The situation
A BaaS infrastructure provider had built strong foundational capabilities for fintech program launch — accounts, ledgering, card issuing, ACH origination. Its sponsor bank clients were successfully supporting early-stage fintech programs. The growth challenge was the next tier: vertical SaaS platforms, AP automation companies, and banks seeking to expand commercial payment volume. Each of these segments had capability requirements that the platform's current architecture didn't fully address.
The engagement was a strategy effort: identify the specific capability gaps, prioritize them by segment opportunity and build complexity, and produce a sequenced product roadmap that the provider's engineering and bank partnership teams could execute against.
Segment 1: Vertical SaaS platforms
The gap analysis for vertical SaaS identified three primary constraints. First, the platform lacked a PayFac-equivalent sub-merchant onboarding model — SaaS platforms needed to onboard their customers quickly and manage them as sub-merchants, but the existing architecture required each customer to go through full bank onboarding. Second, the interchange economics model didn't support Level 2/3 data transmission for B2B card volume — a significant gap for SaaS platforms serving commercial clients. Third, the fee structure tooling was too rigid — SaaS platforms needed configurable pricing by customer tier, rail, and transaction type.
Segment 2: AP automation platforms
For AP automation, the primary gaps were in the virtual card stack and payment orchestration layer. The provider's VCard capabilities supported basic issuance but lacked the commercial purchasing card BIN categories that generate higher B2B interchange. The payment waterfall logic — which rail to try first, fallback sequencing, exception routing — was not configurable at the program level. AP platforms needed to control this logic to optimize revenue across VCard, monetized ACH, and check conversion.
The supplier enablement gap was the most significant: no tooling to support supplier AR integration, STP rate tracking, or enrollment management. AP programs that launched on the platform were responsible for all supplier enablement with no infrastructure support — limiting the VCard acceptance rates they could achieve.
Segment 3: Bank commercial payment expansion
For bank clients seeking to win more commercial payment volume from existing business customers, the gap was in the commercial payment product stack. Banks wanted to offer their treasury and commercial banking clients a competitive AP automation capability, RTP/FedNow integration for B2B payment speed, and enhanced remittance data that would allow their commercial clients to reduce manual reconciliation. The provider's platform had the rail infrastructure but not the commercial payment product layer that banks could offer to business customers as a differentiated treasury product.
The roadmap
The strategy output was a capability roadmap prioritized across the three segments by a combination of revenue opportunity, build complexity, and sponsor bank appetite. The top-priority builds: commercial purchasing card BIN access (high impact, medium complexity), configurable payment waterfall logic (high impact across both SaaS and AP segments, medium complexity), and sub-merchant onboarding model for SaaS (high impact, higher complexity).
The commercial bank product layer — the AP and treasury product set for banks to offer business customers — was positioned as an 18-month initiative requiring both product development and bank partnership agreements that went beyond what the existing sponsor bank relationships covered.
The roadmap gave the provider a clear line of sight from current state to the capability set needed to compete for vertical SaaS, AP, and bank commercial payment volume — without requiring a full platform re-architecture.