Rainforest
Rainforest Pay is an Atlanta-based embedded payments-as-a-service platform that enables vertical SaaS companies to embed card, ACH, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, and terminal processing into their software, absorbing PCI, KYC, fraud, and sponsor-bank burden under an interchange-plus pricing model.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2022
- HeadquartersAtlanta, United States
- Headcount51–100
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Rainforest does
Rainforest (Rainforest Pay, Inc.) is an Atlanta-based embedded payments-as-a-service provider founded in 2022 by Joshua Silver, purpose-built for vertical SaaS platforms serving industries such as healthcare, non-profit, professional services, trucking and logistics, construction, AV integration, and youth sports. The core product, Rainforest Pay, functions as a payfac-as-a-service layer that lets software platforms embed card, ACH, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, and EMV terminal processing directly into their products while Rainforest absorbs the compliance, risk, KYC, fraud, chargeback management, and sponsor-bank relationship burden. Approximately 100 vertical SaaS platforms currently run on Rainforest, collectively processing billions of dollars in annual payment volume.
The platform is cloud-native, hosted on AWS with active-active multi-region deployment, Infrastructure-as-Code, containerized immutable environments, and PCI DSS Level 1 certification, and is exposed to developers through a public REST API, a white-label low-code Component Studio, an end-to-end sandbox, and Slack-based senior engineer support. Rainforest monetizes primarily through buy-rate interchange-plus pricing (0.20%-0.30% bps plus $0.20-$0.30 per-item fees scaled by monthly volume), ancillary transaction-based fees (3DS, account updater, disputes, EMV terminals), and a risk-dependent management fee, with no revenue-share split. Its go-to-market blends enterprise field sales for high-volume platform deals, a developer-led self-serve sandbox onboarding path, and strategic-partners outreach across a content-driven marketing engine anchored by "The Payments Strategy Show" and a 2026 vertical-SaaS benchmarking study.
The company has raised $57.5M across three venture rounds: an $11.75M seed in October 2023 led by Accel, a $20M Series A in June 2024 led by Matrix Partners, and a $29M Series B in September 2025 co-led by Matrix Partners and Infinity Ventures. Reported growth metrics include 10x year-over-year ARR growth since the Series A and 17x payment volume growth in the six months preceding the Series A, and Series B capital is allocated to hiring, planned entry into Canada, and product expansion including tap-to-phone and additional alternate payment methods.
Rainforest firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Rainforest
- Legal name
- Rainforest Pay, Inc.
- Website
- https://rainforestpay.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2022
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 51–100 employees
- Short description
- Rainforest Pay is an Atlanta-based embedded payments-as-a-service platform that enables vertical SaaS companies to embed card, ACH, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, and terminal processing into their software, absorbing PCI, KYC, fraud, and sponsor-bank burden under an interchange-plus pricing model.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Rainforest is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Atlanta
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Rainforest business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Interchange-Plus Card Processing Fees: Buy-rate interchange-plus pricing model with no revenue split. Platforms are charged Rainforest bps (0.30% on $0–$5M monthly volume, 0.25% on $5M–$15M, 0.20% on $15M–$25M) plus per-item fees ($0.30 on 0–50k items, $0.25 on 50k–150k, $0.20 on 150k–250k) on top of interchange and DFA at passthrough. Tiers are "pick a tier."
- ACH and Standard Payout Fees: $0.20 per ACH item for standard payouts; ACH transactions priced separately; ACH account validation at $1.49 per validation. No ACH volume-based fee charged by Rainforest.
- Risk Management Fee: Risk-dependent fee assessed based on risk levels determined during Platform onboarding and underwriting.
