In December 2024, IDEXX told Cornerstone customers their payment integration with Global Payments would stop working in six weeks. A year later, Neo Payments was retired entirely – existing customers migrated to a new product, a new portal, and in some cases, payment links that simply stopped working.
That’s the largest practice management platform in the category. The one with payments already built in, powering hundreds of thousands of veterinarians. And its own customers still had a payments transition forced on them, on someone else’s timeline, because the processing relationship behind the software changed.
If that can happen to the market leader, it’s worth asking a different question than most veterinary ISVs are asking.
Almost every ISV in this category already has asked some version of “Should we add payments to our platform?“, when real question should be:
“Who’s actually benefiting from the payments running through your software today – and what happens the day your processor decides to change the deal?”
Vet ISVs already have payments. Most still don’t own the economics.
Cornerstone, Neo, ezyVet, Covetrus Pulse, Ascend, Shepherd, Provet Cloud…every major veterinary platform ships with integrated payment processing today. That part of the story is settled. It’s rare to find a practice running a modern PMS without a “pay now” button somewhere in the workflow.
What’s not settled is who keeps the money.
Most of these arrangements started as a referral: a practice management company brought in a payments partner to check a box, offer a “buy button,” and move on. In that model, transactions flow through someone else’s rails, and the software company collects a support ticket queue, not a revenue share.
The alternative is owning the economics: structuring the relationship so your platform captures a real, transparent share of every transaction your practices process, instead of just hosting the login screen for someone else’s product.
That’s the debate. Not “having payments” versus “not having payments.” Having payments versus monetizing them.
What’s really holding veterinary ISVs back?
Three things keep software companies from renegotiating a better deal – not from adding payments for the first time, but from upgrading who’s behind the ones they already have.
1) “We already did this once. Switching sounds like a nightmare.”
Fair. Nobody wants to relive a merchant account migration.
But it’s already happening to you, whether you choose it or not. Processors get acquired, sunset products, or change terms. And when that happens without you in the room, you inherit someone else’s migration on someone else’s timeline, with no say in how disruptive it is for your practices.
Managed Payment Facilitation puts you back in control of that timeline. The migration work – moving merchant accounts, retraining front-desk staff, keeping disruption to your practices near zero – gets structured and compressed into weeks, on your schedule, instead of happening through an emergency notice before a strict deadline.
2) “Should we become a PayFac ourselves?”
Becoming a registered payment facilitator carries real weight: underwriting, PCI compliance, financial risk your team isn’t built to carry. If your gut says “that’s not us” – you’re right. Most veterinary ISVs shouldn’t register as their own PayFac.
Managed Payment Facilitation gets you the ownership and the revenue share without the compliance department. NUMBER holds the registration, the underwriting, and the risk. Your team stays focused on veterinary software.
3) “We don’t have engineering time for a payments project.”
Nobody does. Your team is shipping clinical features, not chasing after a migration.
The right payments partner removes that from your roadmap almost entirely. Structured onboarding replaces a quarter of sprint capacity with days of integration work while your core product keeps moving forward.
What changes when you own the economics instead of renting them?
Revenue you’re already generating, captured instead of given away
Every transaction running through your platform today is already creating revenue. Right now, in most cases, that revenue belongs to whoever’s behind your existing “integrated payments” button – not to you. Owning the relationship doesn’t create new volume. It only redirects revenue that already exists.
Control over your own transition, on your own timeline
Practices getting migrated to a new payment product without warning isn’t rare. In fact, it’s what happens when the underlying processor makes the call instead of you. Managed Payment Facilitation puts that decision, and that timeline, in your hands.
A stronger position with the practices you serve
Veterinary practices want fewer systems to manage, not more. When your platform owns the full financial picture (including scheduling, records, billing, payments) practices have far less reason to look elsewhere. And when you can speak to your payments economics with full transparency instead of “check with the processor,” that’s a materially stronger sales conversation.
The window is open, but it’s already closing
Software-and-payments bundling isn’t a niche trend anymore. Industry data shows the share of software purchases bundled with payments has roughly doubled since 2019, and most ISVs across categories now expect payments to play a bigger role in their growth strategy over the next two years. Veterinary software won’t be the exception.
The platforms that renegotiate their payments economics now – before the next forced migration, before a competitor gets there first – will be the ones setting the terms instead of receiving a six-week notice.
That’s why NUMBER works with veterinary software platforms differently. We don’t ask you to add payments you don’t have. We help you own the economics of the payments you already do – without creating compliance headaches, without pulling engineering off your roadmap, and without making the transition difficult for the practices who depend on you.
If your platform already processes payments but you don’t have full transparency into the economics, the support, or who’s really behind that “pay now” button…let’s talk.
