Market Insight
Vertical SaaS platforms understand the businesses they serve. Kanmon helps turn that understanding into access to working capital, giving customers more room to operate and platforms another way to grow.
A staffing company lands a new account. A distributor receives a larger order. A contractor wins a project that will keep the crew busy for weeks.
These are the moments business owners work toward. They also come with a bill.
Payroll starts before the first customer payment. Inventory needs to be purchased before it can be sold. Materials arrive before the job is complete. A business can have customers, demand, and a clear opportunity ahead while still lacking the cash to move forward.
For vertical SaaS platforms, these situations sit close to home. They happen inside the businesses your software supports, often around the very workflows your product manages.
Your platform may already help that staffing company manage assignments, that distributor fulfill orders, or that contractor schedule work. Yet when the customer needs capital to keep going, they often have to leave that environment and start a separate search for financing.
Kanmon helps platforms close that gap: working capital inside the software customers already use, informed by how their businesses actually operate.
As the vertical software community gathers in Miami this week, that is an opportunity worth putting near the top of the conversation.
Vertical SaaS has earned a valuable place in the business
The strength of vertical software comes from understanding the details.
A staffing platform knows that managing a workforce means more than maintaining a list of employees. A field-service platform understands the steps between a customer inquiry and a completed job. A distribution platform is built around the movement of products, orders, and payments.
That specificity gives these platforms a meaningful role in their customers’ operations. They become part of how work gets done.
The Vertical Software Summit’s November 4–5 agenda reflects the expanding ambition of the industry, with sessions on AI, embedded finance, accounting, and customer retention. Platform leaders are exploring how to serve more of the business around their core software.
Working capital fits naturally into that ambition.
A platform can help customers organize purchasing, manage receivables, and prepare for payroll. Financing gives it another way to support the customer when those activities require cash that is not yet available.
The connection is especially strong in industries where businesses routinely spend before they collect. In those environments, capital is part of the operating cycle. Making it accessible through the platform addresses a need that already exists.
The need is real, even when the business is doing well
Small business owners are still planning for growth. In the Q3 2026 Justworks and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index, 62% expected higher revenue over the coming year, 38% planned to increase investment, and 36% expected to add staff.
Those plans can require cash before they produce it.
The customer who wants to hire may need to cover payroll during onboarding. The business preparing for a busy season may need to purchase inventory months ahead. Winning a larger account can mean accepting payment terms that stretch the time between delivering work and getting paid.
Atradius’s 2026 U.S. payment practices research illustrates how common that waiting period is. Surveyed businesses conducted an average of 45% of B2B sales on credit. Late payments affected an average of 22% of B2B receivables. These findings cover surveyed U.S. businesses broadly, rather than SMBs alone, but they describe the payment environment many smaller suppliers operate within.
For a small business, a receivable cannot cover Friday’s payroll until the money arrives.
This is why capital demand extends beyond businesses facing an emergency. Healthy businesses can need funding to support a larger workload, absorb customer payment terms, or pursue an opportunity without exhausting their cash reserves.
A platform that serves those businesses has a reason to care. The customer’s ability to fund the work affects its ability to carry out the activity the platform supports.
Getting financing is still difficult for many smaller businesses
Having a business need does not mean having a workable financing option.
Research published by Mastercard and The Harris Poll in June 2026 found that 48% of surveyed U.S. SMB owners who had applied for business credit in the previous two years experienced either a denial or unfavorable terms. That figure rose to 66% among those with two years or less of business credit history. The borrower survey included 252 U.S. business owners.
The distinction matters. Access can fall short because an application is declined, but it can also fall short when the available terms do not work for the business.
The same research points to an information problem. In a separate survey of lenders across 13 markets, 85% agreed that a lack of real-time applicant data was a barrier to approving more creditworthy applicants.
A small business may have a limited credit history while generating a much richer operating history: completed jobs, recurring orders, collected invoices, and consistent customer activity.
Those records do not guarantee approval. They can, however, add useful context to a financing decision.
That is where the platform’s position becomes particularly valuable.
The platform brings context that a standalone application can miss
Depending on its product, a vertical SaaS platform may see how often a business transacts, how customers pay, how activity changes through the year, and where spending precedes revenue.
It also has an existing customer relationship. The owner already comes to the platform to run part of the business.
Together, that operating context and established relationship create an opportunity to make financing more relevant and easier to reach.
Consider three common situations:
- A staffing firm needs to fund payroll while customer invoices remain outstanding. The financing need is connected to work already being performed and a defined collection cycle.
- A distributor needs to purchase inventory for an incoming order. The need sits around procurement and fulfillment.
- A contractor needs materials and labor to begin a new project. The funding requirement appears before the job generates cash.
The fit comes from understanding those differences. Amount, structure, repayment, and where the customer encounters the offer should reflect the activity being financed.
For the owner, the value is concrete: an opportunity to access working capital through a familiar business relationship, with financing designed around the way the business operates.
For the platform, it is a chance to solve a problem customers already bring into the product every day.
Kanmon makes that opportunity practical
A software company can understand its customers deeply without having the infrastructure to lend to them.
Kanmon provides that infrastructure.
Through Kanmon’s embedded lending model, platforms can offer working capital within their customer experience while Kanmon handles underwriting, capital deployment, compliance, servicing, and collections. Partners can earn revenue share without putting their own balance sheet behind the loans.
That gives the platform a clear role: connect its customer relationships and operating context to a financing experience that fits the product.
Kanmon supports multiple capital structures, including working-capital loans and lines, invoice financing, and buyer financing. That flexibility matters because the cash needs of a staffing firm, distributor, and service business can differ substantially.
For customers, the benefit is access to financing where they already work. For platforms, it creates a new revenue opportunity while expanding the usefulness of the core product.
There is also a broader commercial opportunity. When appropriate financing helps a customer purchase inventory, take on another project, or support a new account, it can enable more of the activity the platform exists to serve.
That is the connection Kanmon is built to support: customer demand, platform insight, and the capital needed to keep business moving.
A natural next step for vertical software
Vertical SaaS platforms have earned their place by solving specific problems for specific businesses.
Working capital is one of those problems.
It shows up in the gap between payroll and collections, between a purchase order and a supplier payment, and between winning an opportunity and being able to pursue it. For many SMBs, finding suitable financing elsewhere remains difficult.
Platforms are already close to those moments. Kanmon gives them a practical way to respond.
Your customers trust your platform to help them run their business. With Kanmon, you can help them fund what comes next.
We’ll be at the Vertical Software Summit in Miami November 4–5. If you’re exploring how to bring working capital to your customers and a new revenue stream to your platform, talk with Kanmon.