How Payments Enable Everything Else in Vertical SaaS, with Patrick O’Donnell from Phorest

Vertical SaaS sits at the centre of embedded finance, and companies like Phorest are the ones shaping it. Phorest has built software for 20 years and has been in payments for five of those years. In this episode, I speak with Patrick O’Donnell, Global Commercial Director, Payments at Phorest, the Irish software company that hair and beauty salons, med spas, and aesthetics clinics run on. Patrick explains why payments only arrived 15 years into Phorest’s life and came out of the US business rather than a roadmap, how the pay pillar group pulls product, engineering, ops, marketing and finance into one room, and why the capital product launched without customers asking for it. In this episode we cover: Why around 70 per cent of payment activity is card present, and what that means for terminals What salon owners use embedded capital for, from the January slowdown to new machinery and new branches How buy now, pay later is rolling out, and why customers have to switch it on themselves Why embedded payroll starts in the US and Canada, and what booking and employee data lets Phorest do with it What share of revenue financial services could reach, and where it sits against the software business What changes when you move from Citibank and Mastercard into a non-regulated software company Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-o-donnell-24354752/ About Embedded Finance Review: Embedded Finance Review is a newsletter, podcast, and event series covering the European embedded finance ecosystem. I also offer Office Hours, free intro calls for companies navigating embedded finance, and host regular in-person events across Europe. Find all details at embeddedfinancereview.com. This episode was produced by https://orama.tv/ (00:00) Intro (03:14) When SaaS Should Add Payments(05:24) Why Embedded Payments Took Off(07:14) What Phorest Does(08:56) Full Stack Features And Markets(11:42) How Phorest Payments Work(14:49) Building The Fintech Team(19:24) Choosing New Finance Products(24:25) Revenue Versus Customer Value(30:54) Advice And Wrap Up