Payments are no longer just a backend function for SaaS businesses. For software platforms and vertical SaaS companies, how you collect and manage payments directly affects merchant onboarding speed, retention, revenue margins, and your ability to scale. But most SaaS founders reach for a generic payment gateway and quickly discover the limitations: complex compliance requirements, clunky merchant onboarding, no visibility over transaction data, and zero control over the payment experience inside their own product.
This guide compares the top SaaS payment processing tools available in Australia, covers what to look for when evaluating options, and explains how the right platform can turn payments from a pain point into a competitive advantage.
SaaS payment processing refers to the systems and infrastructure that software businesses use to accept, manage, and distribute payments. This can apply to their own subscriptions or to payments handled on behalf of merchants and customers using their platform.
For a simple SaaS subscription business with a single product, fixed pricing, and recurring billing, a standard payment gateway is usually sufficient. However, for vertical SaaS platforms, marketplaces, management tools, or any solution that processes payments for multiple merchants, the requirements become far more complex. This is where the difference between a payment gateway and a PayFac (Payments Facilitator) model becomes important. It is also the point where many growing SaaS businesses begin to outgrow off-the-shelf tools.
A traditional payment gateway connects your software to the payment network. It helps process the transaction, but the responsibility for merchant onboarding, compliance, and risk usually sits with each individual merchant.
A PayFac model works differently. With this structure, your software platform can manage onboarding, compliance, and risk on behalf of the merchants using your system. In return, you get more control over the payment experience, customer data, and payment revenue.
For SaaS platforms serving multiple business customers — such as practice management software, field service platforms, logistics tools, or other industry-specific tools — a PayFac model can support:
Best for: SaaS platforms, vertical software companies, and management tools that want to embed payments and become a PayFac without building from scratch.
Pinch Glassbox is an Australian PayFac as a Service platform created by the team behind Pinch Payments. It helps SaaS businesses set up a PayFac model without having to build the compliance framework, merchant onboarding process, regulatory systems, and payment infrastructure from scratch.
Many SaaS payment tools simply provide a gateway and leave the harder parts to you. Glassbox goes further by offering a managed layer between your software and the acquiring banks, giving your platform clearer control over how payments are onboarded, processed, monitored, and managed.
The name Glassbox reflects its core promise. Across every level — from acquirer to PayFac to individual merchant — you can see real-time transaction data through the portal or API. That level of transparency is uncommon in payments, and it helps SaaS businesses make better decisions around risk, operations, and merchant performance.
Key features:
Ideal for: SaaS platforms and independent software vendors in Australia and New Zealand that process payments on behalf of merchants and want full control over the experience, data, and economics.
Best for: Tech-forward SaaS platforms with strong developer resources and international ambitions.
Stripe Connect is the embedded payments arm of Stripe, designed for platforms and marketplaces that need to route payments between multiple parties. It is the most widely used option globally and offers exceptional developer tooling, extensive documentation, and a flexible API.
The trade-off is complexity. Stripe Connect requires significant developer time to configure correctly, and the ongoing compliance and risk management responsibilities remain largely with your team. For Australian SaaS businesses, it also lacks local payment method depth and the kind of hands-on managed service support that early-stage platforms often need when navigating acquirer relationships for the first time.
Key features:
Ideal for: Developer-led SaaS platforms with international users and in-house engineering capacity to manage the integration and ongoing compliance workload.
Best for: SaaS businesses with recurring subscription billing where all payments are collected via direct debit from bank accounts.
GoCardless has built a strong reputation for subscription and recurring payment collection via direct debit. For SaaS businesses with predictable, recurring charges and a customer base comfortable with bank account debits, it handles the basics reliably.
The constraints become apparent when your platform needs to support card payments, manage multiple merchants, or provide the kind of embedded PayFac experience that differentiates modern vertical SaaS products. GoCardless is a solid billing tool, not a platform for payment infrastructure.
Key features:
Ideal for: SaaS subscription businesses with straightforward recurring billing and no need for multi-merchant management or card payment support.
Best for: SaaS platforms that want to embed financial services — including payments, card issuing, and multi-currency accounts — and scale internationally.
