Vertical ERPs Bundle Fintech into Workflows
Matt Brown, Co-Founder of Bonsai, on the rise of vertical ERPs
The real moat in a vertical ERP is not the fintech feature itself, it is the way that feature is welded into a specific job the customer already does every day. Standalone payments, banking, or payroll are easy to copy and easy to buy from an API vendor. What is harder to copy is a contractor tool that already handles onboarding, invoices, tax forms, payout timing, and wallet flows in one place, or a restaurant system that routes tips, payroll, and payments together inside service operations.
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The pattern is bundling commodity pieces into a workflow system. In the interview, forms, lead gen tools, website builders, payments, and banking are all described as individually generic, but valuable when combined around one industry’s daily work and money movement.
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Contractor payroll shows why horizontal fintech gets commoditized quickly. Payroll APIs and embedded providers let almost any software company add payouts, while payroll incumbents, marketplaces, and vertical tools all chase the same fund flows. The winner is the one that owns the workflow and the contractor relationship, not just the money rail.
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HoneyBook is a clean modern example. It started with proposals, contracts, scheduling, and payments for solo service businesses, then added checking, debit, and money management. That move works because the financial products sit inside the same screen where a photographer or planner already books work and gets paid.
This is heading toward tighter bundling, where vertical software keeps swallowing adjacent financial jobs until the operating system for the business also becomes its bank, payments hub, and payroll desk. As embedded fintech infrastructure spreads, advantage shifts even more toward companies that know one customer type deeply enough to package generic financial tools into a distinctly better daily workflow.