JustiFi

Maya is Head of Product at a wellness platform. Thousands of salons, spas, and medspas run their businesses on it. The booking experience is tight. Retention is strong. The product is genuinely good. Last quarter, her team rolled out financing for premium treatment packages. To do it, they routed through a third-party provider with no visibility into the platform's client data. No membership history. No spend patterns. The experience felt so disconnected that most clients never finished the application. Most spa operators never turned the feature on. The platforms pulling ahead in wellness aren't always the ones with every bright and shiny new booking feature. They're the ones where the financial layer knows the client as well as the product does. Where payment history, membership tenure, and spend patterns are usable at the moment that matters. Where adding a new financial product doesn't mean starting over with your most valuable data. Maya's story isn't unusual. Curious how many platform teams in this space are navigating the same thing.

In franchise racquet sports, every payment has to work for three parties at once. The franchisor needs royalties collected at the transaction level, not self-reported and reconciled six weeks later. And they need to know which locations are struggling before the quarterly review, not because of it. The club owner needs money movement that fits how their business actually runs: court fees, coaching splits, membership renewals flowing on their timeline. The player just wants to show up and play. When those three aren't aligned, the friction shows up everywhere. A franchisor flying blind until the quarterly review. A club owner whose payout timing doesn't match their payroll cycle. One of our partners described it as "managing three businesses with tools built for one." The platforms getting this right are building a payment layer where: - The brand gets real-time visibility and royalties that collect themselves - The club owner keeps autonomy over how money moves through their location - The player gets a slick, unified experience, regardless of which location they walk into One transaction. Three parties taken care of. If you're building in the racquet sports franchise space and you're at RacquetX this week, we'd love to hear more about your experience.

Most vertical SaaS platforms don't decide to become fintechs. They back into it. A contractor platform adds payment processing because a customer asked. A gym software adds invoicing to reduce churn. A youth sports platform adds payouts because softball clubs need to pay referees after every game — and Venmo wasn't cutting it. But here's what we've seen happen after that: the platforms that treated those moments as strategic decisions (who owns the data, who controls the experience, what happens when a customer wants to add a second product) ended up in a very different place than the ones that treated it as a vendor relationship. The difference isn't technical. It's a question of timing. The decisions that feel small at the beginning (which processor, whose data, whose customer relationship) are the ones that determine how much control you have three years later. We've watched platforms reach this realization later than they wanted to, not because they didn't care, but because no one framed it as a decision worth making carefully in the first place. Curious if this resonates with where you are right now.

We've been hearing the same story from platforms for a while now. A customer starts their payment onboarding application, gets pulled into a meeting, and never comes back. Not because they weren't interested. Starting over never feels good. So we rebuilt Hosted Onboarding with that in mind. The biggest addition: save and resume. Customers can leave mid-application and pick up exactly where they left off. We've seen this one change meaningfully move completion rates for partners who've tried it. We also added Plaid for bank account connections (fewer typos, faster completions), pre-fill for data you already have, and a copy-between-fields option when the business owner and representative are the same person. One more thing worth calling out: your forms now stay current with JustiFi's underwriting standards automatically. You set it up once. No code changes required on your end. Curious what your current completion rates look like. Happy to compare notes.

We're hiring two Business Development Representatives (US & Brazil) If you're energized by prospecting that actually works (AI-powered outreach, deep research, and building relationships before asking for meetings), this role is for you. This isn't traditional cold calling. You'll work directly with our leadership team, leverage cutting-edge GTM tools, and see the impact of your work every day. What makes this different: - Use AI to personalize outreach at scale - Join at a stage where your contributions shape the company - Competitive compensation with performance incentives - Modern tech stack built for results, not busywork If you thrive in energetic, focused environments and want to be surrounded by equally driven teammates, let's talk. Brazil role (Remote): https://bit.ly/3Mxyo6A US role (Hybrid in MN): https://bit.ly/4tA4gZf

We're hiring two Business Development Representatives (US & Brazil) If you're energized by prospecting that actually works (AI-powered outreach, deep research, and building relationships before asking for meetings), this role is for you. This isn't traditional cold calling. You'll work directly with our leadership team, leverage cutting-edge GTM tools, and see the impact of your work every day. What makes this different: - Use AI to personalize outreach at scale - Join at a stage where your contributions shape the company - Competitive compensation with performance incentives - Modern tech stack built for results, not busywork If you thrive in energetic, focused environments and want to be surrounded by equally driven teammates, let's talk. Brazil role (Remote): https://bit.ly/3Mxyo6A US role (Hybrid in MN): https://bit.ly/4tA4gZf

Our CEO Brett MacKinnon, Sales Executive John David Crouch, and VP of Customer Success Rose Gumz are heading to NAHB International Builders' Show (IBS) in Orlando (Feb 17-19) to compare notes with platforms building for construction. No booth. Just conversations with folks who get it. 81% of SMBs want integrated payments, and the platforms delivering this are owning more of the journey and capturing more value. We've spent years learning how to give platforms full control of the payment experience while creating better experiences for the SMBs they serve. Curious if that resonates with what you're seeing. #IBS2026 #ConstructionIndustry #HomeBuildingIndustry #OnlyAtIBS #IBS

We're excited to welcome Sarah Barber as our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Sarah brings 20+ years scaling fintech and payments businesses, most recently leading revenue, payments, and strategy across NBC's digital portfolio, including SportsEngine. We've been moving fast—adding partners, expanding capabilities, scaling support. Sarah's here to make sure we can keep that momentum while staying focused on what actually matters: helping our platform partners deliver real value to the thousands of small businesses they serve. "Sarah is uniquely positioned to lead us through our current stage and well beyond," said Brett MacKinnon, CEO. "Her strategic approach to revenue, pricing, and analytics, combined with her experience leading payments operations at scale, makes her the right leader to take us where we're going." Welcome to the team, Sarah! Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/g8yXChyJ

The most successful vSaaS platforms are no longer just workflow tools—they're becoming financial operating systems for their customers. New data from Tidemark's 2025 benchmark report provides a clear answer. Surveying over 200 vSaaS platforms worldwide, they found that median Payments Attach Rate jumped from 27% to 40% year-over-year — a 48% increase that signals a fundamental shift in how platforms are approaching payments. This isn't just about adoption numbers. When a customer uses your platform for payment processing, you're delivering measurable financial value with every transaction. Payments touch every transaction, integrate with their accounting systems, and become embedded in their daily operations. Your platform evolves from a workflow tool into their central financial hub — managing not just their business processes, but their cash flow, reconciliation, and banking relationships. That's the real story behind this 48% jump: vSaaS platforms are creating impact that's measured not in features, but in the tangible financial value they deliver to customers' operations.

The small businesses communities depend on —auto repair shops, fitness studios, roofing companies, youth sports clubs — deserve better financial tools. Not generic solutions, but tools built for how they actually operate. We've proven that when platforms have control over their embedded finance strategy, they can move faster, differentiate more effectively, and deliver real value to their customers. This year, we're doubling down on that mission. Helping our platform partners build better products for the businesses that matter most. To everyone building with us: thank you! Wishing you a warm and happy New Year.