Visibility
Can you even see the data driving your payments revenue?
Embedded Payments, Owned End To End
The Best Embedded Payments Team You'll Never Have To Hire.
Advice alone leaves you to execute it. Software alone leaves you to run it. We do both, and own the result. Senior payments advisors plus our own technology, pointed at one job: lower cost, more revenue, faster launches. You get the outcome, not another project to manage.
For 5+ years our team has run this across 100+ platform engagements, recovering the money processors owed and optimizing what payments cost. Start with a call or a paid Payments Diagnostic, and we take it from there.
Platforms We Have Worked With
What Straata Is
Not A Consultant. Not A Platform.
Straata delivers an outcome: payments revenue growth on autopilot.
Payments advice tells you what to do and leaves you to do it. Payments software hands you a dashboard and leaves you to run it. We combine senior payments advisors with our own technology and take the whole outcome off your desk. One team, one roof, from the first look to the money in the bank.
The off-the-shelf AI for your payments data. Lower cost, higher efficiency, and not a line of code to write.
The Work
AssessRecoverOptimizeOperate
Where It Stops
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A consultantAdvice
Hands you a recommendation. You are left wondering how to execute.
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A platformSoftware
Gives you a dashboard. You interpret and extract the value. Another tool to learn.
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StraataAdvisory + Technology
We identify the gaps, deliver the roadmap, deliver the outcome, and keep operating it.
We do not sell you a plan or a login. We deliver the result: costs down, revenues up, speed increased, and execution risk mitigated.
↓DownCosts
↑UpRevenues
↑IncreasedSpeed
↓MitigatedExecution Risk
The Reporting Gap
Payments Grows Fast. Nobody Knows How, Why, Or If It Could Be Better.
For most platforms, payments has become one of the fastest-growing line items in the business. The reporting needed to manage it like one has not kept up anywhere in the market.
Context
Once you can see the data, how do you know what good looks like? Where are the gaps?
Opportunity
Once you can see the gaps, how do you close them?
Ownership
Once you know how to close the gaps, who is going to execute?
So operators settle for directional confidence: we are profitable and the product is working. Meanwhile one of the biggest revenue lines in the business runs on a spreadsheet and a prayer. The leakage is quiet, which is exactly how it survives.
The Payments Revenue Roadmap
Most Platforms Leave 30 to 50% Of Their Payments Revenue Untapped.
These are the five levers where payments revenue is won or lost, each scored against our benchmarks from 100+ platform engagements. The Diagnostic sizes your gap in each, in your Report Card. The full, sequenced roadmap to close them unlocks when you engage Straata.
Benchmarked Throughout
Every lever below is measured against real outcomes from 100+ platform engagements. You see where you sit, what best-in-class looks like, and the distance between the two.
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01
Commercial Terms
Your processor contract, buy rates, and revenue share, benchmarked against what comparable platforms actually pay.
You TodayBest-In-ClassModeled $10.3M over five years, one renegotiation.
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02
Commission Verification
Every residual and fee reconciled to your contract, to the cent. Underpayment you cannot see until someone checks the math.
You TodayBest-In-ClassRecovered $1.345M in a single quarter, one platform.
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03
Interchange Optimization
Downgrades and qualification, matched to your card mix and eligibility. Sized from transaction data, never assumed.
You TodayBest-In-ClassValidation-Gated Confirmed per merchant before a dollar is promised.
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04
Merchant Pricing Optimization
Your effective rate to merchants against what the market bears, priced for retention and margin at once.
You TodayBest-In-ClassBenchmarked Your rate card against comparable platforms.
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05
Product Gaps
Payment products you could offer but do not, and the revenue each one unlocks: surcharging, ACH, payouts, funding.
You TodayBest-In-ClassUpside New revenue lines, sized to your base.
The Diagnostic sizes every lever in your Report Card. The Revenue Roadmap, the how behind each number, unlocks when you engage Straata.
How The Diagnostic Works
Four Files In. One Report Card. Two Ways To Partner.
Straata joins what you agreed, what your processor reported, what each transaction cost, and what merchants were billed, then grades your program and sizes the opportunity in your Report Card. Engage Straata and your Revenue Roadmap unlocks: the execution detail behind every number, lever by lever.