Airwallex has built a comprehensive embedded finance platform specifically for SaaS businesses, and their offering goes well beyond basic payment processing. Through their Platform APIs and Connected Accounts infrastructure, SaaS platforms can programmatically onboard merchants, accept multi-currency payments globally, issue cards, manage FX, and disburse payouts — all without users ever leaving the platform.
For Australian SaaS businesses with international customers or growth ambitions, Airwallex is a genuinely strong option. Their pre-built compliance layer handles AML, KYC, and regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions, which significantly reduces the operational burden of going global. The platform also allows SaaS businesses to monetise payments by collecting application fees and earning from transaction volume.
Where Airwallex differs from Glassbox is focus: Airwallex is a global financial infrastructure platform that SaaS businesses can build on, whereas Glassbox is a purpose-built, Australian-native PayFac as a Service solution with hands-on managed support and acquirer relationships already in place. For platforms focused primarily on the Australian market, Glassbox's local depth and managed service model offers a faster, more supported path to live.
Key features:
Ideal for: SaaS platforms that need to embed payments and financial services globally, particularly those with international expansion on the roadmap.
Best for: Marketplaces and platforms where consumer trust and brand recognition at checkout matter.
PayPal's platform offering allows software businesses to onboard vendors, split payments, and leverage PayPal's consumer wallet infrastructure. Its primary strength is the trust and familiarity consumers bring to the PayPal brand, which can reduce checkout friction on consumer-facing platforms.
For B2B SaaS platforms or software serving business merchants, PayPal's limitations become more apparent: fee structures are less competitive at scale, the onboarding experience is less configurable, and the overall merchant management tooling is less sophisticated than purpose-built PayFac solutions.
Key features:
Ideal for: Consumer marketplaces and platforms where PayPal brand recognition at the point of payment is a meaningful conversion advantage.
Best for: Large, enterprise-grade SaaS platforms with high transaction volumes and global operations.
Adyen is a major player in the global payments space. Its Platforms product is designed for enterprise software businesses that need to handle payments across multiple channels — including online, in-person, and mobile — all within a single system. It also offers strong risk management, advanced fraud protection tools, and a unified commerce approach that sets it apart from many other providers.
The limitation for most Australian SaaS businesses is scale requirements. Adyen is built for large platforms with significant transaction volumes, and the onboarding process, pricing, and support model reflect that. For growing or mid-market SaaS businesses, the overhead is disproportionate.
Key features:
Ideal for: Large enterprise SaaS platforms with high transaction volumes and complex global payment requirements.
When evaluating SaaS payment solutions for your platform, the right choice comes down to more than fee rates and payment method support. Here are the capabilities that separate good tools from great ones:
Your merchants should be able to onboard and verify their identity entirely within your platform's experience. Manual or email-heavy onboarding processes create friction that increases drop-off and delays time to first transaction.
Regulatory compliance — including KYC, AML, CTF, and sanctions checks — is essential for any platform handling payments on behalf of merchants. It is best to choose providers that automate these checks in real time through integrated systems, rather than relying on manual review processes.
You cannot manage risk if you cannot see it. The best SaaS payment solutions provide real-time visibility into every transaction across your entire merchant hierarchy, whether through a portal, an API, or both.
The ability to configure fee schedules per merchant, surcharge processing costs onto customers, and track your actual margin after interchange and scheme costs is what separates a payment tool from a payment business model.
Any payment functionality available in the platform should be accessible via API, so your engineering team can automate workflows, build custom experiences, and integrate payments deeply into your product.
Establishing acquirer relationships and navigating the regulatory landscape for the first time is genuinely complex. Providers that offer guided onboarding, ongoing support, and help with acquirer relationships significantly reduce the time and risk involved in going live.
SaaS platforms that are winning on retention today are not just selling software. They are taking ownership of the entire payment experience within their product. They control how merchants are onboarded, define their own fee structures, and earn from every transaction processed on the platform. Their customers do not need to go anywhere else.
That is what Glassbox enables. Many Australian SaaS businesses assume that becoming a PayFac is too complex, too expensive, or something to consider later. Glassbox was designed to challenge that thinking. It provides the infrastructure, compliance framework, acquirer relationships, and technical foundation that would normally take years and significant investment to build. This allows you to launch faster and start generating revenue from payments sooner.
If you are building a SaaS platform in Australia and payments are part of your plans — even in the future — this is a conversation worth having now.
Download the presentation to explore what is possible.