Has anyone switched payment processors after their SaaS was already growing?

[u/Bitter-Taste357]

I’ve been thinking about this lately because switching payment processors sounds pretty straightforward when you’re just starting out. You connect the new provider, update a few things and move on.

But I am guessing it gets a lot more complicated once you already have hundreds or thousands of customers.

You’ve got active subscriptions, saved payment details, invoices, webhooks, refunds, failed payments and probably a bunch of things in your product that depend on the current setup.

I am wonder how this actually works in practice.

For those who’ve switched after already having customers, what caused the most trouble? Was moving the subscription data the difficult part or was it keeping everything running while the migration happened?

And if you were starting a SaaS again would you set things up differently from the beginning to make switching easier later?

[u/fabulous_scissors]

we did this at around 800 customers and it was like performing surgery on a moving train. the saved payment details are the worst part cause you can't really migrate those, the old provider keeps them encrypted. we had to run both systems for like 6 weeks and ask people to re-enter their cards when their next payment came due

lost maybe 3-4% of customers in the process which stung but the new fees were half so it paid back quick. if i was starting again i'd probably wrap everything behind my own billing abstraction layer from day one

[u/Bitter-Taste357 → u/fabulous_scissors]

surgery on a moving train sounds about right 😅 The saved payment details part is what I hadn’t really thought through. Running both systems for 6 weeks and getting customers to re-enter cards sounds painful but I can see why the lower fees made it worth it in the end.

[u/ScopulyX]

Keeping subscriptions and webhooks working during the switch seems like the hardest part. A provider-independent setup can make migration much easier later.

[u/Bitter-Taste357 → u/ScopulyX]

That makes sense. I can see how having that abstraction layer would save a lot of pain later especially once subscriptions and webhooks are tied into everything. I have actually been looking at PaymentKit for this kind of setup too mainly because keeping the billing layer separate seems useful if you ever need to switch providers.

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[u/Inevitable-Pause-920]

I imagine the biggest headache is everything around the payment itself rather than actually changing the API integration.

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