Marketing for fintech and payments businesses
Acquisition cost measured against the transaction revenue a merchant actually produces, tested channel by channel until the payback holds.
Where the money moves.
Growth here is an arithmetic problem before it is a creative one. A merchant is worth take rate multiplied by volume multiplied by how long they stay, and that number decides what you can afford to pay for one. We build the model with your finance team first, by segment, because a hospitality venue on a terminal fleet and a self-serve online seller share almost nothing except the gateway. Then every channel is tested against payback, and the ones that cannot reach it get closed rather than optimised forever.
A signup is not a customer. The number that matters is first transaction, then transaction two, and the gap between them is where payments marketing quietly fails. Onboarding sequences, integration guides and the moment a terminal lands on site all belong to marketing whether the org chart agrees or not. Activation is run as a campaign in its own right, with its own creative and its own reporting, because lifting it costs considerably less than buying replacement volume.
Merchants rarely choose a provider in isolation. They ask their bookkeeper, they check what integrates with the POS they already run, and they read a marketplace listing well before they read your homepage. Partner marketing, directory listings and developer-facing documentation are acquisition channels with a real cost per merchant attached, so they get budgeted that way. Surcharging rules, least-cost routing and AUSTRAC obligations all shape what can be claimed in an ad, so copy is written with the compliance position already settled.
The two motions need separating. Self-serve volume comes from search, marketplaces and product-led content, and is judged on payback. Enterprise merchants come from named account programmes, industry events and a sales team carrying material through a long cycle. Running both from one team keeps the message consistent while the measurement stays honest, and it stops the enterprise story quietly rewriting the self-serve page. Accounts, analytics, domains and creative are all held in your name.
What we run.
Segment-level CAC and payback modelling
A model built with finance giving each merchant segment its own allowable acquisition cost and payback window. Channel decisions are checked against it every month, and blended numbers are never allowed to hide a paid channel that has stopped working.
High-intent search capture
The terms a merchant types when they are already switching, from eftpos terminal to payment gateway integration, mapped to pages that answer the pricing, settlement and hardware questions before a sales conversation begins.
Partner and marketplace presence
Listings in POS, accounting and commerce app directories maintained as a live channel rather than a one-off submission, with co-marketing aimed at the bookkeepers and software partners who occupy the recommendation seat.
Activation and onboarding sequences
Email and in-product messaging built around first transaction instead of first login, sequenced against the real setup steps including terminal delivery, settlement account verification and the first reconciliation.
Enterprise account programmes
Named merchant lists worked with paid, content and outbound in parallel, with the sales collateral, event presence and account material produced by the same people writing the ads, so the pitch and the campaign agree.
Questions we get asked.
A model built with your finance team gives each merchant segment an allowable acquisition cost drawn from take rate, expected volume and expected tenure. Every channel then reports against that number and against activation, not signups. Blended and paid CAC are shown separately, because a blended figure will disguise a channel that has quietly stopped working.
Yes, once the claim set is settled first. Surcharging, least-cost routing, settlement timing and anything touching AUSTRAC obligations are agreed with your risk and legal people before creative starts, and the approved language is stored and reused. That removes the pattern where a strong campaign is rewritten into something vague at sign-off.
One team, two measurement systems. Self-serve is judged on payback and activation and runs on search, marketplaces and product-led content. Enterprise runs on named account programmes, events and sales material across a long cycle. The message stays consistent because the same people write both, while the reporting never lets one subsidise the other.
It gets a defined test budget and a decision point agreed before a dollar is spent, so the call is made on evidence rather than attachment. If it misses twice it closes and the money moves to the channel already clearing the bar. Across the Ignis portfolio the average return on ad spend is 20x, and that discipline is most of the reason.
Also in financial services
Talk to us.
9 services under one team, run against the numbers your business already reports on.
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