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Building payments into a software platform costs anywhere from a few thousand dollars to well over $250,000, depending on the approach. A payments API can be live in a matter of weeks for a low setup cost. Building payment infrastructure from scratch, including compliance, bank connections, and fraud tooling, is a multi-year investment that few software platforms can justify.
This guide breaks down what actually drives the cost, compares the three paths available to Australian software platforms, and explains where the hidden costs usually show up.
What Determines the Cost of Building Payments Into Your Platform
Five factors account for most of the cost difference between approaches.
1. Bank and card scheme connections
Direct integrations with Visa, Mastercard, and the BECS direct debit system require certification, ongoing scheme fees, and continued maintenance as scheme rules change.
2. Compliance obligations
Handling card data brings PCI DSS scope. Onboarding merchants under your own platform brings AML and KYC obligations, which usually require a licensed acquirer relationship or a payment facilitator model.
3. Engineering time
Payment systems touch reconciliation, refunds, disputes, webhooks, and retry logic. These edge cases are consistently underestimated during initial scoping.
4. Ongoing maintenance
Payment infrastructure is never finished. Scheme rule changes, security patches, and new payment method support all require continued engineering investment after launch.
5. Support and risk operations
Someone has to review disputes, chase failed payments, and monitor fraud alerts. This is an ongoing headcount cost, not a one-off build cost.
3 Ways to Add Payments to Your Platform
Software platforms in Australia generally choose between three paths for adding payments: building infrastructure in-house, integrating a payments API, or using a Payfac-as-a-Service platform.
Option 1: Build payments infrastructure in-house
You can design the payment experience, merchant workflows, reporting, pricing and operational processes around your product while connecting to an external payment processor or acquiring partner.
Your platform may still need to build and manage functionality such as:
- Merchant onboarding
- Business verification
- KYC and KYB processes
- Different merchant accounts
- Payment method management
- Custom fees
- Transaction reporting
- Settlements
- Refunds
- Failed payments
- Merchant-level reconciliation
- User permissions
- Fraud and risk controls
- Support processes
This is where payments can start becoming a product in its own right.
A platform building a significant amount of this functionality internally could invest A$75,000–A$250,000+ in engineering and implementation, depending on the complexity of the product and how much infrastructure is provided by external payment partners.
That figure does not represent the cost of building a complete Payfac operating stack. If your platform also wants to take responsibility for merchant verification, compliance, risk management, acquiring relationships and other Payfac-level operations, the investment can become substantially higher.
And the ongoing cost matters.
Payments infrastructure is not something you build once and forget about. APIs change. Payment methods evolve. Security requirements change. Edge cases appear. Merchants need support.
Every hour your engineering team spends maintaining payments is also an hour they are not spending building the core software your customers originally signed up for.
That opportunity cost is easy to leave out of a spreadsheet.
Option 2: Integrate a payments API
At the simplest level, your software connects to an existing payments provider through an API.
You might allow users to:
- Accept card payments
- Collect payments via Direct Debit
- Save customer payment methods securely
- Process one-off or recurring payments
- Receive payment status updates through webhooks
For a capable development team using a well-documented API, this can be a relatively contained project.
As a broad planning guide, you might allocate A$15,000–A$60,000+ worth of internal or contracted development resources, depending on your checkout experience, billing logic, reporting requirements and existing architecture.
The critical distinction is that you are integrating existing payment infrastructure rather than building the underlying payment infrastructure yourself.
For many SaaS platforms, this is a sensible starting point.
Option 3: Use a Payfac-as-a-Service platform
For software platforms that want to go beyond payment acceptance and offer embedded payments across multiple underlying merchants, another option is PayFac-as-a-Service.
This approach allows your platform to build payments into its product without creating the full Payfac technology and operating stack from scratch.
A Payfac-as-a-Service platform can support infrastructure and processes such as:
- Merchant onboarding
- KYC and KYB
- AML and sanctions screening
- Transaction monitoring
- Fraud detection
- Merchant risk management
- Chargebacks and disputes
- Merchant reporting
- Fee calculation and disbursement
- Acquirer relationships
- PCI DSS compliance
- Ongoing merchant monitoring
You retain control over the customer experience and can make payments part of your product, while the payments provider supports much of the underlying infrastructure and operational complexity.
