At the Stripe Sessions SaaS Platform Leaders Summit, Stripe Head of Data and AI Emily Sands (left) discusses AI’s impact on commerce with Metropolis Cofounder and CEO Alex Israel and GlossGenius Founder and CEO Danielle Cohen-Shohet.
Last month, thousands of vertical SaaS leaders gathered at Stripe Sessions and Stripe’s inaugural SaaS Platform Leaders Summit to discuss what they’re seeing in the market and how vertical SaaS can stay differentiated as AI changes expectations for software.Across the more than 16,000 platforms on Stripe—serving broad categories like home services and auto repair, as well as highly specialized verticals like tattoo parlors and funeral homes—many are looking to move beyond software by adding financial services like payments and lending. They’re working to embed themselves into operations in ways that are stickier and harder to displace than any feature set alone.Here are five insights into how vertical SaaS platforms are building for the future.1. AI is forcing platforms to expand beyond pure software
Concerns around AI commoditizing software businesses are real, but vertical SaaS platforms have an edge because they’re ingrained in the industries they serve. In a fireside chat with Stripe President John Collison, Toast President and CFO Elena Gomez advised vertical SaaS leaders to build closely around customer workflows in ways that pure software, and pure AI, can’t easily replicate: “The companies that win in vertical SaaS are the ones that stay deeply embedded in their customers’ worlds and never stop listening.”One of the most effective ways vertical SaaS companies can integrate into customers’ day-to-day operations is by offering payments. As AI makes software features easier to replicate, payments can make a platform more integral to the financial workflows that run a business—processing transactions, tracking revenue, and managing cash flow.Customers increasingly want this offering from platforms. Median payments adoption rose from 27% in 2024 to 40% in 2025. But adoption isn’t a solved problem: that still leaves a wide gap between the median platform and the top Stripe platforms, which achieve adoption rates of 80% or higher.The platforms closing that gap make payments adoption a company-wide priority. “Starting with the ‘why’ is really important,” said Catherine Beley, VP of payments at GlossGenius. “Bring to the executive team that payments is the biggest revenue driver for the company, and then translate that into tangible goals—not just Gross Payment Volume, but ARR for the entire company.”The platforms that reach the highest adoption rates then reinforce that strategy across product, go-to-market, and customer success. Phil Acree, VP of payments at Fullbay, a platform for commercial trucking repair shops, suggests baking payments into sales compensation plans: “Our software AEs are incentivized to bring up payments in their demos, and so are our onboarders and CSMs. There’s no customer interaction where someone on our team isn’t encouraging payments adoption.”For platforms that succeed, Tidemark estimates that each customer who adopts embedded payments generates an average of $4,200 in incremental ARR for the platform.Payments adoption impacts retention as well. According to 2026 Stripe data, platforms with embedded financial products see 11% lower annual churn, and those with a multiproduct strategy see 49% faster revenue growth than software-only peers.“It’s very easy to talk about payments revenue in isolation,” said Ben Brideaux, SVP, financial services at Nextech. “A real opportunity for payments leaders is that second-order effect on other revenue within your business. If you can increase retention rate and net dollar retention, you start to see these compounding effects.”2. Embedding more deeply into operations builds a stronger moat
