Vertical software turns operations into finance
Roy Ng, co-founder and CEO of Bond, on BaaS's business model
The core advantage of vertical software in finance is that it already sits inside the job the customer is doing, so it can turn operational data into a financial product that feels native instead of bolted on. In Squire’s case, booking, checkout, commissions, and tips already run through the app, which let it move a barber’s earnings onto a card as soon as a haircut closed out. That is very different from a standalone neobank trying to win the same user from the outside.
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Squire is not just a payments add on. It runs booking, scheduling, POS, staff management, payouts, and reporting for barbershops. That means it sees who worked, what service was sold, what tip was earned, and when money should move, which is the raw material needed to build instant payout and later lending products.
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The money flow matters. Bond described the Squire Card as moving net pay and tips to the barber right after checkout, while Bond’s later case study says the product gave barbers instant access to tips and commissions and let owners transfer funds immediately. That shows how embedded finance solves a specific cash timing problem, not a generic banking problem.
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This pattern is the same one that made Square powerful in merchant finance. When a platform sees transaction volume every day, it can predict cash flow and offer the next product with less friction. Bond explicitly compared the path from debit card to lending with Square Capital, and Square later brought lending in house through its own bank.
The next step is more vertical platforms using their workflow data to stack additional products, first instant payout, then stored balance, then credit. As software gets deeper into industry specific operations, the winning finance products will come from the platform that already handles the daily work and already knows where the money is going.