Before you choose payment screens, find out who will help your merchants when a payment goes wrong. Providers divide the work differently. One may help you sign up merchants and move money while leaving account support to your team. You need to know which tasks the provider will handle and which ones you will need staff to do.
Which payment tasks does the provider handle?
A payment form is one part of an embedded payment service. Merchants also need to get approved to take payments. Once they start, they need to see their records and get help with account problems.
Some providers let you choose account tools and add them to your app. Others also take on the work of running merchant accounts. If you serve businesses in other countries, you may need a provider that can move money across borders and work with different currencies. Payables tools handle a separate task, such as paying suppliers.
The service agreement should spell out which of these jobs a provider takes on. A product that helps your merchants collect payments may leave your team to run support or find another way to pay vendors.
1. Stripe Connect
Stripe Connect lets you choose how payments work in your app and add tools for merchants to manage their accounts. With connected accounts, your platform can handle payments for each business that uses your software.
Account controls and merchant screens
Connect supports direct charges, destination charges, and separate charges and transfers. With direct charges, your platform can collect an application fee. Separate charges and transfers let you split a payment among multiple connected accounts.
Embedded components cover onboarding, account management, payments, refunds, disputes, balances, payouts, and report exports. You can style them to match your app. Your team can use these merchant screens without building each one from the payment records.
Decisions that stay with the platform
The charge model sets where you record the money and which balance pays fees or covers refunds and chargebacks. Choose it with those costs in mind.
Compare the models with the people who answer customers and keep your books. The payment request that is easiest to build may leave them with harder accounting or support work. Connect gives you several ways to set up accounts, so your team needs to agree on who pays each cost.
2. Adyen for Platforms
Adyen for Platforms handles online and in-person payments, with tools to manage balances, splits, fees, and payouts. Compare it for multiple payment channels or supported international markets.
Adyen can host onboarding, or you can use its prebuilt components or your own interface. Required details depend on the merchant's legal entity and country. Adyen checks those details to decide which services the merchant can use, including taking payments and receiving payouts.
Adyen's reports cover accounting, balances, fees, and payouts. Its components can also show merchants their payment and payout details. Choose how much to build yourself.
Check who must cover a merchant's unpaid balance. Under Adyen's liable-account model, Adyen may take money from your platform's reserved compensation account to cover an unresolved negative merchant balance. Also check where you can sign up merchants and send payouts. A country where buyers can pay may not support both services.
3. Finix
Finix offers outsourced payment facilitation for software platforms. It supplies payment tools that your team can put inside your app, with choices about how merchants use them.
Hosted or custom merchant onboarding
You can use hosted onboarding forms or collect merchant details through a custom API integration. White-labeled seller dashboards and transaction reporting let you serve merchants without building every screen they need to manage their accounts.
Choose the approach that fits how merchants sign up for your product. A hosted form may suit a simple signup process. If your app already collects the business details you need, a custom flow may connect that work with the other steps merchants take in your product.
The platform still completes the integration
Finix reviews your platform before you can process live payments. Its launch checklist includes rejected merchant applications, failed payments, refunds, disputes, payouts, fees, and webhooks.
Your team still needs to build for failures and explain what happened to the merchant. Plan time for those steps and the live review, even when the payment form works. With Finix, you can outsource payment functions and choose how to add them to your product, but your engineers still have work to do before launch.
4. Rainforest
Rainforest serves vertical software platforms. Its embedded components help you sign up merchants and take payments, with reporting and chargeback tools available too. Your team can use those components, build through APIs, or combine the 2 approaches.
Your platform can set the price merchants pay above the buy rate you pay Rainforest. Its published pricing uses interchange-plus charges with no revenue split. Compare that with offers where you share the money earned from processing payments.
The provider supports card, ACH, wallet, and card-present acceptance. It can approve or decline merchant applications, or send them for manual review.
Rainforest supplies helpdesk material so your team can lead merchant support. Choose it with that work in mind. Its risk-management fee depends on underwriting and is not in its headline calculator. Ask for a full proposal to see what you would pay.
