Killing the Paper Check: How SaaS Companies Can Build Feeless, Frictionless B2B Payments

SaaS founders obsess over features, product–market fit, and ARR growth — but ignore one of the most persistent, costly bottlenecks in their business: getting paid.

For many B2B companies, payments still live in a half-digital, half-analog limbo. Bank transfers take days. Credit card fees eat into margins. Accounting teams spend hours reconciling spreadsheets instead of generating insight.

Scott Campbell, Co-Founder and Head of Solutions at PAYSTAND, believes this is more than inefficiency — it’s a structural drag on growth. His mission: rebuild B2B payments so money moves instantly, securely, and without fees.

The lessons from PAYSTAND’s journey are exactly the kind SaaS and tech companies can apply to remove financial friction, improve cash flow, and unlock capital for faster scaling.

Lesson 1: Own the Financial Plumbing

Scott’s starting point is blunt:

“For a business to own its destiny, it has to own all the components it’s responsible for — including how it gets paid.”

Most companies rely on financial systems designed decades ago — ACH rails that can take up to 10 business days, credit card networks with baked-in incentive fees, and manual reconciliation that wastes skilled labor.

For SaaS founders, owning the plumbing means:

Evaluating every payment touchpoint for speed, cost, and automation potential.
Designing payment flows as part of your core product experience, not as an afterthought.
Considering alternative infrastructure (blockchain, embedded payments, direct bank integrations) that eliminate intermediaries.

Lesson 2: Focus on B2B Pain Before B2C Glamour

PAYSTAND deliberately chose to start in B2B before tackling consumer payments. Why?

Bigger deal sizes mean bigger impact from efficiency gains.
Higher pain tolerance for process changes if ROI is clear.
Massive hidden labor costs — some enterprises were spending hundreds of thousands annually just to move money on spreadsheets.

For SaaS companies, the takeaway is clear: if you’re solving a payment or transaction problem, start where the stakes are highest.

Lesson 3: Apply the “Email Analogy” to Technology Adoption

Scott compares blockchain today to email in 1975 — the capability exists, but mainstream adoption is still ahead.

Early adopters will gain disproportionate advantage by:

Wrapping advanced tech in accessible workflows.
Hiding complexity (e.g., customers don’t need to understand blockchain — they just see faster payments).
Leveraging network effects — the more participants on your system, the more valuable it becomes.

This mirrors how SaaS products often scale: take an emerging capability, make it dead simple, then grow as the market catches up.

Lesson 4: Culture Determines Execution Speed

Innovation in payments requires breaking mental habits. Scott stresses:

Hire true believers in the vision, not just people with the right resume.
Keep culture definitions explicit and operational — down to how fast you acknowledge emails.
Pull talent from your own customer base — some of PAYSTAND’s best hires were users who wanted to solve the problem at scale.

For SaaS scaling teams, this means aligning culture with the pace of change you need — or risk innovation dying in committee.

Lesson 5: Educate Customers into Readiness

One of PAYSTAND’s biggest surprises? Many customers weren’t ready to believe payments could be instant and fee-free.

Breaking through required:

Guiding customers to articulate their ideal state before showing the solution.
Demonstrating ROI in real time (“Here’s your ERP — see how the payment landed instantly?”).
Documenting every conversation to feed product improvements and sales enablement.

For SaaS founders introducing a category shift, market education is part of the product.

Consulting Takeaway — Payment Friction is Growth Friction

If your SaaS company has slow receivables, high transaction costs, or manual reconciliation, you’re leaking growth capital.

The PAYSTAND playbook suggests:

Audit your payment flows like a product manager would — map every step.
Automate reconciliation to free accounting for analysis, not data entry.
Challenge fees as “givens” — explore alternative rails and fee models.
Build financial UX into onboarding so customers pay you faster, easier, and more often.

When you remove friction from how money comes in, you not only improve cash flow — you make every other growth initiative easier to fund and execute.