SaaS payments revenue: how software platforms earn from payments

SaaS payments revenue is the money a software company earns when its customers take payments through its product, or because of it. There are four main ways to earn it: compensation from a processor for the businesses you refer, fees for payment features in your own software, a share of the processing margin through a managed facilitator program, or the full margin as a registered payment facilitator (PayFac). Selling as the merchant of record, as a marketplace does, is a fifth model with its own rules.

The further into the money flow you go, the more of each payment you keep, and the more you carry: liability for your customers' disputes, card network registration, tax reporting, and sometimes money transmission and ACH rules. The number usually pitched is also gross. Interchange, the part that goes to the bank that issued the card, comes out first, and it changes with every card.

This guide does the math on net and names the rule each model triggers. Flux works with software companies through a referral and partner program (more below).

Where the money in a card payment actually goes

Visa puts it plainly: "Merchants do not pay interchange reimbursement fees; merchants pay 'merchant discount' to their financial institution." Interchange is a transfer between financial institutions inside that merchant discount, alongside network assessments and processor costs. What is left is the pool a platform can share in.

How much interchange takes depends on the card. These are Visa's US card-not-present rates effective October 24, 2026, from the Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees schedule, applied to a $100 online sale. The credit rows are standard e-commerce ("Product 1") rates. Recurring payments and merchants with up to $280,000 a year in Visa consumer credit sales can qualify for lower ones, and transactions that don't qualify pay more, up to 3.15% plus 20 cents.

A hypothetical $100 sale

Say a platform charges its customers a flat 3.0% plus 30 cents: $3.30 on a $100 online sale. That price is made up and is not Flux's rate or any provider's quote. Before assessments, processor costs, fraud, disputes and support, interchange alone leaves:

• Regulated Visa debit: about $3.03.
• Visa Signature credit: $1.15.
• Visa Infinite, spend qualified: $0.60.
• Visa business credit, Tier V: $0.20.

Same price, same sale, and the margin runs from 20 cents to about three dollars. B2B platforms see more commercial cards and thinner flat-rate spreads (see mistakes businesses make with B2B interchange).

The debit cap and the swipe fee settlement

Regulated debit is cheap because Regulation II caps a large issuer's debit interchange at 21 cents plus 0.05% of the sale, plus up to 1 cent for fraud prevention. Issuers under $10 billion in assets are exempt. In October 2026 a federal appeals court ruled against the Fed's debit cap, but the cap remains in effect until that court's mandate issues, after which it can be set aside unless a further stay is granted, and the Fed has to write a replacement. A revised Visa and Mastercard merchant settlement that would cut credit interchange by 10 basis points for five years was preliminarily approved in June 2026 and, as of early November 2026, had not received final approval or taken effect. Model on today's published rates and rerun the debit lines if the cap changes.

Four ways SaaS platforms earn from payments

The models differ in three facts: who signs the merchant, who receives the merchant's money, and who answers for disputes.

Referral and partner programs

You introduce customers to a processor. Each one applies, is reviewed and gets its own merchant account, paid directly by the processor, and you are paid under a partner agreement.

What keeps this light is the line Visa draws. In "Beyond the Acquirer", a payment facilitator can sign merchant agreements for an acquirer and receive settlement for sellers, and "an entity that performs either one of these functions is considered a PF, even if they don't perform both functions." Visa's Merchant Servicers, third parties sellers hire directly for gateway, checkout or software services, may do neither. A referral partner stays outside the PF definition as long as it never signs the merchant, deposits its transactions or receives its money.

The trade-off: you earn what the agreement pays, and the merchant's account, and usually its pricing, sit with the processor.

Charging for payment features in your own software

You package payments inside your product: payments only in a higher plan, premium features such as payments-based reporting, or a higher price when a customer keeps a different gateway. Per-transaction markups need a model where you set the price, such as a managed program or a PF. Feature revenue sits on your own invoice, so it is predictable and all yours, but each fee has to earn its place on your price page.

