

The flexibility may suit larger SaaS platforms, but the lack of published pricing makes direct comparison more difficult.

Your platform should ask for a full breakdown of processing costs, account fees, payment-product fees, and the exact method used to calculate platform revenue.

Rainforest

Rainforest is built specifically for vertical SaaS platforms and uses a buy-rate model.

• Pricing model: Interchange and network costs are passed through, with the published buy rate starting at 0.30% + $0.30 per card transaction.
• Platform revenue: Your SaaS platform sets the merchant price and keeps the spread above Rainforest’s buy rate.
• Extra fees: Risk-management, payout, dispute, account updater, authentication, and terminal fees may apply.
• White labelling: Rainforest provides brandable onboarding, payment, reporting, and chargeback components.

Because Rainforest uses a buy rate rather than a traditional revenue split, your platform retains the spread it creates.

However, if your SaaS charges merchants a flat rate while paying variable interchange underneath, changes in card mix can affect your margin.

Tilled

Tilled is a PayFac-as-a-Service provider for SaaS platforms that want to monetize payments without becoming a registered payment facilitator.

• Pricing model: A contracted buy rate combined with revenue sharing.
• Platform revenue: Tilled publishes a 70% revenue share below $5 million in monthly processing volume and an 80% share above $5 million.
• Extra fees: Published SaaS fees are $500 or $2,500 per month, depending on the platform tier.
• White labelling: Branded merchant applications, consoles, transactional emails, and payment links are available.

The key question for your SaaS platform is whether the revenue-share percentage offsets the fixed monthly fee.

A platform with significant payment volume may absorb the fee easily. A SaaS platform starting with a small number of active merchants may need to build more payment margin before the model becomes profitable.

Find the right payment partner for your SaaS platform

The right embedded payment partner isn’t necessarily the provider advertising the lowest transaction rate.

Your SaaS platform needs to compare the complete commercial model:

• What merchants pay
• What your platform pays
• How much pricing control you have
• How platform revenue is calculated
• Which fees are deducted
• How much of the merchant experience you control
• What support and operational responsibilities are included

Model each provider at your current payment volume, expected volume, and an upside scenario.

The provider with the lowest transaction markup won’t always leave your SaaS platform with the highest net revenue.

Fiska gives your platform control over merchant pricing, a 50% share of the resulting profit, and hands-on payment support without platform fees or monthly minimums.

Find out if Fiska is the right embedded payment partner for your SaaS platform. Book a call today.

FAQ: payment processing fees compared for SaaS platforms

What’s a typical payment processing fee?

Merchant-facing card processing fees often fall between approximately 1.5% and 3.5% per transaction, depending on the card, payment channel, location, merchant category, and pricing model.

But that range doesn’t tell your SaaS platform how much it’ll earn.

Your platform also needs to compare the underlying card costs, provider markup, revenue-share structure, and additional platform fees.

What payment processing fees does a SaaS platform pay?

Your SaaS platform may pay interchange, card-network fees, a provider transaction markup, per-transaction charges, monthly platform fees, active-merchant fees, payout fees, dispute fees, and fees for additional payment products.

The exact combination depends on the provider and operating model you choose.

What’s a payment processing buy rate?

A buy rate is the underlying price your SaaS platform pays its embedded payment provider.

Your platform can charge merchants a higher sell rate. The difference between the merchant price and the buy rate creates the gross margin available to your SaaS platform before other costs are deducted.

How do SaaS platforms make money from payment processing?

A SaaS platform can earn payment revenue by charging merchants more than the underlying cost of processing.

Depending on the provider, your platform may keep the full spread above a buy rate, split the margin with the provider, or receive a defined revenue share.

That revenue can grow as more merchants activate payments and existing merchants process more volume.

How does embedded payment revenue sharing work?

In a revenue-share model, the provider calculates the eligible payment margin and divides it between the provider and your SaaS platform.

Your platform should confirm which costs are deducted before the split.

Two providers can offer the same headline revenue-share percentage while producing very different net revenue for your SaaS business.

Is flat-rate or interchange-plus pricing better for a SaaS platform?

Neither model is always better.

Flat-rate merchant pricing is simpler to sell and easier for merchants to understand, but it can expose your platform to changes in underlying interchange costs.

Interchange-plus pricing provides more visibility and can create a more consistent markup, but the merchant’s effective rate varies.

Some SaaS platforms offer both models to different merchant segments.

What’s the difference between referral and embedded payments for a SaaS platform?

With referral payments, your platform sends merchants to a separate processor and usually has limited control over pricing, branding, and the payment relationship.

With embedded payments, payment functions sit inside your SaaS product. Your platform can have greater control over merchant pricing, the payment experience, and transaction-based revenue.

*Competitor descriptions, pricing figures, product capabilities, revenue-share terms, and fee examples are based on publicly available information reviewed on 30 September 2026 and may change without notice. 

Sources

• www.stripe.com/connect/pricing
• www.docs.stripe.com/connect/saas
• www.docs.stripe.com/connect/platform-pricing-tools
• www.support.stripe.com/questions/monetizing-payments-with-stripe-connect
• www.stripe.com/connect/features
• www.finix.com/pricing/platforms
• www.finix.com/pricing/direct-merchants
• www.finix.com/pricing/payouts-pricing
• www.docs.finix.com/guides/platform-payments/monetizing-payments/available-fees
• www.finix.com/resources/blogs/mastering-interchange-fees-minimizing-costs-with-finix
• www.platforms.worldpay.com/en/embedded-payments/
• www.platforms.worldpay.com/en/embedded-payments/configurable-fees/
• www.platforms.worldpay.com/en/brand-facts/
• www.platforms.worldpay.com/en/solutions/embedded-payments/
• www.rainforestpay.com/pricing
• www.tilled.com/pricing
• www.tilled.com/blog/monetizing-payments-101