- 01Send the files
- 02Reconcile
- 03Report Card
Send the raw exports.
No integration. No cleanup project. Pull the files you already have and send them as they are.
- Residual reportsWhat your processor says it paid.
- Contract + Schedule AWhat it agreed to pay.
- Transaction dataWhat actually moved, fee by fee.
- Merchant statementsWhat your customers were charged.
We reconcile the money trail.
What you were promised, what was processed, what merchants were charged, and what you were paid, checked line by line.
Visa, MC140 bps40 bps−100
Amex90 bps30 bps−60
Debit110 bps30 bps−80
Exceptions traced3
See the grade and the size.
The Diagnostic grades your program and sizes the opportunity across five levers. The step-by-step roadmap to capture it unlocks when you engage.
Report Card
Ready In A Week
- Clarity
- D
- Cost Optimization
- C
- Revenue Growth
- B
- Protection
- C
Payout shortfall$875K
Optimization found$1.7M/yr
Your Report CardTwo Ways To Partner
- The full roadmapEvery lever, sized and benchmarked.
- All the workingsEvery number traced to source.
- The sequenceWhat to do first, and why.
- Yours to keepNo lock-in. Run it at your pace.
Partner Model 01 / Self-Directed
Take It And Run
Engage, and the full Revenue Roadmap and every working is yours. Your team executes.
You leave with a prioritized, benchmarked plan and the evidence behind every number, ready to act on with or without us.
- RecoverClaw back what you are owed
- NegotiateReset commercial terms
- OptimizeCapture pricing + interchange
- OperateA named Fractional GM of Payments owns it
You keepThe outcome, not another project
Partner Model 02 / Done With You
Have Straata Execute
We run the roadmap on your behalf and own the result.
Recovery, negotiation, optimization, and ongoing operation, carried by a named payments operator accountable for the outcome.
The Report Card sizes the prize before you commit. Engage, and your Revenue Roadmap unlocks. The only choice left is who runs it: you, or Straata on your behalf.
Proof, With Workings
Why Teams Choose Straata.
Named engagements, measured outcomes, and the mechanism behind each result. The proof is the record of the work, not a row of floating metrics.
Seen before. Proven here.
5+ years and 100+ platform engagements sit behind the method. The benchmarks come from repeated payments work, not generic market research.
Every number keeps its workings.
Residuals, contracts, transactions, and merchant statements become one money trail. Every finding carries the mechanism, magnitude, and recovery posture.
No handoff after the finding.
A named payments operator turns the evidence into recovery, negotiation, optimization, or an operating plan. You receive an owned outcome, not another dashboard.
Independent, with no kickbacks.
We take no referral fees and no vendor kickbacks. That is not true of many payments consultants, who get paid to send you to a processor. Our only incentive is your result, so the advice is always yours, not theirs.
Contract Negotiation
~$750K in annualized savings from an executed Stripe renewal.
Parking marketplace
Executed result
Fractional GM of Payments
Payments attachment moved from about 30% to 65–70% in roughly 12 months.
CPA practice-management SaaS
Measured result
Business Case Formation
Wholesale-reseller IC+ agreements executed. The migration is underway.
Church management SaaS
Executed agreement
Buy-Side Diligence
Forward selected, beta completed, and the replacement payments program launched.
Field-service SaaS
Launched live
Business Case Formation
$5M+ projected annual revenue from a payer-sync model.
Healthcare payments
Projected result
Straata In Numbers
$100B+
Annual GMV analyzed100+
Platform engagements$18M
Identified for clients, H1 2026 Diagnostic50% unlocked within 90 days of identification5+ yrs
Focused only on payments20+
Processors normalized in one P&LEvery figure starts from your own data, not a market model. We read what your statements already contain and interpret it differently. Each stays tied to its engagement state (recovered, executed, measured, launched, or projected), so a projection is never dressed up as a recovery. No blended vanity total, no ambiguity about what happened.
See All 67 EngagementsThe Diagnostic Questions
Can You Answer These Questions?
