Is Pipe for SaaS companies?

Is Pipe for SaaS companies?

Pipe was built to help SaaS companies grow—and today, we do it in a whole new way.

If your SaaS platform serves small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—helping them run operations, manage payments, and streamline workflows—embedded finance can be the missing piece that drives deeper engagement and growth for both you and your customers. Pipe makes it simple to offer seamless access to capital inside your platform, unlocking a powerful competitive advantage.

First, a little backstory

Pipe initially launched with SaaS companies in mind. SaaS companies were a natural fit for what we were building because of their recurring revenue models and unique challenges. Many SaaS companies experience a long CAC payback period gap, which they try to close by offering customers big discounts—often as high as 30%—as an incentive to pay annually. Of course, this can impact revenue recognition and profit margins and ultimately drive down the company’s overall value. 

Our solution, was recurring revenue financing, which turned future ARR into dilution-free up-front capital for growth. But the need for working capital and growth funding was so much bigger than just SaaS. Small businesses around the word often struggle to access financing when they need it.

In early 2024, Pipe's platform evolved to deliver fast, frictionless working capital to SMBs inside the platforms they were using to run their businesses—you guessed it, SaaS. While Pipe is available directly through Pipe.com and in partnership with payfacs, marketplaces, and more, vertical SaaS companies have proven to be the ideal partner for Pipe's embedded capital solution.

How embedded finance can help grow your SaaS platform

For a b2b SaaS company—especially if you're focused on a specific vertical like home services or personal care—growth often comes down to reducing churn, standing out from your competitors, and maximizing lifetime value. With a finite number of businesses in your vertical, you can't rely on bringing in tons of net-new customers every month.

That’s where embedded finance comes in.

Embedded finance integrates financial products—such as working capital, cards, or even insurance—directly into non-financial platforms like vertical SaaS. It creates a stickier, more valuable product experience that helps customers succeed while differentiating your platform from competitors.

Build or Partner? The Case for Pipe

Offering financing in-house might seem like a logical step for a SaaS platform, but building a capital product from scratch is a massive operational and regulatory challenge. To do it well, you’d need:

Risk modeling & underwriting expertise
Compliance & regulatory infrastructure
Capital market access
Seamless operational automation

Even for well-funded software companies, getting these right is difficult—which is why partnering with a fintech expert like Pipe is the smart move.

Launching an embedded capital product with Pipe, is simple. If your customers process payments through your platform, you're likely a fit to integrate Pipe Capital, which can take as little as a week or two for our Pipe-hosted option, helping your customers access the capital they need without leaving your software.

And speaking of your customers...

How Pipe helps your SaaS customers

The process of applying for loans and other forms of traditional financing can be slow and clunky, and small business owners aren't know for having an abundance of free time. One of the biggest pain points you can solve for them is making capital access fast and easy.

While bank loans are typically based on years of financial statements and credit scores, Pipe is different. We use live, anonymized transaction data from the payments processed through your platform to generate capital offers for your customers. These offers are typically pre-approved, meaning once a customer receives an offer, the only thing that would prevent them from final approval would be a compliance and fraud issue (like the person applying not actually being the real business owner). An embedded capital solution like Pipe lets you offer a frictionless user experience with very high customer satisfaction in a way that feels native to your platform (but without actually building anything from scratch.)

Embedded capital not only improves the customer experience and helps build trust in your platform, it also helps your customers grow their businesses. With access to working capital, they can weather the ups and downs of business seasonality and take advantage of growth opportunities when they arise, increasing the LTV of your customer base by growing the revenue of the SMBs that use your software.

Capital-as-a-Service

Similarly to what you offer your SaaS customers, Pipe offers a simpler way to access financial products without the fuss of maintaining or building them yourself. It's Capital-as-a-service—or even better Growth-as-a-Service.

Curious how your SaaS could grow with an embedded financial solution from Pipe? Connect with our partnerships team for more information on the revenue opportunity size for a SaaS company like yours.