Continuing our Fintech deep dive, we now turn our focus to the payments space - the gateway drug for many in Fintech. As a business, we've relied on Stripe for many years after early challenges with PayPal's consumer-centric policies. Yet PayPal remains a go-to for reliable, if costly, cross-border payments.
As payments underpin nearly all financial transactions, it's no surprise this sector sees constant innovation from both established players and emerging challengers. Let's explore some of the top companies shaping the future of payments:
Payment Service Providers & Payment Facilitators
As a go-to for many developers, Stripe enables businesses to instantly accept and process payments online. Their API-based platform and comprehensive stack of products simplify complexities around fraud, global expansion, and more.
PayPal, though initially consumer-focused, now offers extensive services for online merchants to receive and process transactions globally. They also enable customers to open accounts and transfer money worldwide.
Braintree, a PayPal subsidiary, delivers a developer-friendly payment gateway for seamless mobile and online payments.
Checkout.com provides an end-to-end solution for online merchants including identity verification, payment processing, risk analysis, card issuance, and intelligent payment routing.
Adyen offers comprehensive payment processing from card issuance to payouts. Their global platform unified online, mobile, and POS payments across 200+ countries.
Originally serving brick-and-mortar retailers, Block (formerly Square) now enables businesses to accept payments online, in-store, or both. Their hardware POS terminals transformed in-person credit card acceptance.
NMI delivers an e-commerce gateway supporting online and brick-and-mortar merchants. They focus on simplifying payments through seamless integrations.
Razorpay built a full-stack payment gateway and processing platform tailored to Indian businesses and their regulatory needs.
Moov offers an open-source payments platform providing ledger infrastructure with direct connections to card networks, banks, and regulatory bodies.
Lemonway delivers a unified payment platform with modular components purpose-built for marketplaces and platform businesses.
Enabling embedded payments, Finix allows merchants to quickly accept transactions natively via APIs. Their software handles processing, underwriting, and more.
Acquired by FIS in 2022, Payrix offered payment APIs to help SaaS companies embed tailored financial services.
Tilled delivers "PayFac as a service" encompassing payments, merchant enrollment, billing, and hosted payment forms for online businesses.
Infinicept built a robust payment facilitation platform with merchant services, underwriting, and management solutions for ISVs and vertical SaaS.
POS leader Lightspeed now provides embedded payment processing natively built into their retail hardware and software systems.
Rainforest offers payments-as-a-service enabling software platforms to embed tailored financial products across billing, disbursements, and more.
Bud built an open banking platform granting users access to data from any financial product. Their APIs enable new fintech apps.
Tabapay delivers a payment orchestration and movement platform powering many emerging fintechs.
Forage serves government benefit programs, authenticating and processing EBT payments from mobile devices.
As consumer expectations and business models evolve, payments infrastructure must keep pace. Established giants like Stripe, PayPal, and Square continue leading innovation, while many emerging players build tailored solutions for specific verticals, geographies, and transaction types. With open banking expanding access to financial data, expect ever more disruption in this foundational fintech sector.
While these companies provide the infrastructure powering payments globally, virtually every business must build or adapt internal payment capabilities amid this rapidly evolving landscape. Manning + Company offers an innovative talent solution perfectly suited to the needs of the payments ecosystem.
As a talent advisory firm, we provide flexible sourcing across technology, product, data, design, growth, and other critical functions. Our on-demand model recruits specialized experts to join clients for short or long-term initiatives.
For payments companies seeking to build or expand offerings, our sourcing consultants directly recruit product managers, engineers, designers, and other experts to create modern payment experiences. We tap targeted candidate pools beyond traditional job boards, accelerating hiring.
In one recent engagement, our dedicated sourcing advisor helped a cryptocurrency payments startup quickly scale its product team to support a high-growth period. Within weeks we sourced a VP of Product, backend engineers, data scientists, and designers. Our market insights enabled competitive compensation scaling this small team nearly 10x.
For enterprises assessing internal payment capabilities, Manning + Company provides on-demand access to veteran payment consultants, technologists, and project managers to inform strategy and execution. We augment expertise and bandwidth for time-bound initiatives.
One global retailer engaged us to evaluate how emerging payment methods like Apple Pay and contactless cards were impacting their brick-and-mortar checkout experience. Our payment experts measured customer sentiment, developed mobile wallet acceptance requirements, and identified terminal upgrade needs nationwide – executing in weeks what would have taken months internally.
In another case, we helped a subscription company plagued by failed payments and involuntary churn rebuild its billing infrastructure. Our engineers rapidly diagnosed issues stemmimg from outdated APIs and incompatible global payment processors. We designed a future-proof payments stack then staffed a squad to overhaul systems in months rather than the years expected internally.
Whether assessing internal capabilities or developing new fintech products, Manning + Company provides on-demand access to payments talent. Our network includes technology builders who created innovative platforms at leading companies like Stripe, Square, PayPal, and major banks. We recruit specialized experts in:
Online, mobile, and POS payments
Processor integration and payment ops
Global payouts and cross-border transactions
Subscription billing and revenue management
Fraud analysis, risk modeling, regulatory compliance
Card issuing, open banking integrations, and embedded finance
Our sourcing advisors qualify the perfect candidates through skills testing and behavioral interviewing. Clients gain data-driven insights on competitve compensation to attract specialized talent. We handle recruiting, onboarding, and offboarding – no traditional recruiting overhead.
Financial services dominate the economy, so talents needs span far beyond fintech builders. Our advisors provide enterprise leaders, fast-growth startups, and payments specialists with on-demand access to proven experts able to deliver complex initiatives.
To learn more about how Manning + Company applies specialized payments talent to your unique business needs, visit www.jonahmanning.co or follow us on LinkedIn. The future of payments is data-driven, embedded, and global – we ensure you have the right team to capitalize on fintech’s most promising sector.