Payments needs an owner: How to build effective embedded payments partnerships

Turning payments on is something most software vendors have already done. In fact, BCG found that more than half of relevant software vendors in North America offered embedded payments in 2025. The companies that turn payments into a growth business and those that plateau look identical on launch day.  

However, a year or two later, what separates them comes down to one question:  

Does anyone inside the company actually own payments?

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Who should own payments inside a software company?

Org design is the most underrated decision in payments strategy. It decides how capital gets allocated, which projects get funded and what sits at the top of the roadmap. It also significantly influences culture, which is the part most companies miss. The software companies that use executive sponsorship to make payments part of their identity implement everything else far better.

So, when thinking about ownership within a business, my answer is: one executive, with a seat at the leadership table and a number they cannot hide from. The structure can be a business unit, a president of payments or a payments leader in the C-suite. What matters is that one person can force trade-offs across product, sales and operations, and that the company's KPIs and mission state plainly that payments is a strategic priority. ECI made this move in October 2025, when it launched a dedicated payments division with Andres as its president.

The clearest test of ownership is the sales compensation plan. If a rep earnings are the same - whether or not payments is attached to a deal - the company has already shown its sales team what it values. Redesigning the compensation plan forces every other conversation into the open: leadership buy-in, the economics of each revenue line and what payments is worth to the business. We work through compensation design with partners constantly, because it is where good intentions turn into habit.

Why do payments and software need separate scorecards?

Software revenue is contracted and recurring, measured in ARR and net revenue retention. Payments revenue, however, is transactional. It rises and falls with volume, seasonality, merchant mix and the way the consumer chooses to pay. A company that judges payments by software metrics will misread it every quarter.

The companies that get this right are tracking both, and that gives them room to price. Both revenue lines add up to total customer value, and both are sticky; BCG puts attrition for embedded payments at 2.5 times lower than for payments that sit outside the software. Software companies have raised software prices every year since SaaS began. Payments pricing can move as well, once or twice a year. The winners treat the two as levers, giving up one to win on the other, and selling to the full value of the relationship.

The upside is large. Payments revenue reaches software companies at a very high margin, and at scale I have seen payments grow into 30 to 40% of EBITDA at companies valued on a software multiple. That changes the financial makeup of the business, which is why boards now push payments from the top down.

It also explains the most common mistake, which is treating payments as a pricing conversation. Payments are a value conversation first and a pricing conversation second. The simplest illustration is still the paper check. Accepting one carries hidden costs, from the people who handle it to the fraud risk it carries. Set against that, the fee on a card or bank payment looks very different.

What should a software company own, and what should its partner own?

Ownership has a second meaning, and it matters just as much. A software company also has to decide which parts of the payments business it runs itself and which parts its partner runs.

For companies still catching up, this starts with vendor selection, and the questions on the table should be practical:  

• How much of the payments sale does the company run, and how much does the partner run? Who owns support?  
• What is the plan to bring the back book onto payments? No single split suits everyone. The split has to be deliberate and written down, because ambiguity is where programs drift.

Then comes conviction. The open secret of running a partner business is that it works like a venture capital portfolio. A partner team places many bets, then concentrates its time and resources on the top 20% or so, or the model becomes untenable. Within those partnerships, both sides need shared goals and the patience to read results correctly. If a go-to-market motion is behind schedule after 12 months (for a credible reason), the right call is often to keep going. Partners who pull back the first time something goes wrong in payments miss most of the upside.  

Done well, at scale, a payments partnership looks less like a vendor contract and more like a joint business between two sophisticated companies with competing priorities, which is exactly why alignment takes work.

Why does the payments sale need more people in the age of AI?

One of the counterintuitive patterns among top performers is that they are putting more people around the payments sale. The sale is complicated and consultative, and industry expertise, whether in-house or at the partner, decides how well it goes. For the next handful of years, the context that closes these deals will come from people. AI will make those people faster.

The other investment worth making in the next 12 months is in simplification. Many software companies have grown through acquisition and collected several payment relationships and gateway connections along the way. The architecture gets complicated, technical debt compounds, and moving customers from old setups to new ones gets harder every year. A deliberate plan to consolidate payment relationships and simplify the gateway footprint is what lets a program scale. The companies that keep postponing it eventually buckle under the weight.

So, if a software company takes one action this year, it should plan its human capital strategy for payments. The partner, the capital and the technology all matter, and none of them delivers without people who know how to run a payments business.

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FAQ

What is a payments back book?

A payments back book refers to a software company’s existing customers who either signed up before payments was offered or have yet to adopt it. Activating these customers is a key growth opportunity for embedded payments businesses.

How should a software company split payments work with its payments partner?

The software company should deliberately define how responsibilities for payments sales and customer support are divided between its team and its payments partner. That division should be documented, with shared goals and a commitment to evaluating results over time, typically at least 12 months.

How does Nuvei work with its software partners?

Nuvei works with software partners to help them build and scale payments as a business, combining payments infrastructure with a consultative partner team.

For software partners, that means:

• Flexible partner models: Commercial and go-to-market strategies tailored to each partner’s business model.
• Front-book and back-book activation: Strategies to drive payments adoption among new customers and increase adoption across the existing customer base.
• Strategic partner support: Guidance on payments adoption, sales and support responsibilities, payments economics, and compensation planning.

The technology to turn on payments is everywhere now. The software companies that keep growing are the ones where somebody owns what happens next.