What is PayFac-as-a-Service?
A payment facilitator, or PayFac, signs up merchants to accept card payments and handles the funds flow on their behalf. It sits between your customers and the card networks, and it takes on responsibility for underwriting, monitoring and compliance.
Becoming a registered PayFac gives a software company a great deal of control, but it also means taking on all of that responsibility. PayFac-as-a-Service gives you the benefits of the model without the build. You integrate with a provider that already operates the infrastructure, and you offer payments to your customers under your own brand.
How linq works
Your customers sign up inside your product. linq supports a branded onboarding flow, so your customers never leave your platform to get set up.
We handle underwriting and approval. Each business is reviewed, verified and approved by our team, with ongoing monitoring after approval.
Payments run through your platform. Your customers accept cards and bank payments in the checkout, billing or point-of-sale experience you design.
Funds settle and you earn. Your customers get paid, and your platform earns revenue from the processing it enables.
PayFac-as-a-Service compared with other ways to offer payments
| Referral or ISO partnership | PayFac-as-a-Service (linq) | Becoming your own PayFac | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who your customer signs up with | The partner, in a separate process | You, inside your product | You, inside your product |
| Branding | Mostly the partner's | Yours | Yours |
| Underwriting and risk | The partner | Shared; we handle the heavy lifting | You |
| Compliance burden | The partner | Largely ours, with your responsibilities clearly defined | Yours |
| Revenue opportunity | Limited | Meaningful, and shared with you | Highest, with the highest cost and risk |
| Best fit | Software that wants a simple referral | Software that wants payments as part of the product | Platforms with a dedicated payments team |
Read more about PayFac, ISO and ISO/MSP models.
What you control and what we handle
You control the customer experience, how payments fit into your product and how you position them to your customers.
We handle merchant underwriting, risk monitoring, card network compliance requirements and the processing relationships behind the scenes.
Together we manage the details that make a payments program run smoothly, including support, reporting and the occasional hard case.
Why software companies choose linq
Experience you can lean on. Merchant Focus has been helping businesses accept payments since 2004. We know what merchants ask, where processing goes wrong and how to fix it.
White-label from the start. Your brand, your workflow, your customer relationship.
One partner for cards and ACH. Offer your customers the payment methods they need without stitching together several vendors.
Flexibility as you grow. linq is built so your payments program can evolve with your platform and your customers.
Real people. Our team works with yours through integration, launch and growth.
Built for the industries we know
linq is designed for software companies serving fitness and wellness, medical and healthcare, unattended and car wash, and other specialized industries where payments are part of the daily workflow. See how we work with fitness and wellness, medical and healthcare and unattended and car wash software.
Let's talk about your platform
Tell us about your software and your customers, and we will help you decide whether linq is the right fit.