Many companies we work with cannot answer any of these without a week of spreadsheet work. Some cannot answer them at all.
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01 / Cost Clarity
Do you know your true cost per transaction, across every processor, card brand, and funding type?
Most platforms cannot tell their board what their true payments margin is. Revenue is growing, but nobody can say whether the economics are actually healthy.
All-In Cost By Rail
Illustrative all-in payment cost matrix by processor and payment rail. -
02 / Margin Clarity
Can you decompose your take rate into interchange, assessments, markup, and partner costs at the merchant level?
Margin erosion is quiet. It does not show up in your processor's reports. By the time you notice, the leakage has been compounding for quarters.
Merchant-Level Take-Rate Decomposition
Illustrative bridge from collected take rate to retained merchant-level margin. -
03 / Market Position
Do you know how your economics compare to platforms of similar size, vertical, and volume tier?
Your processor is not incentivized to optimize your economics. Without an independent view, you are negotiating blind every time your contract comes up.
Independent Peer Position
Illustrative peer benchmark showing payment economics against a matched software-platform cohort. -
04 / Repricing
Can you model the revenue impact of repricing a merchant cohort before you do it?
Merchant churn does not start with a cancellation email. It starts with a pricing conversation you never saw coming because you had no visibility into competitive positioning.
Modeled Before You Reprice
Illustrative repricing scenario showing current and proposed rates with annualized impact. -
05 / Merchant Risk
Do you know which merchants are at churn risk based on pricing competitiveness and volume trends?
A processor moves money. A strategy grows revenue. Most platforms have the first and assume it covers the second. It does not.
Risk Before The Renewal Call
Illustrative merchant risk monitor combining peer-pricing gaps and recent volume trends. -
06 / Change Control
If your processor changed its fee schedule tomorrow, could you quantify the impact by end of week?
Hiring a full payments team is increasingly untenable, and even when you do hire, they still need tooling. That is the paradox Straata solves.
Change Quantified By End Of Week
Illustrative processor fee-schedule comparison with annualized cost impact.
Business Continuity
When Your Payments Lead Leaves, The Knowledge Shouldn’t.
At most platforms, payments runs out of one person’s head. A departure, a leave, or a reorg, and the contracts, the processor relationships, and the reasoning behind every decision walk out with them, on one of the biggest revenue lines in the business. Straata is the record that stays.
The record that stays
Even at the base subscription, we keep a living history of your payments program: the economics, the vendor terms, the benchmarks, and why each decision was made. It lives outside any one person’s head.
Your next hire, up to speed fast
When your own payments owner turns over, the replacement inherits a complete, current record instead of a cold start. Days to the first real decision, not two quarters.
A bench that’s already ramped
Need someone in the seat now? Because we already hold your context, Straata steps in fractionally the moment it is empty. A departure, a leave, or the gap before a hire lands.
A team you hire can quit. Straata doesn’t.
Our Guarantee
We own the outcome. So we put ourselves on the hook for it.
Three promises, in writing, in every engagement. Not a slogan, a standard we hold ourselves to.
Value in weeks, not quarters.
The Diagnostic returns a graded Report Card in one week. A full engagement is delivering inside the first weeks, not the first two quarters.
If we are not live within 30 days of receiving your data, the platform fee pauses until we are. The clock starts once your data and access are in hand, not while we wait on you or a processor.
Every number reconciled, or it’s not on the invoice.
We read your own data and interpret it differently. Every finding traces to the exact line in your statements.
If a finding does not reconcile to your own records, we do not bill it. You never pay for a number we cannot prove.
We work for you. Never the processor.
Every other party in payments is paid by the processor. We are not. That independence is the whole point.
Straata takes no processor referral fees, revenue share, or kickbacks. Our only compensation comes from you.
Anyone can say they own the outcome. These are the terms that make it true.
Beyond The Diagnostic
Our Payments Expertise Applies Wherever Value Is At Stake.
An diagnostic is one entry point. The same rigor can help you understand the economics, shape the strategy, build the operating foundation, and execute the outcome.
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01
Understand
- Report Card
- Residual Audit
- Optimization Analysis
Separate payout accuracy from optimization upside, then quantify both against the records that prove them.
