How to Monetize Your B2B Embedded Finance Offering

If you've built an embedded finance offering into your B2B platform, you've done the hard part. Now comes the question every platform eventually faces: are you actually making money from it?

For many platforms, the honest answer is: not as much as you could be. That's usually not a product problem – it's a monetization model problem. Andreessen Horowitz has documented a consistent 2x–5x revenue-per-user lift when platforms embed financial services. So how do you monetize your embedded finance offering?

The Monetization Landscape

There are several distinct ways platforms can generate revenue from an embedded finance offering. Most platforms use one or two. The best ones build a strategy across several.

Interchange on card transactions. When buyers pay through virtual or physical cards issued on your platform, you capture a share of interchange –  typically 1–2% on commercial card spend. It's the most familiar model and the easiest to implement, but it only applies to spend that flows through card rails.

Payment processing fees. Platforms routing ACH and other non-card payments can charge per-transaction or volume-based fees. Margins per transaction are lower than interchange, but the addressable volume is far larger, especially in B2B.

Passthrough pricing with a markup. Some platforms pass through their processor's costs and add a margin on top. It's transparent and defensible, and often used as a starting point before a platform has enough volume to negotiate better underlying rates.

Increased SaaS fees. Some platforms don't monetize payments as a standalone line item at all. They use payments as a feature that justifies raising their core subscription price. This works particularly well when the payment capability is tightly integrated into the workflow and generates clear operational value. Mindbody found that customers using financial products generate roughly $250/month versus $150/month for software-only customers. This led to a 60% revenue premium from the same customer base, without changing the subscription price.

Revenue share on credit and embedded lending products. When a credit infrastructure partner provides embedded financing, a portion of the financing fee flows back to the platform as revenue share. The platform doesn't carry balance sheet risk; it earns on total interest revenue.

Reconciliation and automation services. Platforms that automate invoice matching, payment tracking, and AP/AR reconciliation can charge for that operational value directly, either as a premium feature or embedded in higher-tier pricing.

The right mix depends on your platform's volume, customer base, and how deeply embedded your financial products are in your users' day-to-day workflows.

Building a Durable Revenue Model

The platforms generating the most meaningful revenue from embedded finance aren't choosing between these models – they're layering them. Toast is the clearest B2B example: financial services revenue now runs at approximately 6x subscription revenue, with subscriptions accounting for only 13% of total sales. That ratio is the result of stacking payments, working capital, and credit products on top of a software base, with each layer reinforcing the others.

A few principles worth anchoring to:

Match your pricing model to your customer's value perception. If your users see payments as a commodity, passthrough with a markup is defensible. If your B2B payments product is saving them hours of reconciliation work per week, a SaaS fee increase or premium tier is more appropriate — and more durable.

Don't price payments at cost to drive adoption. It's tempting early on. But pricing at cost trains customers to treat payments as a free utility, which makes it very hard to monetize later.

ACH volume is your largest opportunity. Most B2B spend moves through ACH. Per-transaction fees on that volume are lower than interchange, but the sheer scale means even modest per-transaction monetization adds up quickly. Unlike virtual card programs, you're not dependent on supplier acceptance behavior. Bain projects embedded payments will exceed $7 trillion in U.S. B2B transactions by 2026; the vast majority of that moves through ACH, not cards.

Reconciliation is an underrated monetization hook. Platforms that own the reconciliation layer have a product customers will pay for and won't easily churn from. Clio doubled ARR from $100M to $200M between 2022 and 2024 largely to payments and the operational automation that came with it. Reconciliation wasn't just a feature; it was a retention driver that made the financial product sticky enough to compound.

Revenue share on credit is the highest-margin path at scale. When a buyer takes extended terms or a supplier accepts early payment, the fee on that transaction is many multiples of ACH fees or interchange. Platforms that partner with credit infrastructure providers and earn revenue share on that volume are accessing the highest-margin stream in the embedded finance stack.

The Virtual Card Trap

Here's the mistake most B2B payments platforms make: they build their entire monetization model around interchange on virtual cards – and then wonder why payments revenue is underwhelming.

The pitch is simple. Issue virtual card numbers to buyers, push supplier payments through card rails, capture interchange. No lending risk, no complex infrastructure. Easy.

The problem is adoption. Processing fees on commercial card transactions (which can run 2–3%) eat directly into supplier margins, so enterprise suppliers, manufacturers, and service providers routinely decline card acceptance. In practice, virtual card programs in B2B AP settings achieve 5–15% supplier adoption. The other 85–95% of your payment volume sits outside your monetization model entirely.

If interchange is your only lever, you're effectively ignoring the majority of transactions moving through your platform.

Every B2B Transaction Is a Credit Transaction

Here's the reframe that changes how you think about monetization: in B2B, payment and credit are the same thing. A supplier ships goods and waits 30, 45, or 60 days to get paid. A buyer approves invoices today but doesn't settle until terms expire. Every one of those transactions involves someone extending credit to someone else. Historically, platforms have let that economic value walk out the door.

This is the core difference between B2B and B2C payments. In consumer payments, a transaction is usually instantaneous. In B2B, the gap between delivery and settlement is built into how commerce works. Platforms that recognize this gap as a monetizable product can generate revenue on nearly every transaction on their platform, not just the ones that happen to move through card rails.

The practical implication: revenue share arrangements on embedded lending products can outperform interchange at scale, because they apply to ACH-settled transactions (the vast majority of B2B spend) and because the financing fees are larger than interchange margins.

Every B2B Transaction Is a Credit Transaction

For B2B platforms looking to move beyond interchange, OatFi provides the credit and payment network infrastructure that makes monetization possible without the operational overhead of building it yourself.

OatFi sits between your commercial charge card, AP and AR workflows – coordinating buyer terms, supplier early or on-time pay, and automated reconciliation through a single API integration. Platforms earn revenue share across credit and payments volume from day one, without taking on balance sheet risk or hiring a credit team. 

If you're leaving revenue on the table by relying on a single monetization lever, that's the starting point worth fixing first.

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Ready to generate revenue from every transaction on your platform? Talk to OatFi's team at oatfi.com/contact

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