Can Zoho’s Unified Payment Stack Streamline the Order-to-Cash Journey?

Can Zoho’s Unified Payment Stack Streamline the Order-to-Cash Journey?

Analyst(s): Keith Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: May 16, 2025

Zoho Corporation has launched Zoho Payments, a unified payment processing solution designed to support card and ACH collections across 135+ currencies. The solution enables businesses to manage payments directly within Zoho’s financial applications, improving automation, visibility, and integration across core financial workflows.

What is Covered in this Article:

  • Launch of Zoho Payments, enabling card and ACH payments across 135+ currencies
  • Native integration with Zoho apps and API support for third-party connectivity
  • Payment workflows include invoice-based collections, hosted pages, and e-commerce use cases
  • Built-in fraud protection, faster settlements, and automated reconciliation
  • Transparent pricing and scalability to support growing payment volumes

The News: Zoho Corporation has made its entry into the US payments industry by launching Zoho Payments, a native processing system built right into its wider financial product suite. This newly introduced platform supports both card and ACH payment collections, offers real-time syncing across financial applications, and delivers a secure and compliant infrastructure designed to scale as business demands grow.

The service is structured to help companies collect payments through different channels — invoice links, hosted pages, e-commerce checkouts — while supporting more than 135 currencies and enabling direct reconciliation. Key features include PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, integrated fraud safeguards, and scheduling options for payouts. Zoho Payments is now live in the US market, priced at 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

Can Zoho’s Unified Payment Stack Streamline the Order-to-Cash Journey?

Analyst Take: With Zoho Payments, the company is pushing deeper into financial services, a space where efficiency and integration are often fragmented. By creating its own payment technology and embedding it directly into its existing software lineup, Zoho is aiming to reduce the friction caused by disconnected third-party tools. Through native support for common payment types and built-in risk management, the tool aims to streamline collections and improve the broader control companies have over finances.

Native Integration Minimizes Friction and Manual Work

Zoho Payments removes the extra steps, such as dealing with different logins or relying on separate dashboards, that tend to slow down transactions. One client mentioned that switching from external portals to Zoho Payments significantly eased client onboarding and daily management. Because of its close link with Zoho Books and similar apps, what used to take multiple people or systems can now often be handled by a single team member.

Broad Payment Scenarios Are Supported Natively

From invoice generation and custom payment links to hosted checkout pages and e-commerce integrations, the platform supports a range of collection methods. This allows businesses to align payment workflows with their operational style, while still keeping everything in one place. Whether it’s a one-off transaction or recurring billing, the same secure and consistent interface is maintained.

Operational Efficiency Gains from Automation and Insights

Reconciliation processes are automated, while dashboards provide clearer views into transaction history, including failures, refunds, and pending payouts. That means finance teams spend less time double-checking numbers and more time understanding their cash flow. Quick settlement features, flexible payout configurations, and improved authorization success also contribute to stronger operational outcomes. And by embedding fraud protection directly into the workflow, the platform also reduces chargebacks and revenue loss.

A Full Stack Approach to the Order-to-Cash Process

Zoho Payments removes the extra steps, such as dealing with different logins or relying on separate dashboards, that tend to slow down transactions. One client mentioned that switching from external portals to Zoho Payments significantly eased client onboarding and daily management. Because of its close link with Zoho Books and similar apps, what used to take multiple people or systems can now often be handled by a single team member.

Zoho’s entry into the payments space is timely, given the increased usage of digital channels to conduct transactions. No longer confined to physical retail stores or online shops, transactions are occurring within mobile apps, across social media platforms, and within other applications or experiences. Releasing a native payment processing solution enables Zoho to capture additional incremental revenue while streamlining workflows for customers.

The challenge for Zoho will be demonstrating that its solution is as robust, efficient, and secure as the incumbents already in the market. Moreover, Zoho will need to demonstrate real-world efficiency gains to displace other solutions, through case studies and third-party validation of benefits.

What to Watch:

  • Adoption will depend on the ease of onboarding for users accustomed to third-party processors
  • Zoho’s ability to maintain high authorization rates and minimize chargebacks at scale will be a key differentiator
  • Competition from entrenched payment processors may pressure pricing or feature parity
  • The launch of Zoho Payments signals potential expansion into broader financial services

See the complete press release on the launch of Zoho Payments.

Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.

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Author Information

Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.

He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.

In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.

He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).

Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.

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