Managed or "as-a-service" facilitator programs

In what vendors sell as embedded payments, a provider that is already a registered payment facilitator lets your customers sign up for payments inside your software, and you usually set the price and keep a share of the margin. Read who the PF of record is. If the provider signs your customers and receives their money, it carries the network-level liability and you carry whatever the contract passes back, such as onboarding, first-line support or a share of losses. If the program registers you as the PF, you are in the next model, with help.

Becoming a registered payment facilitator

Under the Visa Core Rules (24 October 2026), a payment facilitator is "An entity that contracts with an Acquirer to deposit Transactions, receive settlement from, or contract with an Acquirer on behalf of a Sponsored Merchant." You sign customers as sponsored merchants, receive their settlement, pay them out and keep the spread between your price and your costs. It is the most margin of the four, with the commitments in the next section. Mastercard has its own payment facilitator rules.

A note on marketplaces and merchants of record

Visa decides who the merchant is by asking who the customer believes they are buying from, who books the sale as revenue rather than a commission, and who handles returns. A Visa Marketplace "processes Transactions and receives Settlement on behalf of" its retailers, is the merchant on the receipt and handles buyer-seller disputes. It keeps a fee or margin on each sale but carries the losses, and handling sellers' money brings the tax and money transmission rules below.

What becoming a payment facilitator commits you to

The PF margin pays for obligations Visa writes into the contract. Each is a cost line in your model.

• Liability for your sub-merchants. Rule 5.3.1.1 requires the PF agreement to state that the PF "Is liable for all acts, omissions, Cardholder disputes" and related issues caused by its sponsored merchants and is "financially liable for each Transaction processed on behalf of the Sponsored Merchant, or for any disputed Transaction or credit." When a sub-merchant's chargebacks or refunds outrun its balance, the gap is yours.
• An acquirer watching you. Under Rule 5.3.1.2, your sponsored merchants are treated as your acquirer's merchants, and the acquirer is liable for you and them.
• Registration before the first sale. Rule 5.3.1.3 requires your acquirer to have your registration confirmed by Visa before it submits transactions for you or your sponsored merchants. You carry a PF identifier and a unique identifier for each sponsored merchant in authorizations, and Visa can request per-merchant reporting including monthly dispute counts.
• PCI DSS for you and them. The PF "Must ensure that its Sponsored Merchants comply with" PCI DSS (v4.0.1 is the only active version), and handling card data on their behalf makes you a PCI service provider. Hosted fields shrink scope without erasing it: since March 31, 2025, SAQ A eligibility includes confirming the site is not susceptible to script attacks.

The USD 1 million rule

Rule 5.3.1.4 says an acquirer working with a PF "must enter into a direct Merchant Agreement with a Sponsored Merchant that exceeds USD 1 million in annual Transaction volume": before processing for a new merchant, within 2 years for an existing one. The PF "may continue to provide payment services (including settlement)," but your largest customers end up with their own acquirer contract. Exceptions cover relationships of at least 2 years with the same acquirer under continued oversight, and listed categories such as utilities, real estate rentals, doctors, hospitals, schools and tax payments.

Tax reporting, money transmission and ACH rules

Handling your customers' money brings rules from outside the card networks. This is general information, not legal or tax advice: the answers turn on how your funds flow, so put your attorney and CPA on them before you build.

Form 1099-K

Under the aggregated payee rule in 26 CFR 1.6050W-1(d)(1), a business that receives payments from a payment settlement entity on behalf of others and distributes them is treated as the settlement entity for the businesses it pays. As of November 2026, card payments have "no threshold amount" for reporting, and third party settlement organizations report above $20,000 and 200 transactions, a threshold the One, Big, Beautiful Bill restored retroactively.

Money transmission

Visa warns that local laws "may require PFs or Marketplaces to obtain a money transmission license (or similar)." FinCEN's rule (31 CFR 1010.100(ff)(5)(ii)) calls money transmitter status "a matter of facts and circumstances," with a narrow exclusion for payment processors acting "by agreement with the creditor or seller." States run their own regimes. Iowa's agent-of-the-payee exemption, for example, needs a written agreement between payee and agent, among other conditions. States are also adopting the Money Transmission Modernization Act on different dates (Illinois from January 1, 2026, Virginia from July 1, 2026).

