How Crystal Practice Management built a payments product from scratch and achieved 2-3x monthly growth with Rainforest

‍“Payments volume isn't captured, it's earned. It takes the right product, real customer obsession, and a partner in the weeds with you. That's exactly what Rainforest has been for us.” - Paul Thavaj, Head of Payments, Crystal Practice Management

Meet Crystal Practice Management 

Crystal Practice Management is a practice management and electronic health record platform built exclusively for optometry. Serving over 8,000 doctors who collectively treat more than 40 million patients per year, Crystal is the operating system behind the scenes at optometry offices across the country handling everything from appointment scheduling and exam management to contact lens sales and office operations.

Paul Thavaj leads payments at Crystal PM. When he joined, the payments opportunity was right there: practices generating billions in processing volume, without any embedded payments product.  He was ready to change that by building one from the ground up, and needed the right partner by his side. 

The Challenge

Starting from scratch 

Before Rainforest, Crystal PM had no payments product. No existing infrastructure, prior integrations, and no playbook. Their practices were running on standalone terminals completely disconnected from their practice management software — scheduling, patient records, and payments all living in separate worlds. 

In fact, more than 90% of their customers were still operating this way.

‍“We never had payments. There were barely any integrations, and mostly manual entry.” - Paul

The Backbook Opportunity

However, behind that gap, was a major opportunity. Thousands of practices representing billions in annual processing volume — none of it being captured by Crystal PM. 

For Paul, this was the mandate: build a payments product from scratch and convert a backbook that had never been touched.

Converting that backbook opportunity, however, required more than just building a product. It required removing a real barrier that had been stalling sales conversations: terminal costs. 

Crystal PM operates in an overwhelmingly card-present world in which patients pay in person; at the front desk, integrated terminals aren't optional, they're the product, and the upfront cost of getting practices onto new hardware had been a consistent sticking point.

Why Rainforest? 

Crystal PM needed a partner who would show up the way a co-founder would — willing to get into the details, move fast, and not make them wait in a queue to get things done.

"We saw Rainforest as a partner that would be in the weeds with us and work efficiently without having to go up a chain of other people to get something done. It was kind of a no-brainer what Rainforest brought to the table." 
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- Paul 

They needed someone to move fast with them and treat their success as their own – not just be handed a product. 

The solution 

With the help of Rainforest, Crystal PM built a fully embedded payments product that brought integrated terminals, modern payment methods, and a seamless merchant experience to optometry practices for the first time.

Built from scratch, launched seamlessly 

The implementation was fast and frictionless, something Paul had not experienced at the same scale before. He initially prepared for complexity, but what he got instead was a process that moved quickly, documentation that actually worked and a team that showed up every step of the way. 

‍"The partnership itself and the integration from start to finish, getting it to market, has been seamless.”  - Paul

Tackling the backbook opportunity, together

To unlock the pipeline, Rainforest stepped in with a terminal incentive program, offering discounted and often free card-present terminals to Crystal's merchants. It was a decisive move that changed the shape of the sales conversation entirely. 

The terminal incentive was just the starting point. Rainforest took a hands-on role in helping Crystal PM with whatever they needed to convert their backbook at scale. 

The Rainforest team worked directly with Crystal's sales reps to help them confidently sell embedded payments, showing up in person for quarterly business reviews, and providing the white-glove support that gave Crystal's team the time and guidance to get up to speed quickly.

It was the exact kind of partnership where Rainforest didn't just hand Crystal a product and step back, they stayed in it with them.

The results

Hundreds of millions in processing volume within 3 months 

Since their full public launch, Crystal PM has onboarded more than 150 merchant accounts and is approaching hundreds of millions in annual processing volume – all within the first three months of being generally available. 

 2–3 x monthly growth

Processing volume has been growing 2–3x every month since launch. As the sales team has ramped, their targets have doubled to keep pace with demand.

‍"We've grown 2x, 3x every month. What's nice is the amount of reps that we're hiring and ramping — their goals have been doubling as well. We've hit the ground running through quarter one." - Paul 

Less than 15 days from application to live

Merchant onboarding has been fast and smooth. From a practice signing an application to being fully implemented and actively processing, Crystal PM has gotten the timeline down to under 15 days.

Positive cash flow in just 3 months

They achieved positive cash flow just three months after going live. For a payments business built from scratch inside a vertical SaaS platform, that kind of early momentum is rare.

‍"We're three months in and we're already seeing positive cash flow with the payments. We're constantly innovating our product and adding things that will help our customers." - Paul 

A word to other platforms 

For platforms sitting on an untapped payments opportunity, Paul's story is a clear illustration of what's possible when the right product, partner, and the timing align. The backbook is still in front of Crystal PM, and they're just getting started.

‍"Rainforest has helped accelerate where we're at and what we're doing today, and I think we're just going to keep doubling and tripling what we're continuing to do. Without Rainforest, it would have been a longer road. It would have been a tougher road."- Paul