The fitness industry is in a growth phase most software categories would kill for.

Global memberships climbed 6% year-over-year in 2024, revenue grew an average of 8%, and 91% of operators expect further revenue gains in the years ahead. For software platforms serving those operators, including gym management systems, booking apps, studio CRMs, and class scheduling tools, that growth flows straight through your product.

The question is whether you're capturing any of the economics.

Most fitness ISVs aren't. Payments get passed through to Stripe, Square, or a generic processor, and the platform collects a SaaS subscription while someone else takes the transaction revenue. That model worked five years ago. It doesn't work now, not when your competitors are embedding payments and earning 2–5x higher ARPU per customer while you're leaving margin on the table.

Here's how the best fitness software platforms are turning payment processing for gyms into their second revenue line, and what it takes to get there.

Why fitness is uniquely suited to embedded payments

Gym operators are one of the most payments-intensive customer segments in vertical SaaS. A typical club runs recurring membership dues, one-time personal training charges, class packages, retail and merchandise sales, supplements, day passes, and corporate wellness billing, often all in the same month.

Personal training alone accounts for 15–20% of total gym income at successful clubs, and non-dues revenue can reach 10–20% of total revenue when merchandise and wellness services are added in.

That's a lot of transactions flowing through your software. And every single one is a chance for your platform to earn. Three things make fitness especially attractive for embedded payments:

1. Recurring billing is the core workflow. Unlike one-off commerce, gym revenue is built on predictable monthly charges. Once a member is enrolled, the billing engine runs for years. That means stable, compounding processing volume for any platform that owns the rails.
2. Multi-revenue-stream complexity pushes operators toward all-in-one tools. A gym owner doesn't want separate systems for dues, retail, training packages, and class drop-ins. They want one platform that handles everything. Software that embeds payments natively wins these consolidation decisions.
3. Failed payments are a massive pain point. Preventable failed payments account for roughly 50% of subscription churn at gyms. Platforms that solve this with smart retries, better authorization rates, and multiple payment methods don't just earn processing revenue. They directly reduce their customers' churn. That's sticky.

The revenue opportunity hiding in your existing volume

If you're running a gym management or fitness booking platform on something like Stripe Connect, your submerchants are paying roughly 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. 

You're facilitating that relationship, handling onboarding, support, dispute questions, and feature requests, while seeing virtually none of the economics.

When you own the payments layer, every transaction becomes a revenue event. Embedded payments can add 30–50% to effective revenue per customer without touching your SaaS pricing.

Run the math on a mid-sized gym software platform:

• 500 gym submerchants
• Average of $40,000 in monthly processing volume per gym
• $20M/month in aggregate platform volume
• $240M/year flowing through your software

Even a modest share of the processing margin on that volume can rival or exceed your core SaaS ARR. And unlike subscription revenue, it scales with your customers' success. When your gyms grow, your payments revenue grows with them.

This is why 91% of ISVs expect embedded payments to play a larger role in their growth strategy over the next 12 months, and why 65% of ISVs not currently offering payments plan to add them. The window is open, but platforms that move now own the customer relationship going forward.

What fitness software platforms need from a payments partner

1. Revenue share from transaction one

Stripe Connect gets you to market quickly, but the revenue model doesn't flex. You're on flat 2.9% + $0.30 pricing and collecting almost nothing as the ISV. A genuine embedded payments partnership should pay you a share of every transaction your gyms process, starting from day one. Interchange-plus pricing beats flat-rate economics at virtually any volume above token levels, and the difference compounds.

2. Instant settlement for your gym customers

Independent gyms don't have deep cash reserves. A two- to three-day settlement hold on membership dues or personal training payments is working capital that could be covering payroll, rent, or supplement inventory restocks. Platforms that unlock instant or same-day settlement for their submerchants solve a daily financial pain point and create a feature competitors without the right rails can't match.

3. Recurring billing built for membership businesses

Gym revenue lives and dies on recurring charges. That means dunning logic, smart retries on failed cards, card account updater integrations, and multiple backup payment methods have to be first-class features, not bolted-on afterthoughts. When involuntary churn from failed payments drives half of total cancellations, the authorization rate of your payments stack directly impacts every gym operator's bottom line.

4. Submerchant onboarding that doesn't take weeks

Gym operators don't want to fill out a 40-field KYC form before they can take their first membership payment. They want to be operational today. Payments partners that offer automated underwriting, embedded KYC/AML, and fast submerchant onboarding let your platform deliver a go-live experience measured in minutes, not days.

5. Chargeback indemnification and fraud coverage

Fitness businesses see a steady trickle of disputes. Members forget they signed up, contest personal training charges after cancellations, or dispute supplement purchases. ISVs shouldering that risk on behalf of their gyms is a liability trap. The right partner handles fraud and chargeback exposure as part of the service, not as a problem passed back to you.

The case against becoming a payfac yourself

There's always the temptation to register as a payment facilitator and own the entire stack. For most fitness ISVs, it's the wrong move.

Becoming a payfac means registration with card networks, underwriting infrastructure, BIN sponsor relationships, PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, and building out a risk operations team. Speed-to-market and PCI burden are two of the main reasons ISVs partner with third parties rather than build in-house. For a platform under $50M in annual processing volume, the economics rarely justify the overhead.

A payfac-as-a-service model, where your platform gets all the economics and onboarding experience of a payfac without registering as one, is where most of the market is heading. You get the revenue share, the embedded onboarding, and the instant settlement capability, and someone else carries the compliance, risk, and infrastructure lift.

Getting payments right from day one

The fitness software category is consolidating around platforms that own the full customer relationship, from schedule to checkout to payout. The gym management tools that treat payments as infrastructure rather than a feature pass-through are the ones pulling ahead.

That's what Coinflow Launchpad was built for.

Launchpad is Coinflow's accelerator for small and mid-sized ISVs, fitness platforms included, giving you interchange-plus pricing from day one, instant settlement for your gym submerchants, automated onboarding, full fraud and chargeback indemnification, and revenue share on every transaction your customers process. No setup fees, no platform minimums, and 24/7 integration support from a named engineer.

Whether you're already live on Stripe Connect and ready to migrate, or you're building embedded payments for the first time, the infrastructure decision you make now will define your economics for the next decade.

Talk to the Coinflow team to see what embedded payments could add to your fitness platform's revenue, or apply to Launchpad to get started.