Let’s play word association.
VC – Sequoia.
AI – Altman.
SaaS – … is dead.
Payments – ???
Visa? Stripe?
Took you a few seconds to answer, didn’t it?
Payments are so deeply embedded in our lives that we don’t even think about them. One might argue that every company is a payments company. And they'd be right. Every business — large or small — touches payments.
So is payments a category then?
Every company is a payments company. Most just don't know it yet.
From my experience, it is. I spent half of my 20-year career inside companies enabling payments.
Kabbage. Amex. Keep. Collectly.
The software enabled the product. But the payments economics shaped how the business operated.
Interchange. Float. Reserves. Loss provisions.
These aren't line items. They're the architecture of the payments business model.
That creates unique challenges for founders and operators in this space.
Transactional revenue that makes forecasting feel like guesswork.
A rigid cost structure that forces you to differentiate through services.
Strict regulations that prevent “move fast and break things” approach.
The playbook for a SaaS business doesn't work here.
So I threw out everything I knew about startups and started a new one.
The SaaS payments playbook.
The payments CFO skillset is unique. Yes, many principles from SaaS finance apply, but with caveats.
How payments companies make money — and where they lose it.
How to squeeze 20 bps here and there.
How to manage losses without blowing up your credit team.
How to drive payment adoption among merchants.
How to get sales to sell payments, not just licenses.
How to get SaaS VCs to understand your business.
I could list hundreds.
The valuable stuff, I found, was unconventional. The stuff that actually mattered — that separated operators who scaled from those who stalled — wasn't in any textbook. And nobody was talking about it.
Introducing: The Payments Operator.
My intention is simple: make the payments industry easier to understand, keep up with, and navigate — for founders and their teams who are on a mission.
And I won't be doing it alone.
I'm still learning. So I'm bringing the whole ecosystem with me. Founders who built it. Operators who scaled it. Product, growth, and partnership teams who live inside it every day. Companies building payments infrastructure, vertical SaaS, streamlining workflows that most people never see.
Every conversation will add a piece to the puzzle.
Because that's the thing about payments — no single person has the full picture. The space is too wide, too deep, and moving too fast.
But together? We'll get close.
The Payments CFO.