How Nickel grew payment completion from 29% to 47% with Whop embedded checkout

Powering payments for America's core businesses.

Construction, manufacturing, the trades, trucking: these fields are at the heart of America’s economy, but software devs and retailers often forget they even exist.

You’ll find thousands of examples of SaaS for online retailers and finance. But what about the businesses that do all their work hands-on? 

That's where Nickel comes in.

Nickel brings modern payments and banking to businesses that operate in the real economy.

The businesses modern fintech forgot

Getting paid in the trades still runs on paper, even though it’s the worst possible way to handle payments.

A contractor wraps up a job, then sends an invoice on net terms, and waits. Sometimes, they might not even send an invoice; they’ll just agree on a cash amount with the client. A check will arrive (eventually), but it's a business model built on waiting and uncertainty.

The contractors are left to cover materials and payroll out of pocket, and then wait for weeks to be made whole. Meanwhile, ecommerce stores and SaaS have the software to support them, so they get their payments instantly.

That’s the gap: the businesses that build everything are usually the last ones to get software built for them.

Modern financial technology for traditional trades

Nickel was built specifically for those increasingly important businesses that often get overlooked by fintech.

The goal: everything you need to move money, all in one place. Contractors, manufacturers, and freight companies can send invoices, set up recurring payments, and onboard new vendors. They also get insight into their working capital, and even an AI bookkeeper called Penny.

ACH transfers are unlimited and free. That ties into Nickel’s larger mission and beliefs.

“One of our foundational beliefs is that a business shouldn’t have to pay to receive money they’ve earned, and it should be as easy as possible to run your business and have the finance side taken care of.”
- Nickel

Getting the payments themselves to work, though, turned out to be the hard part.

Every new provider meant building the same thing again

Before partnering with Whop, Nickel’s payments ran on two separate systems. 

Cards went through a hosted checkout on a per-merchant processor. ACH and payouts ran separately through a banking partner.

“What that setup didn't give us was flexibility. Every processor was its own end-to-end integration – its own card fields, its own settlement handling, built from scratch each time. We'd done it enough times to know exactly what adding another one costs.”
- Nickel

It also had two of everything: two providers, two integrations, and two places for something to go wrong. Payments are meant to be easy and secure, and this previous model wasn’t cutting it.

Then, Nickel found Whop.

How Whop powers Nickel

Whop’s embedded checkout sits inside Nickel’s own product, on Nickel’s own page.

It removes the pain points Nickel previously had to deal with. Payments run through a single provider, with one settlement flow and no handoff between systems.

Checkout is customized to Nickel's branding, with fields that get filled in automatically.

It's not just payments that Whop handles. Whop also provided Nickel with its full fraud stack and embedded payouts. 

“Most options give you a way to take a card and leave the rest to you. Collecting is one integration, and settling is a separate build on your own bank rail. Whop gave us both in one relationship, as well as the fraud stack and buyer experience to come with it. The embedded element meant we weren't building a checkout; we were dropping one in.”
- Nickel

That changed the timeline completely.

“We went from starting the work to taking real payments in about a week — roughly four times faster than the last payment solution we brought on.”
- Nickel

Nickel’s success is undeniable: across the whole Nickel platform, payment completion climbed from 29% in June to 47% in August.

Build checkout and payouts into your platform with Whop

Nickel’s goal was to get America’s core businesses the payment tools they need.

Whop works in the background, handling the part underneath, so that Nickel doesn’t have to build those tools twice. 

“The integration was painless and straightforward. The best experience, though, has been with the Whop team. It was clear from the start that they cared about building a partnership and were committed to something lasting. It's rare to see that kind of care and attentiveness, but the Whop team has been nothing short of phenomenal.”
- Nickel

Whop does it all, from checkout to payout. Adding another payment path is painless. 

The same is true for any platform moving money on someone else’s behalf. In Nickel’s case, it was construction and trucking. In your case, it could be something else entirely.

Whatever you're building, Whop can power your platform.