Even though credit and debit cards feel like a recent invention, you may be surprised to know that they’ve been around in one form or another since as early as 1950, starting with the Diner’s Club “credit card.” 

While the era of merchant services remained relatively new for the next few decades, there was a relatively large upgrade to the payments ecosystem with the introduction of POS terminals in the 1980s. Fast forward to the next decade, and eCommerce began to take off with Amazon and eBay. As cashless and digital payments became more commonplace, payment gateways such as Authorize.net and Cybersource, and eventually modern staples like Square and Stripe, led the way as payment facilitators (or PayFacs).

Today, the total transaction volume of digital payments worldwide is projected to reach a staggering $11.5 trillion in 2024, with $7.6 trillion coming from digital commerce. Covid-19 has exacerbated the surge in digital payments, with the World Bank estimating that two-thirds of all adults make or receive digital payments--an extremely sharp rise from 35% in 2014. As eCommerce and digital payments continue to become more mainstream, the need for payment processing will indubitably increase. 

Enter payment facilitators. While we’ve written about PayFacs in-depth, essentially they allow businesses to securely and effectively accept a range of electronic or digital payment methods both online and in-person. The platform is responsible for a range of tasks, including aggregating transactions, streamlining onboarding, handling compliance (such as Know your Customer and anti-money laundering), overseeing the underwriting process, and of course providing payment processing services. 

This differs from a payment processor, as payment facilitators are service providers of merchant accounts, focusing on merchant onboarding and aggregation. For a full breakdown of the differences between payment facilitators, Merchants of Record, aggregators, and payment service providers, read our blog on the topic.

Top 9 Lesser-Known Payment Facilitators You Should Know About

Forward

Forward offers a host of payments solutions to support SaaS companies that want to integrate and monetize payments and fund additional roadmap capacity. It’s a startup that began processing payment in the end of 2023, and has, since mid-2024, processed a few million transactions. The platform boasts technical integration in under a week. Founded by software industry veterans, Forward raised $16 million in 2024 to boost and expand its payment facilitation platform, and plans to expand capacity through technology development with AI and ML. 

Stax Connect

The Stax family offers a range of FinTech services, including recurring billing through Stax Bill, payment processing through Stax Pay, and PayFac services through Stax Connect (formerly known as Fattmerchant). It’s a fully-managed payments facilitation ecosystem that’s used by SMBs and larger businesses alike across verticals like healthcare and legal. Stax Connect offers deep integration through its straightforward API, and has various program options including referral, reseller, and PayFac. It offers transparent, subscription-style pricing with no fees, which can save costs for high-volume sellers.

WePay

Founded in 2008, WePay was designed to target the flaws in PayPal’s payment processing and facilitation workflow and optimize it,  making it easier to collect funds from a range of sources. The platform was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2017, and provides (white-labeled) integrated payment solutions for SaaS businesses and crowdfunding platforms. The platform focuses on web-based processing, and does not offer a dedicated merchant account. Though it has been a reliable player in the digital payments ecosystem, WePay discontinued its services in 2024, requiring businesses to find an alternative payment processing and facilitator provider.

Rainforest

Payments-as-a-service platform Rainforest helps software companies “build and optimize embedded financial services” by moving money in multiple directions. Although it was founded in just 2022, it’s secured significant funding since then, raising $8.5 million in seed financing in 2023 and $20 million in Series A funding not even a year later. They claim to have accelerated their payment volume 17-fold, and say they differentiate themselves from other competitors by being designed for SaaS companies in particular and offering white-glove onboarding.

Payabli

A US-based infrastructure and monetization platform, Payabli recently secured $20 million in Series A funding for its “next-generation payments infrastructure” platform. They use a single API and infra stack to manage payments for SaaS startups, with the aim of disrupting traditional, larger PayFacs like Adyen. The API-first platform bakes issuance solution and payment acceptance tools straight into the platform, and the Payabli team plans to use the funding to scale operations and increase total processing volume.

JustiFi

A self-described “payments & embedded fintech for vertical SaaS platforms,” JustiFi’s payment processing platform teams up with vertical software platforms to process payments at the most competitive rate possible. The Minnesota-based FinTech platform unifies card present and card-not-present transactions, and then integrates payments, insurance, and even Buy Now, Pay Later solutions into one system. In 2024, they raised $10 million in capital to further expand their white-labeled solutions.

ProPay

ProPay offers payment solutions for PayFacs, SaaS organizations, and software providers, making it easy to securely accept payments anywhere. A subsidiary of TSYS (one of the biggest processors worldwide), ProPay has existed for nearly 3 decades. It’s branded somewhat more as a payment processing solution for businesses of all sizes, but it also provides PayFac functionalities such as merchant accounts and eCommerce support.  

Checkout.com

Checkout.com is the PayFac provider behind some of the world’s biggest brands, including Uber Eats, Grab, and Klarna. Using a unified payments API, Checkout.com takes a modular approach to empowering businesses to accept, process, integrate and monetize payments with 100% customization; they also utilize network tokenization for more competitive acceptance rates. The London-based platform operates on a global level and was ranked the most valuable European fintech startup, and as of 2024 is looking to expand into China

Exact Payments

This embedded payments solution provider streamlines managing payments for software and subscriptions, as well as via mobile. Branded as a “PayFac-as-a-Service solution (PFaaS),” Exact Payments grants its users an all-in-one billing and payments solution.They offer embeddable UI features and a virtual POS so clients can accept payments anywhere, and require no capital investment to get started. Exact utilizes comprehensive APIs and claims to help its customers earn additional revenue that can boost CLV up to 5x, and can increase valuations by as much as 10x. In 2024, they were named a Top 10 Payments ISV.

Final Words

With a range of payment facilitation platforms to choose from, it’s important that businesses choose a provider that integrates into their existing tech stack, ensures compliance, and meets the needs of their unique business model, as one size most certainly does not fit all. 

At Preczn, we empower SaaS companies to unlock and benefit from new revenue streams by going beyond just payment processing services and offering payment orchestration. Through our platform orchestration approach, not only can businesses centralize and support multi-PSP payment ecosystems, they can also support lending and treasury, offering a truly holistic finance approach. 

Discover how our FinTech operating system can work for your SaaS organization beyond payments. Contact us to learn more about our integrated financial services solution.