Embedded payments is becoming commoditized, forcing firms to rethink how they capture value. The most promising answers to the question of where else platforms can turn to capture margin may lie in the adjacencies, services that are enabled by, but not limited to, payment rails. Each transaction creates a byproduct of data, trust and liquidity that can be harnessed for new, higher-margin offerings. Meanwhile, payments create liquidity flows that can be optimized. Platforms that manage funds in transit can capture spread by offering features like instant payouts, yield-bearing accounts or even cross-border treasury solutions. Perhaps the least glamorous but most sticky adjacency is data. Platforms that can analyze transaction flows to help merchants optimize pricing, forecast demand or identify churn risk can create defensible revenue streams beyond the margin of payment processing itself. Some platforms are becoming financial supermarkets, bundling a full suite of services from payments to lending to insurance. Others are doubling down on vertical specialization, offering tailored financial workflows for industries like healthcare or construction. A third path is infrastructure ownership, where platforms seek to build or control enough of the financial stack to capture margin that would otherwise leak to partners. The companies that could be most likely to sustain superior economics may be those that successfully layer higher-margin financial services onto their payments base. Industry observers have noted talk centered around “ARPU (average revenue per user) expansion through financial services” rather than “payments attach.” The market is shifting from excitement over gross payment volume to scrutiny of net revenue retention driven by adjacencies.