121: Guest Patrick O’Donnell - How Embedded Finance Creates Value For Customers

Most SaaS platforms have spent the last few years adding payments. But payments alone is no longer the breakthrough — it’s the baseline. In this episode of Breakthrough SaaS Growth with the Jasons, we’re joined by Patrick O’Donnell, Global Commercial Director for Payments and Embedded Finance at Phorest Salon Software, to explore what comes next. Pat has spent 25 years in payments across Citi, Mastercard, and dLocal, and is now building payments and financial capabilities inside a vertical SaaS platform. That gives him a unique view of where embedded finance actually creates value — not as infrastructure, not as a bolt-on, and not just as a monetisation play, but as a way to help customers run, grow, and future-proof their businesses. We dig into why payments have become table stakes, what financial friction customers still face, how vertical SaaS platforms can use data and trust to create better financial experiences, and where embedded finance can move from transaction processing to real customer impact. Because once payments disappear into the background, the real question becomes: what should customers be able to do tomorrow that they simply couldn’t do before? Connect with Pat on LinkedIn