This can reduce the time, cost and complexity involved in launching a multi-merchant payments offering.
It can also create a pathway towards generating revenue from payments without requiring your platform to build every component internally.
By comparison, building a full Payfac-level technology and operating capability internally can become a high-six-figure or seven-figure investment, particularly once engineering, compliance, security, legal support, risk operations and ongoing merchant management are considered.
There is also another cost: time to market.
A platform that spends a year building its own payments operating stack has also delayed the point at which it can start generating revenue from those payments.
This is one of the reasons PayFac-as-a-Service infrastructure exists.
Build vs API vs Payfac: Cost Comparison
| Approach | Typical implementation cost | Time to launch | Who owns compliance | Ongoing cost model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build in-house | A$75,000 to A$250,000+ for payment acceptance; high-six-figure to seven-figure for a full Payfac stack | 6 to 12+ months, longer for a full Payfac build | Your platform | Internal engineering, compliance and risk team |
| Payments API | A$15,000 to A$60,000+ | Weeks to a couple of months | Provider | Per-transaction fee |
| Payfac-as-a-Service | Lower than building the stack yourself; varies by scope | Weeks to a few months | Provider, with your platform managing merchant relationships | Per-transaction fee, offset by merchant fee revenue |
Hidden Costs Most Platforms Underestimate
A handful of costs consistently get left out of the initial budget.
PCI DSS compliance. Any platform that touches card data takes on PCI DSS scope. A tokenised or hosted integration usually reduces that scope far more cheaply than pursuing full compliance in-house.
KYC and KYB checks. Onboarding sub-merchants means verifying individuals and the business entity itself, plus ongoing monitoring. Manual review does not scale past a handful of merchants a month.
Fraud and dispute handling. Chargebacks and disputes need a process and, eventually, dedicated headcount. This is one of the most common reasons in-house builds run over budget.
Scheme and regulatory updates. Card scheme rules and Australian payment regulations change regularly, and each change requires engineering time to stay compliant.
Reconciliation. Matching payments to invoices across Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks is a recurring engineering cost when built manually.
These obligations look different depending on your platform's industry and customer base.
Which Approach Fits Your Platform
The right approach depends on where your platform is today, not where it might be in three years.
If you are validating a payments feature, a payments API is the right starting point. It gets a working payment flow in front of customers within weeks, at a cost that does not need a separate budget approval.
If customers are already asking for sub-merchant accounts, or you want revenue from processing rather than just enabling it, evaluate a PayFac-as-a-Service model early. Retrofitting merchant onboarding onto an API-only integration later is more work than building it in from the start.
If payments are your entire product, an in-house build may be justified. This is the exception, not the default, and it usually only makes sense once volume is large enough to offset the fixed compliance cost.
Some platforms reach this decision through a partner rather than building or integrating alone.
How Pinch Helps Software Platforms Add Payments Without Building From Scratch
Pinch gives software platforms a flexible way to build payment capabilities as their business grows, without committing to a full payment infrastructure from day one.
Australian class-management platform PassM8 is one example. Its founder, Philip Johns, shared his experience working with us:
“Pinch helped PassM8 deliver enterprise-grade billing capability from day one, something that would have been impossible without a true integration partner.”
— Philip Johns, Founder, PassM8
Start with the Pinch Payments API to accept card and BECS Direct Debit payments inside your product. Add merchant onboarding and fee monetisation as volume grows. Graduate to full PayFac status through Glassbox when your platform is ready to own the merchant relationship end to end.
This staged approach means a platform only takes on the cost and complexity that matches its current stage, rather than committing a large fixed budget before generating any payments revenue. Fees are transaction-based, so the cost scales with your platform rather than ahead of it.
Talk through which stage fits your platform's current volume and roadmap.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this guide is for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, financial, or taxation advice. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date details based on current Australian regulations, business requirements can change. We recommend consulting with a qualified accountant, lawyer, or business advisor before making any significant decisions or taking action based on this content.
