They tripled their valuation with payments. Why didn’t I?

Three's a charm

Growing by double, that would be an amazing achievement. But growing by triple? Now that would be absolutely incredible…and it’s possible! Leading SaaS companies are already tripling their valuations with their payments strategy.

Maybe you have added some payments acceptance to your platform, but this valuation growth hasn’t happened for you…Do you know why not? It’s time to find out and finally resolve your payments challenges to get the valuation that you know your SaaS company deserves. Imagine just how high your valuation with payments could be!

At Handpoint, we’ve worked on SaaS + Payments on three continents over 20 years. In our experience, there are typically two common culprits when your payments strategy isn’t multiplying your value: 1) where are you in your SaaS-Fintech payments evolution, and 2) the partners you choose to work with.

Sustaining revenue growth

There are very few SaaS companies capable of sustaining growth rates above 30 to 40 percent. McKinsey researchers analysed the revenue growth rate of 100 SaaS companies in the United States with revenue above $100 million. The study points out that the median revenue growth rate was 22 percent in 2021.

The trend is that, within time, revenue growth slows down, and it’s up to you to decide how to make the most of your hard-won customers. Besides, we don’t even need to remind you: sustaining the revenue growth rate of your business leads to valuation increase, which not only helps you to scale your business, but keeps the investors happy.

But how to keep up with such a high metric? The answer is adding value to your product by putting into practice a payments strategy that gives you ownership to make your product better today and plan for the future within one platform.

Evolution of software revenue models

There is a common evolution in SaaS and payments. The hockey stick of value creation occurs not when you have added this or that payments acceptance. It is after you make payments your own, and really pull them into your strategy.

Summarizing from Flagship Partners, the evolution towards owned, embedded payments involves:

On-premises, perpetual license, one-time fee plus maintenance.
Subscription models, where most of the subscriptions were sold to the business themselves.
Integrated payments enablement, pre-monetization
First commercial partnerships, opportunistic revenues
Strategic partnerships, revenue expansion focus
INFLECTION POINT in value creation
Branded payments, global expansion, owning the customer facing journey
Becoming a payfac
Fintech business unit

You see more and more SaaS companies with their own branded payments, and this is why: you get full control of your customer’s journey and payments turn into an easy step for your clients. In summary, payments are the perfect multiplier for you to scale your business.

Why does this create a hockey stick in value creation?

Capture more value. Extra revenues can fund a land grab with lower SaaS fees, more marketing, etc.
Better customer onboarding
Higher value product to customer
Transform customers’ processing volumes into revenues

Does this always work?

You surely have seen some SaaS companies create a payments brand for themselves and not triple their value. But that’s because they haven't really owned the customer journey:

They put payments in another brand
They don't manage onboarding
They don't maximize total revenues and have someone else sell payments separate from SaaS fees (that’s crazy - the other guys can only win on price, so they will bargain the value of integrated payments down!).

They have the right idea, but they didn't go all the way. Now, sometimes this is because they didn't know how to do it better (Handpoint can help…), but sometimes it is because they don't have the right partners.

The partner you choose matters

SaaS companies need a path from where they are now to greater payments ownership. Most payments providers don’t have what it takes to get you there. 48-hour call back period with payments pricing. Bad APIs. Bad onboarding. No branding. No way to evolve your business over time.

Because of all these challenges, you need to choose a provider that gives you a path to the inflection point and beyond.

Handpoint is ready to help you scale your business. We are your one-stop-shop to embed all the payment types your customers need. Our consultative approach will identify the right solution for you, while you receive a dedicated team to set up and adjust the features and real-time payments data that you need.

We understand that your clients have chosen your software because of the value it brings to them. Handpoint comes to the table when you need to add even more value – and integrating payments is the best way to do it!

As we already mentioned, SaaS companies are tripling their valuation with payments added into their strategy. Doing it the right way, you’ll be able to:

Gain back control of the customer journey.
Handle your development roadmap.
Maximize the revenues you earn.

We’ll give you the flight path to enable you to evolve, ensuring the perfect level of payments support as you scale. We already have helped over 100 companies launch their payments products. May the next one be you! You’ll be going live in days to weeks, not months or years.

It’s critical to get started today. Book a strategy session with our CEO and discover how Handpoint can help you not only double, but triple your valuation with payments!