# Horizontal vs Vertical Payments

**Published by:** [jelca thinks](https://paragraph.com/@jess/)
**Published on:** 2022-02-10
**Categories:** payments
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@jess/horizontal-vertical-payments

## Content

Horizontal = industry agnosticbroad service covering a wide breadth of industriesusually more mature solutionsexamples: Square, Worldpay, Quickbooks, FISKey:need to own the entire stack and have an incredibly powerful value proposition or else you will lose to incumbentsVertical = industry specificfull featured solutions for industry niches addressing specific pain pointsfunctional specificity narrows their target market but creates high stickiness and higher ARPU if they can serve their market wellexamples: Lightspeed for restaurants, Mindbody for salons/fitnessKey:need to REALLY UNDERSTAND industry pain points and be able to solve for themOverallmerchant services and card acceptance are table stakespayments should be part of a bigger software solutionhorizontal or vertical, they are a one to many opportunity for acquirersconsider operational costs and acquisition costs no matter what path you choose

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