5. Global Payments for Platforms
Global Payments for Platforms offers Integrated Payments alongside PayFac-as-a-Service Pro and PayFac Developer. Each leaves your team with different work, so check which service you are being offered.
Pro offers prebuilt infrastructure and a white-label merchant experience. The provider handles underwriting and compliance, including extra checks on complex merchant applications. You can prefill details on signup forms and set risk rules to suit your needs.
The platform offering also includes merchant portals, reporting, configurable fees, recurring billing, and flexible funding. Your team can view online, mobile, and in-person transactions together to check the records against the money received.
Under Pro, your team still works with merchants and answers support requests, with the provider helping behind the scenes. Developer is for companies that want to manage payment facilitation themselves. Compare the staff each service requires before choosing between them.
6. Airwallex Payments for Platforms
Airwallex Payments for Platforms lets merchants take payments and move money across borders in multiple currencies. It can create connected customer accounts, split funds, collect platform fees, and support international payouts.
You can collect business details through hosted or embedded onboarding. You can also use Airwallex's APIs. Your company can set customer prices and use prebuilt components or its own interface.
Compare Airwallex when your product needs to convert currencies and settle payments. Like-for-like settlement can avoid a needless conversion when supported currencies match. You may still pay other foreign-exchange costs.
Who takes on the risk depends on your setup and the laws that apply. Under the platform-owned payment model, your platform handles disputes and refunds and must meet reserve requirements. Under the customer-owned model, customers take on those duties. Agree on the model before comparing costs. Check merchant eligibility as well as where you can send international payouts.
7. Stax Connect
Stax Connect lets you put payments inside your software with hosted components and branded dashboards. Its managed services include bank sponsorship and dispute handling, with settlement services available too.
Merchants can take cards and digital wallets online or in apps, as well as in person. Stax supports ACH transactions and deposit reports for card and bank payments. Portfolio reports show active merchants and payment volume alongside approvals and disputes. They also track how many merchants use your payment service.
Connect Plus adds help bringing payments to market and getting merchants to use them. This program specifically includes Tier 1 merchant support.
Check whether you are being offered Connect or Connect Plus. The base agreement may not include every support service. Stax's underwriters may also ask your company to collect more details from merchants before approval. Assign someone on your team to follow up on those requests.
8. Payabli
Payabli has 3 parts called Pay In, Pay Out, and Pay Ops. Compare it if your software helps businesses collect payments from customers and pay their bills.
Pay In lets merchants sign up and take payments through a white-label application or APIs. Customizable JavaScript components offer another option. It supports cards, ACH/eChecks, wallets, recurring billing, payment links, invoices, and in-person equipment.
Pay Out sends payments to suppliers, vendors, employees, and other recipients. Its managed-payables options include virtual cards, ACH, physical checks, real-time payments, and wires. These tools help businesses pay others as well as receive money from their own sales. Pay Ops adds tools to manage payments and create reports.
Payabli's detailed product pages mark push-to-card and digital checks as coming soon. Some check-collection features carry that label too. Ask which features you can use under the proposed agreement.
Who handles payment problems under the contract?
Ask each provider who handles merchant verification, transaction disputes, negative balances, reserves, payout exceptions, and customer support. Write down who does each job and who your team should contact for more help.
Bank sponsorship and payment technology serve different needs. Knowing that a provider uses a sponsor bank does not tell you every service you will get or every duty your team will keep. Check the proposed agreement to see what each party does as money moves through the system.
Check payables in the same way. A merchant payout sends the money from sales to the merchant. A vendor payment pays another business for a bill. If your product needs both, include each in the proposal. The word payouts alone does not tell you whether a service does both jobs.
Staff the work the agreement leaves with you
Before you choose a provider, assign the payment tasks you will keep to specific teams. Estimate the time they will need for merchant support, including collecting missing details and dealing with account problems.
Use that staffing plan to decide how much work to outsource. If you have an established payments team, you may be able to use detailed account controls. A smaller team may need the provider to take on more daily merchant work. Choose a service your team can support after launch and put the agreed services in the contract.
