For companies embedding payments into their products, the biggest operational risk may be that the technology succeeds, particularly when embedded payments succeed beyond even the expectations of the business.

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The problem, according to the October edition of PYMNTS Intelligence’s Business Payments Tracker Series, “Built to Scale: How to Grow Embedded Payments Without Starting Over,” produced in collaboration with WEX, is that the infrastructure built to launch the feature may not be equipped to operate the business it helps create.

The report suggested that adoption is no longer the industry’s central obstacle. Operational maturity is.

The report found that that 99% of surveyed companies had implemented some form of embedded finance, yet 93% reported challenges delivering these capabilities, including technical integration, compliance, security and strategic alignment.

For finance leaders, the danger is that these costs and hiccups rarely arrive together. Each additional payment method, banking relationship or geographic market can introduce another integration, exception process or compliance requirement.

The measure of success when integrating embedded payments is not necessarily how quickly a business can start moving money, but how much additional complexity it can absorb without having to start over.

A payments feature that initially helps a software platform improve customer retention or generate new revenue can eventually become a sprawling financial operation, complete with regulatory obligations, fraud exposure, reconciliation demands and liquidity requirements. While the economics of embedded payments can be attractive, its advantages can disguise the operational costs of expansion.

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