ACH and Nacha

If your platform sends ACH entries for customers that have no direct agreement with the originating bank, Nacha treats you as a Third-Party Sender, with a risk assessment and an annual Rules Compliance Audit. Nacha's 2026 rules add risk-based fraud monitoring "reasonably intended to identify Entries that are suspected of being unauthorized or authorized under False Pretenses." Phase 2 took effect June 19, 2026, so it now applies to every Third-Party Sender.

How to estimate payments revenue honestly

A rate applied to all your customers' volume is a ceiling, not a forecast. Build the estimate up instead:

1. Start with volume that will actually move. Some customers like their processor or are under contract, so estimate adoption by segment.
2. Subtract interchange by card mix. Use your customers' real mix of debit, consumer credit and commercial cards, not one average rate.
3. Subtract network and processor costs. Assessments and acquirer and processor charges come out before anyone shares anything.
4. Subtract losses. In a PF or merchant-of-record model, lost disputes, fraud and sub-merchants who go negative are your cost.
5. Subtract people. Underwriting, risk monitoring and payments support are staff costs. In a referral model they mostly sit with the processor.
6. Apply your share, then run scenarios for rate changes rather than assuming them.

A hypothetical worked example

Say your software has 500 customers who each take $15,000 a month in online card payments, $90 million a year, and to keep the math simple every sale is $100. You set the price, as in a managed program or a PF, and charge the made-up 3.0% plus 30 cents from above.

• The gross pitch: 900,000 sales at $3.30 is $2.97 million in "payments revenue."
• Adoption: say 40% of that volume moves to you in year one: 360,000 sales and $1,188,000 in fees.
• Card mix: say 30% regulated debit, 40% Visa Signature-level credit and 30% Tier V business credit. At the table's standard rates (merchants this size may qualify for Visa's lower Small Merchant rates), interchange averages about $1.87 a sale, $673,560 in all.
• What is left: $514,440, before assessments, processor costs, losses, support and your model's split.

That is about 17% of the gross pitch, and it still isn't profit. Shift the mix toward commercial cards and it shrinks. Price on interchange-plus and the card-mix risk moves to your customers, along with the benefit of a debit-heavy mix. The numbers are invented; the order of operations is the point.

Questions to ask before you pick a model

• Who signs the merchant, and who receives and pays out settlement?
• Who funds chargebacks, refunds and negative balances? Get it in writing, and ask whether a reserve applies and how it is set (see how reserves and holds work).
• Who files the Forms 1099-K? Name the entity.
• What happens when a customer passes USD 1 million a year?
• Can you see the rates your customers pay? You can't explain a margin you can't see.
• How is your pay figured (on volume, on margin or per merchant), how often is it paid, and with what reporting?
• If ACH is involved, who is the Third-Party Sender?
• If you leave, what happens to your merchants? Do their accounts and saved payment methods move with you?

As a rough guide, referral programs and feature fees suit a team with no payments staff, a managed program suits one that wants to set prices and can absorb some losses, and registering as a PF suits scale, a risk team and counsel. These rules are as of November 2026 and change often, so confirm them first.

How Flux works with software companies

Flux works with software companies through its referral and partner program. It is not a PayFac-as-a-service: each business you refer applies to Flux, a person reviews the application, and, if approved, the business gets its own Flux account. Flux runs the payments, security and support.

In the Flux partner portal, partners refer merchants and track each one from application to live processing. Partners are paid monthly, with compensation set in the partner agreement. You can talk rates with a merchant, and Flux confirms the final rate upfront. A merchant who applies on the Flux application page is still credited to the partner who referred it.

Your software can build on the Flux Payments API, hosted fields and payment links, as the Set Forth and GoHighLevel integrations do. Hosted fields capture card data in origin-isolated iframes on payments.fluxpayments.com, so card numbers never touch your servers, and Flux is PCI DSS SAQ-D Level 2 certified. For anything more specific, talk to the team. To become a partner, email support@fluxpayments.com.