How SaaS Platforms Can Scale Merchant Onboarding Without a Development Team

Introduction

As SaaS platforms increasingly embed payments into their products, across industries like bookings, e-learning, and subscriptions, the demand for scalable, compliant merchant onboarding has grown sharply. Yet many teams face a dilemma, integrating payments often requires development resources they don’t have.

For platforms without in-house payment expertise, building a gateway or managing compliance frameworks like PCI DSS and KYC can stall progress. That’s where purpose-built infrastructure comes in, offering a way to manage merchant onboarding without starting from scratch.

1. The Challenge of Merchant Onboarding for SaaS Platforms

Merchant onboarding in a SaaS environment refers to enabling users, such as tutors, therapists, or retailers, to start accepting payments directly through the platform.

But onboarding isn’t just about setting up a payment link. It involves identity verification (KYB/KYC), anti-fraud checks, banking integrations, 3D Secure (3DS), payout scheduling, and more. These are highly regulated processes that must be reliable and secure.

Many SaaS providers rely on aggregator-style payment partners to simplify onboarding. While this reduces initial complexity, it can limit flexibility and ownership, particularly when trying to offer a branded, seamless experience.

2. The Developer Bottleneck

Building a payment gateway in-house is rarely a viable option for smaller teams. The costs of integrating acquirers, staying compliant, and securing cardholder data can quickly spiral. Ongoing maintenance and evolving standards like SCA or PSD2 only add to the burden.

As platforms scale, these technical requirements can outpace the team’s ability to deliver. What starts as a simple integration can become a bottleneck to growth. It delays go-to-market timelines and drains engineering focus from the core product.

3. Embedded Payment Infrastructure as a Scalable Alternative

To bypass these challenges, many SaaS providers are adopting embedded payment infrastructure, solutions built specifically for multi-merchant platforms.

These systems offer out-of-the-box onboarding flows, KYB and AML handling, and merchant management tools via clean APIs. They’re designed to plug into SaaS products with minimal developer time, while offering the same control and compliance as custom-built systems.

Platforms using Boxopay’s SaaS based payment gateway, for example, gain a white-label solution that supports the full lifecycle, from onboarding and verification to payouts and reporting, without building a payment stack internally.

Scenario, Consider a SaaS company serving the fitness industry. It grows from 50 to 500 active trainers in under a year. With embedded payment tools, the company can onboard each trainer as a verified merchant, handle payments securely, and manage risk, without having hired additional engineers.

4. Beyond Payments, Strategic Business Benefits

SaaS platforms that integrate merchant payments don’t just remove technical roadblocks, they also unlock new business value:

• Improved retention, Users stay longer when they can run their business, and get paid, within one platform.

• New revenue channels, Platforms can apply markups or service fees, introducing recurring revenue on top of subscriptions.

• Positioning power, By offering embedded finance features, platforms move beyond utility tools and become part of their users’ core business infrastructure.

5. Choosing the Right Payment Gateway Partner

Selecting the right provider is key. For SaaS platforms, the following criteria matter most:

• Multi-merchant support, Centralised tools to manage hundreds of active users.

• Compliance handling, Built-in support for PCI DSS, KYC/KYB, and 3DS.

• White-labelling, Full control over user experience and branding.

• Operational visibility, Real-time reporting, reconciliation, and flexible payout schedules.

The goal is to find infrastructure that adapts to your growth, not the other way around.

Conclusion

SaaS platforms no longer need to invest heavily in payments engineering to scale merchant onboarding. With embedded payment gateways purpose-built for multi-tenant environments, teams can deploy secure, compliant, and branded onboarding at speed, without adding developer overhead.

For platforms focused on growth, choosing the right infrastructure partner is now a strategic decision, not a technical one.