About this episode
Jo Elias Phillips and Will Corbera, co-founders of Payabli, are building the payments infrastructure that software companies have been waiting for. After meeting at a salsa club in Miami over 15 years ago and bonding over entrepreneurship, they set out to solve a problem they saw firsthand: vertical SaaS platforms were losing time, money, and customers trying to stitch together fragmented payment solutions that were never built for them.Will bootstrapped his first payments company for 17 years before a successful exit. Jo helped architect what became ServiceTitan's payments business, now processing $60 billion in annual volume. Together, they combined those experiences into Payabli, a unified pay-in, pay-out, and pay-ops platform that helps software companies embed and monetize payments without building everything from scratch. The company has raised $60 million in venture capital, serves close to 100 partners, and processes tens of billions of dollars in volume.This episode explores their origin story, the lessons they carried from previous startups, and why they believe the future of payments belongs to the platforms, not the legacy processors.Here's what's covered:Why most SaaS companies underestimate what it takes to monetize payments after integrationHow Payabli unified pay-ins, pay-outs, and pay-ops to eliminate vendor fragmentationHow AI is reshaping their product, operations, and long-term vision for scaling without headcount bloatIf you've ever wondered why your payment integration isn't generating the revenue you expected, this conversation shows you what's missing.
