Sai Arora's Linkedin Analytics

Product leaders: Stop calling it “embedded finance” if it’s just an iFrame or a PDF form with someone else’s logo. You didn’t embed finance. You outsourced it and hoped no one would notice. That isn’t integration. It’s a trust leak. Your users aren’t stupid. When they click “Pay” and land in a different brand, a foreign UI, a completely new vibe? They know it’s an afterthought. We’ve seen the fallout of this approach firsthand: Suppliers won’t share sensitive bank info. Your team ends up mailing paper checks. Again. Adoption flatlines and no one knows why. Here’s the truth: If you don’t own the UX, you don’t own the relationship. If you don’t own the relationship, you don't deserve adoption, retention, and revenue. Real embedded finance means delivering a native UI through the entire flow. Real embedded finance means building seamless experiences that reflect your brand. Real embedded finance means taking full ownership of the customer relationship. If you’re serious about trust and monetization, either build it like you mean it or choose partners that fundamentally see the world this way. What's your definition of 'embedded finance'?

Too many Vertical SaaS teams are stuck in a loop. They keep building the same BillPay workflows: – Approval routing – Emailing PDFs – ACH and mailed checks – Maybe a “Pay by card” button for flair Then they rebrand it as “modern AP automation” and call it "innovation." Here’s the truth: Most teams spend months (sometimes years) just to deliver what the market already expects. That’s not innovation. That’s reinvention. And it distracts product teams from real differentiation. Innovation isn’t copying what everyone else already built. It’s embedding smarter workflows that help your customers move faster. It’s turning AP into a revenue driver. It’s freeing your team to ship what actually moves the needle. If you’re still building BillPay from scratch, ask yourself: Is this really innovation?

“Vendor enablement is the number one bottleneck for our issuing business.” We heard this multiple times at Stripe Sessions last week, particularly from large vertical SaaS platforms. Product teams have spent months building powerful spend tools for their customers, but many missed one key persona: Their customer’s vendors. It doesn’t matter how smooth the buyer experience is. If vendors won’t accept the payment or trust the flow, adoption stalls. Your product isn’t just B2B. It’s B2B to B. BILL understood this early. Making it easy for vendors to get paid is what unlocked their growth. Now every vertical SaaS team is asking: "How do we get vendors to trust and adopt our payment flows?" We’ve been digging into this with a few teams quietly. If you’re thinking about it too, let’s connect.

You don't want to control every layer. You want to deliver the best outcomes. At Magento in 2017, we launched Magento Cloud by partnering with Platform.sh to power our core value prop: scalable cloud hosting. Cloud e-commerce was the future, and we wanted to win. Partnering gave us leverage, speed, and focus. That decision helped us move fast, close more deals, and ultimately get acquired by Adobe. We're seeing the same thing in embedded fintech. The best vertical SaaS product teams are partnering to launch AP, AR, and payments because it gives them real leverage to win. If you’re building in this space, I’ll be at Stripe Sessions this week and would love to trade notes What’s something you chose not to build and why?

Glean acquired by Pipe. Avid acquired by Corpay. Embedded finance providers are realizing the key to controlling their destiny is to be in the flow of funds and own the pipes their customers use to manage their cash flow. But what do you do if you need those pipes now and don’t have the resources to run an M&A process and take on the inevitable integration process? This is the challenge most vertical SaaS teams are facing right now. They need to offer financial products to stay competitive, but can’t afford the build or buy path. So what’s the third option? That’s exactly why we’re building Mercoa. We give vertical SaaS platforms everything they need to launch B2B to payments and deliver working capital; seamlessly embedded, compliant, and live in weeks. No M&A required.

Stripe Sessions 2024: GENAI IS THE FUTURE AND WILL DISRUPT EVERYTHING Stripe Sessions 2025: STABLECOINS ARE THE FUTURE AND WILL DISRUPT EVERYTHING Stripe Sessions 2026: GENAI STABLECOINS ARE THE FUTURE AND WILL DISRUPT EVERYTHING