Anrok or Avalara for a Fintech With Two Revenue Streams

Say your platform charges a partner bank or software client $1,500 a month for API access plus a small fee on every transaction it routes. In this example, that $1,500 platform fee may behave like a SaaS subscription, so it needs the same taxability and nexus review any B2B software company would do, since whether SaaS is taxable varies by state. The transaction-based fee is a different animal, closer to a payments or financial service fee than a software sale, and in most states does not carry sales tax at all, though this varies enough by state and by what exactly the fee is for that it is worth confirming directly rather than assuming.

A platform that cannot see this split in its own billing data will either miss taxing the part that should be taxed, or worse, start applying sales tax to transaction revenue that was never subject to it.

For the recurring platform or API access fee, Anrok is built for software and digital-product companies, so this is the type of revenue it is designed to handle; confirm that your billing system is a supported integration and how it applies state taxability rules and tracks nexus. If your platform fee bills through Stripe Billing or a similar modern billing tool, that piece of the puzzle is close to a standard SaaS use case even inside a fintech business.

Fintech and embedded finance companies often carry more tax and compliance surface area than a typical SaaS business, sometimes touching multiple tax types, multiple entities, or cross-border partners depending on how the platform is structured. Avalara's coverage across tax types beyond sales tax, and its ERP integrations, tend to fit better once a fintech's finance stack grows past what a subscription-focused tool was designed for.

Median pay for a staff accountant runs $83,680 a year, climbing past $109,810 at the 75th percentile¹, and a fintech with a complex fee stack usually needs that accountant's time going toward regulatory review, not manually reclassifying transaction fees every month.

Say a payments platform bills a client business $2,000 a month in platform access fees and collects roughly $18,000 a month in transaction-based fees off that same client's payment volume. In this example, only the $2,000 platform fee is the piece most likely to need sales tax treatment in states that tax SaaS; the transaction fee revenue often sits outside sales tax, though it may carry other tax and regulatory obligations, so confirm the treatment in each state with a tax advisor.

Burn multiple discipline matters here too: fintechs operating on tighter margins than pure software companies often watch this number closely², and mistaxing either revenue stream shows up as an unplanned liability or refund that distorts it.

Say instead the split runs the other way, a smaller $500 platform fee riding on top of $40,000 in monthly transaction volume: the dollar amount subject to sales tax stays small even as total revenue grows, which is exactly why lumping both streams into one taxable total overstates what you actually owe.

Ask each vendor how it distinguishes platform or subscription fees from transaction or interchange fees in your specific billing data, since a tool that cannot separate them reliably will get one of the two wrong. Confirm whether your entity structure, several fintechs operate more than one legal entity for regulatory reasons, is supported cleanly, since a platform that assumes one entity can misfile across the group.

Because fintech tax questions frequently intersect with money transmission and other regulatory rules beyond sales tax, involve counsel who specializes in payments and fintech, not only a general sales tax advisor. See Avalara, Anrok, and TaxJar compared for a wider field of options.

Ask each vendor about these points before you build:

• How does it distinguish platform or subscription fees from transaction or interchange fees in your specific billing data?
• Is your billing system a supported integration, so the recurring platform fee reaches the tax tool without manual work?
• Can it handle additional tax types, multiple entities or cross-border partners if your platform touches them?
• Which fee types does your tax advisor confirm are outside sales tax in your states, so those streams are excluded correctly?