Why Embedded Payments is a Retention Strategy for Vertical SaaS with Joshua Silver, CEO of Rainforest

Joshua Silver has spent two decades in embedded payments. Before co-founding Rainforest, he built Patient Co, a healthcare payments business scaled to billions in processing volume and tens of millions of patients, then spent several years consulting with software founders on building their payments programs. Rainforest is payments as a service, purpose-built for vertical SaaS — and in this conversation Joshua makes a compelling case that embedded payments is not just a revenue opportunity but a competitive moat.What We CoveredWhy vertical SaaS companies are still leaving money on the table with embedded paymentsThe gap in the market Rainforest was built to fillHow payfac as a service works and who it is designed forWhy the number of registered payfacs is shrinking, not growingThe $5 billion volume threshold for when becoming a full payfac makes economic senseHow Rainforest differentiates from Stripe and Adyen for vertical SaaS platformsVertical-specific risk models versus general-purpose toolsRainforest's real-time ledger and what it unlocks for complex payment structuresAdding PayPal and Venmo for untapped vertical SaaS marketsExpanding into Canada and building the playbook for international growthHow AI is being used across the business and the rising threat of AI-driven fraudWhat success looks like for Rainforest in the next five yearsKey TakeawaysEmbedded payments builds a moat. Joshua's closing point is the sharpest: once merchants are running their money through your software platform, competitors face a much harder job dislodging you. Payments isn't just a revenue line — it's a retention strategy.Vertical-specific risk models matter enormously. Stripe and Adyen have to serve everyone, so their risk tooling is built for the lowest common denominator. Rainforest has built models tuned to individual verticals — lawn care looks different from HVAC, which looks different from nonprofit donations — and it takes the fraud liability rather than passing it to the platform.The $5 billion payfac threshold is the new reality. A decade ago the rule of thumb was around $1 billion in card volume. Regulatory and compliance burdens have risen so sharply that Joshua now puts the threshold at $5 billion with line of sight to $10 billion before it makes economic sense to go full payfac.A real-time ledger is a competitive differentiator. Most legacy processors are batch-based, settled overnight on mainframes. Rainforest's ledger is real-time, enabling split payments, franchise fee hierarchies, and complex billing structures that batch systems simply cannot support.About Joshua SilverJoshua Silver is co-founder and CEO of Rainforest, a payments-as-a-service company purpose-built for vertical SaaS platforms. Before Rainforest, he co-founded Patient Co, scaling it to billions in healthcare payments volume before a sale, and subsequently consulted with software founders on building their payments businesses. He has been working in embedded payments for twenty years.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes