Multi-channel Embedded Payment Processors
Warren Brown, VP of Product at Order, on 4 ways to monetize payments in vertical SaaS
This claim is really about who owns the payment workflow, not who offers the cheapest rail. In vertical SaaS, the winning provider is the one that lets a platform decide card or ACH inside one system, while keeping the same ledger, controls, webhooks, and reconciliation. Order is a clean example. It already pays vendors by both virtual card and ACH, with roughly 80% of vendor payment volume on cards and 20% on ACH, because different transactions need different economics and acceptance paths.
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Cards still dominate where software needs programmable controls. Order uses vendor specific virtual cards with spend limits and authorization rules, which makes distributed employee spend easier to manage and harder to abuse. That is difficult to replicate with plain ACH, which is why cards remain the core rail even as ACH expands.
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ACH matters because some suppliers simply will not eat card fees, especially on high ticket B2B payments. Order already uses ACH for some catalog payments and wants broader ACH support across channels, but the product goal is not just moving money. It is attaching invoice and PO data so buyers and vendors can reconcile payments without digging through bank statements.
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The market has been moving from stitched together point solutions to broader payment stacks. Earlier embedded finance stacks often combined separate vendors for KYC, ACH, and card issuing. Lithic started by adding Accounts and ACH to cards, and its current ACH docs frame ACH as part of a payments system where additional rails can be added over time. That is the product direction behind multi-channel processors.
Going forward, embedded payment leaders will look less like single rail infrastructure and more like money movement operating systems for software platforms. The durable advantage will come from giving vertical SaaS companies one integration for cards, ACH, and eventually newer rails, then turning that unified flow into better reconciliation, lower support cost, and higher payment monetization.