- Ancillary Transaction-Based Fees: Account Updater $0.23/item, 3DS $0.31/attempt, Disputes & Returns $15/item, plus an EMV Terminal Monthly Fee of $11.25/terminal.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Usage-based | Monthly | Interchange-plus card pricing on a pick-a-tier basis (0.30%/0.25%/0.20% bps + per-item $0.30/$0.25/$0.20) plus interchange and DFA at passthrough |
| Usage-based | Monthly | ACH transactions and standard payouts at $0.20 per item with no ACH volume-based fee |
| Usage-based | Monthly | Ancillary risk and operations fees: Risk Management (risk dependent), Account Updater $0.23/item, 3DS $0.31/attempt, Disputes & Returns $15/item, EMV Terminal $11.25/terminal/month |
Go-to-market motion4 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels7 records
Rainforest product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Rainforest Pay is a cloud-native, payfac-as-a-service embedded payments platform purpose-built for vertical SaaS platforms. It enables software platforms to embed payment processing (card, ACH, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, and EMV terminals) directly into their product via low-code embeddable components and APIs, while Rainforest handles merchant onboarding, KYC/underwriting, PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, fraud monitoring, chargeback management, next-day funding, and unified reporting.
Product overview
Rainforest (Rainforest Pay, Inc.) offers a single, unified embedded payments platform — not a multi-brand portfolio — composed of one core payfac-as-a-service product (Rainforest Pay) layered with a Component Studio module of white-labeled, low-code embeddable components, a Developer APIs and Tools suite, a Sandbox testing environment, and a public Interchange-Plus Pricing and ROI Calculator. The core Rainforest Pay platform delivers the merchant onboarding, KYC, payments processing (card, ACH, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, terminals), next-day funding, chargebacks, reporting, and compliance burden that vertical SaaS platforms need; the Component Studio and Developer APIs expose the same capabilities as embeddable UI components and REST APIs with webhooks for fast integration; the Sandbox allows end-to-end pre-launch testing; and the ROI Calculator helps prospects model interchange-plus economics. Together, these named products form a platform-plus-modules architecture optimized for vertical SaaS platforms.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Rainforest Pay Core embedded payments platform (payfac-as-a-service) purpose-built for vertical SaaS. Provides merchant onboarding, KYC/underwriting, PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, fraud monitoring, chargeback management, next-day funding, and unified reporting, while enabling software platforms to embed payment processing (card, ACH, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, terminals) into their own product.
- Component Studio White-labeled, low-code embeddable components for merchant onboarding, payments, reporting, chargeback management, and Plaid bank verification that enable vertical SaaS platforms to launch embedded payments in days rather than months.
- Rainforest Developer APIs and Tools Out-of-the-box payment processing APIs, webhooks, detailed guides, end-to-end sandbox testing, and realtime API logs that let developers embed payments processing into their platform, with senior integration engineer support via Slack.
- Rainforest Sandbox Sandbox environment for testing payments integration end-to-end before going live, paired with a self-serve sign-in flow and demo booking.
- Interchange-Plus Pricing and ROI Calculator Public pricing model with transparent buy-rate, interchange-plus pricing (no revenue split) and an interactive ROI calculator that models potential revenue based on processing volume, payment size, merchant count, and market competitiveness.
Quantifiable outcome
- 10x year-over-year annual recurring revenue growth since Series A
- +7 more outcomes
Companies that use Rainforest
Customer profileNamed customers12 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles2 records
Rainforest technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration6 records
Feature12 records
Rainforest partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Three partnerships are on record, tiered flagship strategic integration, core (ach foundation) and core infrastructure.
- PayPalflagship strategic integrationIn February 2026 Rainforest launched an embedded PayPal integration enabling vertical SaaS platforms to embed PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal Pay Later into their checkout experience alongside existing payment methods via a single API for unified processing, reporting, and reconciliation.
- Plaidcore (ach foundation)Plaid instant bank verification is embedded into Rainforest's Component Studio to enable frictionless ACH payments and secure end-customer bank linking within Rainforest-powered platforms.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)core infrastructureRainforest Pay is hosted on AWS using globally available services across multiple regions to provide active-active multi-region hosting, automated testing, continuous deployment, DDoS mitigation, and best-in-class uptime.
Scale indicators11 records
Recent moves7 records
Expansion highlights7 records
Rainforest competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Stax: Stax (formerly Fattmerchant) is a payments-as-a-service provider offering interchange-plus pricing and embedded payments tools for software platforms and ISVs. It directly competes with Rainforest on the same vertical-SaaS, no-rev-share, interchange-plus thesis.
