Payment Pulse – Ep. 21

Introduction: Payments tell a deeper story than dashboards alone. Explore five payment metrics that help SaaS leaders drive smarter growth decisions.

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Episode Transcript

Shannon: Welcome to Payment Pulse. I’m Shannon.

Michelle: And I’m Michelle. We’re excited to kick off this season with you. We’ve got fresh ideas, strong strategies, and of course payments, insights that help SaaS leaders grow smarter.

Shannon: There’s something about the start of a new season or a new chapter that naturally makes you pause and ask what’s working and what’s not. So whether you’re leading product revenue or partnerships, this is usually the moment where metrics come back into focus.

Michelle: Totally. If you’re thinking about your goals for the next phase, whether that’s planning a new roadmap, tightening up your go-to-market strategy, or tuning your revenue engine, today’s episode is going to help you measure what really matters.

Shannon: Right, and because not all metrics are created equal, some numbers make you feel good, while others actually help you make better decisions.

Michelle: Exactly. We’re diving into five key performance indicators, or KPIs for short, that can drive SaaS growth by helping you understand the real impact of your payments integration.

Shannon: So before we jump in, let’s do a quick level set. If you’re already tracking KPIs like MRR, ARR, or churn across your SaaS business, you’re on the right path. But today we’re zooming in on the payment side. That’s where the numbers often tell a deeper story about strategy, retention, acquisition, and overall business health.

Let’s start with a big one, net revenue. Now, this isn’t just about total money flowing in. It’s about understanding how embedded payments actually contribute to your bottom line. And this is where a lot of teams stop too early. They look at gross volume and think, “Great! Payments are working!”

Michelle: Exactly. It’s about profitability, not just activity. Volume alone doesn’t tell you if payments are actually strengthening your business. So you set up your baseline from before the payments integration and compare it to how revenue looks after you launch payments. That comparison is where the insight lives. Look at things like revenue per customer, average transaction size, and the take rate- meaning what you earn out of each transaction. That’s a deeper way to see growth as it happens.

Shannon: This is especially helpful if payments weren’t part of your original product vision. You can clearly see how payments shift your revenue mix over time and whether they’re becoming a meaningful growth lever and not just a nice add-on. 

Here’s a practical tip. Don’t just look at one big revenue number. Split your data into two segments: customers using embedded payments versus those who aren’t. That’ll show you the real lift that payments is delivering.

Michelle: And once you see that difference, it becomes much easier to prioritize adoption because the data is doing the convincing for you. 

All right, next up, net new acquisition. This measures the new customers you get that are directly influenced by your payments feature. In other words, are payments helping you win deals that you might not have won otherwise?

Shannon: Exactly. So if integrating payments makes your product feel more complete, more modern, or easier to buy from, that shows up in acquisition. So for example, when a prospect says the built-in payments feature really made this an easy decision- great! That’s attribution and that’s a signal that payments aren’t just operational.

They’re a true sales asset.

Michelle: Monitoring new wins after the launch and even tagging deals where payments played a role helps you quantify the impact. It also gives your sales team real proof points that they can reuse in future conversations.

Shannon: And the teams that do this well usually reinforce payments, benefits consistently in their messaging. It’s not just “We process payments”, but they also talk about things like faster cash flow, fewer tools, less friction, and a better experience for their customers.

Michelle: When payments solve real pain points, they stop being a backend feature and start becoming part of your growth story.

Shannon: All right, so now let’s talk about adoption. The payment attachment rate measures how many customers are actually using your payments feature. And because launching payments is one thing, but getting customers to actually turn them on is another.

Michelle: Think of it like this: embedding payments is great, but adoption is power. You take the number of customers who have activated payments and divide it by the number of customers who could be using payments. Multiply that by 100, and there’s your attachment rate.

Shannon: And this metric is incredibly revealing. A low attachment rate usually isn’t a pricing problem, it’s an experience problem. It might point to onboarding friction, unclear value, or customers simply not realizing how much easier payments could be.

Michelle: That’s why it’s helpful to go just beyond the count track volume process through embedded payments versus total volume that tells you how deeply customers are using it, not just whether they clicked “enable”.

Shannon: And here’s the encouraging part: the attachment rate is very fixable, so small changes in onboarding, clear in-app prompts, and even limited-time incentives for early adopters can move this number fast.

Michelle: When attachment rate climbs, everything else tends to follow revenue retention and long-term value. 

Now let’s talk about a big one: Churn rates. We know churn is vital for SaaS health in general, but here we’re looking at churn specifically through a payments lens.

Shannon: Right, so it’s not just about customers leaving your platform; it’s about customers stopping transactions, and when payments churn, it often signals something is broken in your experience.

Michelle: Exactly. Churn isn’t just a number- it’s feedback. Tracking both customer churn and revenue churn helps you understand not just how many customers you’ve lost, but how much impact that loss has on your business.

Shannon: And payments often surface very specific issues. For example, things like failed transactions, confusing statements, disputes, or chargebacks can all quietly push customers away. But the upside is that those are problems that you can fix.

Michelle: When you reduce friction in payments, you’re not just retaining revenue- you’re reinforcing trust, and trust is one of the biggest drivers of long-term retention. 

So last on our list is a classic SaaS benchmark: the rule of 40. This one zooms out and looks at overall business health by combining growth and profitability.

Shannon: So to figure this out, you take your growth rate and your profit margin and add them together. If you’re at or above 40, you’re generally in a strong position. It’s not a hard steadfast rule, but it is a really helpful gut check.

Michelle: What’s powerful here is how payments influence both sides. Embedded payments can drive growth through acquisition and expansion, and improve margins by creating a new revenue stream.

Shannon: When you take a look at these five metrics together- net revenue, net new acquisition, attachment rate, churn, and the rule of 40- you’re not just tracking numbers. You’re telling a story about how payments support sustainable growth.

Michelle: If you’re kicking off a planning cycle, whether you’re refining strategy or launching something new, these five KPIs give you a clearer way to measure your payments impact.

Shannon: And remember, the goal isn’t more dashboards. It’s better decisions.

Michelle: Track consistently, benchmark over time, and let the metrics guide where to invest next.

Shannon: Thanks for listening today, and if you enjoyed this, subscribe to the Payment Pulse podcast and share it with a friend or a colleague who’s looking to level up their SaaS growth.

Michelle: And head on over to our blog on xplorpay.com, that’s X-P-L-O-R pay dot com if you want even more details on these KPIs. We’ll link it in the show notes.

Shannon: Until next time, measure what matters, and grow what works.