What happened
Shares of HubSpot (HUBS -0.06%) surged to a new all-time high on Tuesday, gaining as much as 16.7%. As of 2:02 p.m. EDT, the stock was up by 15.9%.
The catalyst driving the inbound marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) specialist higher was an announcement at its annual marketing event that it was getting into a lucrative new business: payments.
So what
The company announced the launch of HubSpot Payments, "an end-to-end payment solution built to deliver a more delightful and connected buyer experience." It's built directly into the company's software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform and doesn't require "writing code or clunky integrations."
Image source: Getty Images.
To encourage customers to use HubSpot Payments, the company will waive the fees for the first $50,000 of ACH transactions processed each month. HubSpot said it is teaming up with global online payment processor Stripe -- a longtime partner -- to help power the solution.
The payments business will generate another high-quality revenue stream for HubSpot, while potentially improving its margins.
There were other announcements during the event. The company debuted a laundry list of enterprise-grade features, updates, and improvements to help its customers "better align their data, channels, and teams, and easily adapt to every phase of growth." HubSpot debuted a new customization feature that gives users more granular control over their dashboards.
HubSpot also increased the utility of its governance features, improving user permissions, audit logging, and signature management, while adding tools to prevent user impersonation. And it added a "sandbox" feature that allows developers to test and experiment with system changes before deploying them. This helps them to spot and correct potential problems before updates go live.
Now what
HubSpot should be able to convince a good chunk of its sizable user base -- which currently numbers more than 121,000 -- to use its new payment solution, giving it a cut of every transaction.
The company has grown far beyond its humble roots as an inbound marketing specialist and is expanding into every corner of CRM and e-commerce. Investors no doubt see this as the next phase in HubSpot's relentless growth story.
