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Many guides on how small businesses can accept payments assume you've already invested in a point of sale (POS) system, hired a developer, or built an ecommerce website. For many founders, freelancers, and service businesses, that's simply not the case. If you're starting from scratch or looking for a simpler way to get paid, it helps to first understand small business payment processing and the different ways businesses can accept payments. This guide covers four practical ways to start accepting payments, from taking card payments over the phone to sending payment links and creating an online checkout, so you can choose the option that best fits your business.

A mass payout is a single batch payment that pays a list of recipients at once instead of processing each payment individually. Marketplaces, gig platforms, affiliate programs, and insurance companies commonly use mass payouts to send earnings, commissions, and claims on a reliable schedule. Finix is a certified direct processor that handles payment processing and payouts for growing platforms and merchants.

If you’re investigating the best payment processors for SaaS, you need to understand which model fits your goals and structure.  There’s a major difference between simply accepting payments and embedding them as a revenue layer. If you’re a SaaS platform, marketplace, or vertical software company, you're not just choosing how to accept payments — you're choosing how payments will work inside your product and business model. That distinction changes the evaluation entirely, and choosing the wrong model can limit your take rate, reduce control over sub-merchant accounts, and create compliance dependencies that become harder to change as your platform grows. We’ve assessed each option across the six dimensions that matter at the infrastructure level: revenue model, compliance and liability ownership, sub-merchant management, token portability and ownership, infrastructure control, and cost at scale.

Vertical payment solutions are designed for those cases, with industry-specific functionality integrated directly into the business. Generic processors optimize for volume across as many business types as possible – that flexibility starts to break down once your operations or compliance requirements get more specific. Finix supports businesses across multiple industries with transparent pricing, flexible payment acceptance, and support for the operational realities that come with managing payments.

Visa Direct is Visa’s push payments platform. It lets a business send money straight to a recipient’s eligible card, bank account, or digital wallet without waiting for a standard bank transfer cycle to finish. For software platforms and marketplaces paying sellers, drivers, contractors, or claimants, the main appeal is speed, since payouts can arrive in minutes rather than days. Finix is a certified direct processor that helps businesses accept payments and send push-to-card payouts through Visa Direct in one place.

Choosing a payment processor for one business is relatively straightforward. Choosing one for a franchise network means accounting for independent locations, centralized oversight, consistent onboarding, and costs that multiply as the network grows. This guide covers what to look for in a franchise payment processor, from reporting and merchant account structure to pricing and fraud protection. It also explains the signs that your current provider may no longer meet the needs of your franchisees or your growing network.