- 27 Evidence Engagements
- ~$20MIn H1 2025 diagnostic work alone, Straata identified this much in erroneous client charges.
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02
Strategize
- Business Case Formation
- GTM Strategy Design & Implementation
- Sponsor Bank Architecture
Turn the evidence into a board-ready business line, operating model, and route to market.
- 14 Strategy Engagements
- $12M–$17M+Across quantified cases, Straata modeled this much in near-term client impact.
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03
Build
- Managed Vendor Migration
- Data Activation
Install the operating infrastructure: carry the processor move and build the data foundation that keeps the economics visible.
- Operating Standard
- 100% liveOne owner carries the migration to the last merchant and leaves the reporting foundation in place.
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04
Execute
- Contract Negotiation
- Vendor Selection & RFP Response
- Buy & Sell-Side Diligence
- Fractional GM of Payments
Carry the commercial move through signed terms and sustained ownership, with a named payments operator accountable for the outcome.
- 23 Execution Engagements
- $1.81M+ / yrExecuted annualized savings across three completed negotiations.
- Fractional GM of Payments
- $400–600KWhat one in-house payments seat costs, loaded. Straata installs the whole function for a fraction, scoped on a call.
Rollup method: one non-overlapping client-benefit figure per case across the 67-case library. Realized, identified, and modeled amounts remain labeled; advisor fees, processing volume, vendor costs, duplicate aliases, and alternate scenario tiers are excluded.
Get Started
Start With The Data You Already Have.
Straata works from the exports your payments stack already produces. No integration, reformatting, or engineering lift.
Book A Call →
Stripe
Adyen
Fiserv
FIS
Rainforest
Elavon
PayPal
Global Payments
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Book the call
Confirm your processor, volume, and which files you can pull.
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Sign the data agreement
Sign once before any file moves. Your data stays encrypted in a SOC 2 backed environment.
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Send the four files
Send residual reports, Schedule A, transaction data, and merchant statements. No reformatting required.
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Read your report card
Get grades, recovery value, and time to unlock, then decide the next move.
No Call, No Commitment
See A Sample Report Card And How We Size The Gap. Instant Download.
Before you book anything, get a sample Diagnostic Report Card and the benchmarking methodology on the spot. No call, no data required.
- A sample Diagnostic Report Card, graded and filled in
- The benchmarking methodology, in plain language
- Where your vertical’s take rate really sits
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions.
What if nothing is wrong?
Then you keep a clean, graded answer you can hand to your board or a diligence team, and we name what would make the next read stronger. A clean grade is a real deliverable.
Why start with the report card?
It establishes the evidence before any execution scope is proposed. If the card shows nothing material, you still keep the finding and know what was checked.
What data do you need, exactly?
Four files: residual reports, your contract's Schedule A, transaction data with card type, and merchant statements. A few months of each is enough. Missing one narrows the read, and we tell you what the gap prevents us from proving.
Is our data secure?
We never touch cardholder data. No full card numbers, no CVV; PCI DSS is out of scope by architecture. Files live in a SOC 2 backed cloud environment, AES-256 at rest and TLS in transit, under a data and security agreement signed before anything moves.
How long does it take?
About one week from files received to report card. Deeper readouts and the paid work that follows run in weeks, never quarters.
We already have a payments team. Is this still useful?
Yes. Internal owners use the report card as an independent benchmark and as leverage before a renewal, a negotiation, or a board conversation. The diagnostic machinery is the part almost no internal team has time to build.
What happens if our payments lead leaves?
Nothing walks out the door. Straata keeps a living record of your payments program: the vendor terms, the economics, the benchmarks, and the reasoning behind each decision. So the next owner, your new hire or a fractional operator from us, picks up mid-stream instead of starting from zero.
What does the paid work cost?
It is scoped around what the report card finds, which is why we do not publish a rate card. Recovery work can be priced on what is actually recovered, so the incentive stays aligned.
Where does the platform fit?
The platform is the amplifier: normalized data, benchmark logic, and agentic execution under a named payments operator. You experience it through the report card and the work.