Rainforest and PayPal Unite to Digitize Payments for Vertical Software

ATLANTA, GA – February 25, 2026 – Embedded payment provider Rainforest and digital commerce giant PayPal have announced a major partnership aimed at modernizing transactions for businesses operating on specialized software platforms. The new integration embeds PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal Pay Later directly into Rainforest’s payment infrastructure, creating a single, unified checkout experience designed to lure businesses away from the persistent and problematic use of cash and paper checks.

This collaboration targets a deeply entrenched issue in American commerce. Despite the digital revolution, an estimated 61% of Americans still write checks, and paper checks remain the payment method most susceptible to fraud. By consolidating popular digital payment options into one seamless system, the partnership aims to accelerate the shift to more secure and efficient digital transactions, a move with significant implications for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across numerous industry verticals.

The Enduring Problem of Paper Payments

The initiative directly confronts the costly and risky reliance on traditional payment methods. According to the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), checks were the payment method most impacted by fraud activity in 2024, with a staggering 65% of organizations reporting incidents of check-related fraud. This vulnerability is compounded by operational inefficiencies, as manual processing, reconciliation, and chasing down late payments consume valuable time and resources for SMBs.

While digital payments are growing, 75% of organizations continue to use checks for B2B transactions, often citing requirements for working with smaller suppliers or refund processing. This persistence creates a significant opportunity for solutions that simplify the transition to digital. The Rainforest-PayPal integration is designed to lower this barrier by offering trusted, consumer-friendly payment options like Venmo and PayPal alongside traditional card and bank payments, all within the software businesses already use daily.

For merchants, the benefits are clear: faster payments, improved cash flow, and a drastic reduction in the administrative burden of managing disparate payment types. For the software platforms themselves, it represents a crucial step in keeping more transaction volume within their ecosystem, preventing revenue leakage to outside payment processors or offline methods.

A Unified Front for Vertical Software

Historically, software companies wanting to offer a diverse range of payment methods had to cobble together multiple integrations. This meant duplicative engineering work, separate reporting systems, fragmented merchant onboarding processes, and a complex web of daily deposits that made reconciliation a nightmare. Rainforest’s collaboration with PayPal is engineered to eliminate this complexity.

By embedding PayPal’s services directly into its core product, Rainforest allows its software platform clients to activate PayPal, Venmo, and buy-now-pay-later options without any additional development. The key benefits of this unified approach include:

• A Single API: Platforms can configure and manage all payment types through one interface.
• Streamlined Onboarding: Merchants are onboarded once to gain access to all available payment methods.
• Unified Reporting: All transaction data, regardless of payment type, is available in a single, filterable dashboard.
• Simplified Reconciliation: All funds are consolidated into a single daily or weekly deposit, accompanied by itemized reporting.

“Rainforest’s customers have been increasingly eager for a PayPal integration as they look to shift more of their transaction volume away from cash and checks and toward modern digital payments,” said Joshua Silver, Founder and CEO of Rainforest. “Partnering with PayPal allows us to do exactly that, giving platforms instant access to PayPal without extra onboarding steps, external portals, or fragmented reporting.”

The Strategic Stakes in Embedded Finance

This partnership is a significant move within the rapidly expanding embedded finance market, which is projected to exceed $570 billion globally by 2033. Embedded payments, which constitute the largest segment of this market, are fundamentally changing how businesses and consumers interact with financial services by integrating them directly into non-financial applications.

Vertical software—industry-specific platforms for sectors like healthcare, field services, and logistics—is a particularly fertile ground for this trend. These platforms are deeply integrated into the daily operations of their merchant clients, making them the natural point for embedding financial tools like payments, lending, and insurance. For PayPal, this represents a crucial strategic push.

“Vertical software is a strategic growth area for PayPal as more commerce moves directly into software,” noted Taira Hall, Senior Vice President and Head of SMB Commercial at PayPal. “Rainforest’s deep focus on vertical software and strong execution make them the ideal partner to equip software platforms with trusted PayPal payment options.”

This alliance allows PayPal to tap into vast transaction volumes that have historically occurred offline or through competing processors, expanding its footprint beyond traditional e-commerce and point-of-sale systems.

Reshaping the Competitive Landscape

For Rainforest, the integration is a powerful differentiator in a competitive landscape that includes giants like Stripe Connect and Adyen for Platforms. The Atlanta-based company, which recently closed a $29 million Series B funding round and has reported over 10x year-over-year revenue growth, has consistently positioned itself as a provider “purpose-built” for the unique needs of vertical software platforms.

By adding PayPal's universally recognized and trusted brands to its native, unified system, Rainforest offers a compelling value proposition that competitors may struggle to match without similar deep integrations. This move not only enhances its product offering but also validates its platform-centric model. With recent accolades including Venture Atlanta’s 2023 Emerging Startup of the Year and a spot on The Information’s Top 50 Most Promising Startups for 2024, Rainforest is leveraging this partnership to solidify its position as a key innovator in the payments-as-a-service space. This collaboration not only strengthens both companies' market positions but also signals a broader acceleration in the fusion of software and financial services, a trend poised to redefine commerce across countless industries.