- Dwolla: Dwolla is an ACH-focused embedded payments provider that enables software platforms to initiate bank-to-bank payments via an API. It is a direct peer to Rainforest's ACH/payments-as-a-service capabilities for vertical SaaS, though with a narrower payment-method scope.
- Finix: Finix is a payfac-as-a-service provider purpose-built for vertical SaaS and software platforms, offering embedded card processing, ACH, onboarding, and risk management on a buy-rate-style model. It is the most direct head-to-head competitor to Rainforest in the vertical-SaaS embedded payments niche.
- Helcim: Helcim is a payments technology company that publicly promotes interchange-plus pricing and an integrated payments platform for small businesses and software partners. It competes with Rainforest in the interchange-plus embedded-payments category with an overlapping ICP.
Broad incumbents
- Adyen: Adyen is a global payments platform that offers embedded / platform-payments capabilities as part of its broader enterprise processing stack. It is an incumbent in the same broad space as Rainforest but does not specifically target SMB vertical SaaS.
- Stripe Connect: Stripe Connect is the dominant embedded-payments offering from Stripe, enabling platforms to route payments to connected accounts with extensive developer tooling, global reach, and balance-sheet scale. It competes with Rainforest for vertical-SaaS platform deals but serves a much broader market and uses rev-share / flat-rate economics.
Emerging players
- Modern Treasury: Modern Treasury is a payment-operations platform serving software companies and fintechs with money movement, bank integrations, and ledgering. It is a partial-overlap peer: Rainforest focuses on card-present/embedded merchant payments while Modern Treasury focuses on ACH/wires and ledger, but both serve the same software-platform buyer.
- Check: Check is an embedded-payments platform for SaaS companies that provides payment-processing infrastructure as an API for software businesses. It is an emerging player with partial overlap to Rainforest's vertical-SaaS, payfac-as-a-service positioning.
- Aeropay: Aeropay is an embedded payments provider focused on real-time, bank-to-bank (RTP/Ach) payments for software platforms. It is an emerging peer in the embedded-payments space serving consumer-facing software platforms, overlapping with Rainforest's ACH capabilities.
- Spreedly: Spreedly is a payment-orchestration and vaulting platform that lets software companies route transactions across multiple payment processors. It is an emerging peer in the embedded-payments infrastructure stack adjacent to Rainforest's payfac offering.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks7 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Rainforest social profiles
Digital presenceRainforest compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
Rainforest financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Rainforest leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles2 records
Rainforest funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds5 records
Investors8 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Rainforest M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Rainforest
What does Rainforest do?
Rainforest Pay is a cloud-native, payfac-as-a-service embedded payments platform purpose-built for vertical SaaS platforms. It enables software platforms to embed payment processing (card, ACH, Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, and EMV terminals) directly into their product via low-code embeddable components and APIs, while Rainforest handles merchant onboarding, KYC/underwriting, PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, fraud monitoring, chargeback management, next-day funding, and unified reporting.
Is Rainforest a public or private company?
Rainforest is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Rainforest founded?
Rainforest was founded in 2022. It employs 51 to 100 people.
Where is Rainforest based?
Rainforest is headquartered in Atlanta, United States, in the North America region.
How does Rainforest make money?
Four revenue lines are on record. Interchange-Plus Card Processing Fees are the primary driver. The others are ACH and Standard Payout Fees, risk Management Fee and ancillary Transaction-Based Fees.
Who are Rainforest's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Stax, Dwolla, Finix and Helcim. Broad incumbents are Adyen and Stripe Connect. Emerging players are Modern Treasury, Check, Aeropay and Spreedly.
Does Rainforest have an API?
Yes. Public/partner-facing REST API that lets developers embed payments processing into their platform. Includes detailed guides, full end-to-end sandbox testing, realtime API logs, and webhooks to trigger notifications to merchants about payment status, chargebacks, and more. Active API status is publicly available. Built for developer experience with low-code embeddable components, comprehensive documentation, and senior integration engineer support via Slack. Developer documentation is at docs.rainforestpay.com.