A first of its kind: The 2026 Vertical SaaS Embedded Payments Benchmarking Study

At Rainforest, we answer hundreds of payments questions everyday. What's an ideal take rate for a healthcare platform with $200M in annual volume? Is 75% a good attach rate? What's a realistic goal for adoption?

For experienced payments professionals who've worked with vertical SaaS platforms, most of these questions come with a gut feeling, but gut feeling isn't data. It can't be shared, cited, or stress-tested – and it doesn't help the operator who hasn't spent a decade inside payments.

So we went ahead and gathered the data for you. Here, we’ll dive into why we built this study, what makes it different, and what you’ll learn in order to unlock more revenue for your platform. 

The problem with how payments gets benchmarked today

76% of vertical SaaS platforms describe embedded payments as "very important" or a "critical revenue driver." 

However, 79% are benchmarking their performance against their own historical trends which tells you where you've been, not where you stand. 

72% are relying on benchmarks from their payments provider, a source with a structural conflict of interest.

Metrics like attach rate, adoption rate, take rate can actually make or break how operators run their platforms, and how investors evaluate them. Yet, Independent reference points for these exact metrics simply never existed. Until now.

What makes this study different

This is the very first independent study of embedded payments performance in vertical SaaS. 

We collected from hundreds of vertical SaaS platforms with no provider incentives and no ecosystem bias. Fielded in Q1 2026, the study spans nine verticals, ARR from under $10M to over $100M, and payment volumes from under $10M to over $10B.

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Respondents are running the programs, not observing them

As for the respondents, they're the operators running these programs. 

87% are primary or shared decision-makers for payment strategy. 76% have direct ownership of payment metrics.

There are clear gaps between where platforms think they're performing best and where they actually stand. In fact, the gaps are significant enough that we built an entire diagnostic framework around them.

What you'll find inside

The report measures performance across five compounding benchmarks: attach rate, adoption, active adoption, take rate, and payments as a share of revenue — and reveals which variables actually predict where you'll land on each one.

The adoption gap is wider than most platforms realize

78% of platforms are targeting a payment adoption rate of 71% or higher. Only 25% have reached it. That gap holds across verticals, ARR bands, and years in payments. 

Your vertical matters less than you think

Vertical is a moderate predictor of take rate and platforms serving B2C verticals tend to see higher take rates. Adoption, attach, and active use are driven primarily by maturity and strategy, not market segment. Regardless of whether you serve gyms or government agencies, your benchmarks on operational metrics are more similar than you'd expect.

The leadership factor no one talks about enough

The difference between having a C-Suite payments leader and having no dedicated payments leader is 45 basis points at the median take rate. That's not a rounding error, it's the result of hundreds of decisions made by someone whose job it is to make them. 

Your roadmap to payments success

This report is more than a benchmark, it's a tool and a playbook built specifically for you. 

By the time you've worked through it, you'll know exactly where you stand relative to your peers, what your biggest gaps are, and what the data says about how to close them. 

Furthermore, use this report internally because this is independent, third-party data that can align your product, sales, and leadership teams around what's actually possible.

Download the report today to see how your platform stacks up against independent benchmarks, identify gaps and take next steps to grow your payments business.

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