{
  "id": 2979815,
  "title": "When payments grow beyond the gateway",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/when-payments-grow-beyond-the-gateway",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-08-24T08:41:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "YourStory",
    "slug": "yourstory",
    "url": "https://yourstory.com/2026/08/payments-grow-beyond-the-gateway"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "As businesses expand, accepting their first payment marks a significant milestone. Initially, this transition is straightforward, whether it be through a website, invoice or payment link. However, as companies grow, the payment landscape becomes far more complex. Finance departments must now handle subscriptions, recurring billing, payment links, invoices, marketplaces, and even in-person payments.\n\nManaging refunds, disputes, settlements, payouts, and multiple banking relationships becomes an essential aspect of financial operations. What started as a simple payment workflow transforms into an integral part of the business, touching nearly every department. Initially, growth may bring additional payment types, but eventually, it leads to manual reconciliation and the use of multiple systems to track payment statuses, subscriptions, refunds, and cash movement.\n\nPayment complexity arises when finance and operations teams rely heavily on manual processes. At this stage, payments are no longer just about processing transactions; they become fundamental to the overall business operations. As companies scale, the process of collecting money, paying vendors, processing salaries, and managing cash flow often spreads across various banking portals, payment gateways, and finance applications.\n\nExperts suggest that the key to successful scaling lies in minimizing friction between financial systems. According to Sivaramakrishnan Iswaran, Global Head of Finance and Operations at Zoho, \"Businesses that scale well aren’t necessarily the ones with the most advanced tools. They are usually the ones that have no friction between their financial systems.\" Zoho emphasizes bringing together business finance, banking, and payments into one connected ecosystem, providing organizations with better visibility into cash flow, smoother money movement, and a simplified method for managing financial operations as they grow.\n\nBeyond simply processing a transaction, growing businesses require a more comprehensive approach. Recurring payments necessitate managing mandates over time, along with handling retries when renewals fail. Settlements need to be reconciled across bank accounts with different schedules, while incoming payments must be automatically matched to invoices. As businesses expand into physical stores or service locations, the inclusion of in-person payments adds another stream that must coexist with online transactions.\n\nMoreover, money moves in the opposite direction through vendor payments, payroll, and reimbursements. Managing incoming and outgoing payments using separate systems introduces additional operational overhead, making it challenging for finance teams to maintain a clear view of cash movement across the business. In essence, payments evolve from being merely about processing individual transactions to managing the movement of money throughout the entire organization. As this footprint expands, adding more tools may not necessarily simplify operations; it can make them harder to manage.",
  "summary": "Accepting payments is only the beginning. As businesses grow, recurring billing, settlements, reconciliation, payouts and compliance create a new layer of operational complexity—one that calls for a more connected approach.",
  "key_points": [
    "Payments evolve from simple transactions to managing money movement throughout the organization",
    "Experts recommend minimizing friction between financial systems for successful scaling"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}