Join over 1,500 attendees at London’s Guildhall for IFGS 2026
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The flagship event of UK FinTech Week is back in 2026. With over 1,500 attendees and representatives from over 70 countries, IFGS continues to attract the brightest and best from the global FinTech ecosystem to discuss and debate the crucial issues facing the sector now and in years to come.
IFGS kick-starts a week-long programme of events that will deliver world-class content, thought-leadership and ample networking opportunities for the entire UK FinTech ecosystem.
FinTech founders, entrepreneurs, investors, bank ex-cos, regulators, policy-makers, academics and media from around the world will come together to learn, discuss, debate and network. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of the conversation!
Why Attend IFGS?
Ranging from innovators, institutions, regulators to policy-makers, startups and investors – key players are in one place for a day of thought-provoking discussions. The agenda will spotlight the global fintech ecosystem, with an increased focus on the key areas that enhance, empower and ensure that FinTech and financial services pave the way for economic growth, sustainability, and a financial system that caters for all.
With four stages filled with insightful sessions, panel discussions, and in-depth presentations, this event is a must-attend for FinTech professionals.
Gain empowering insights from industry expert speakers (representing the likes of HSBC, Monzo, Swift and Paypal) exploring the key themes and topics resonating across the FinTech ecosystem today:
Powering Growth: The role of FinTech in supporting the wider UK economy
AI in Financial Services: From responsible adoption to new business models
Stablecoins: Balancing innovation, trust, and regulation
Operational Resilience, National Sovereignty, and Geopolitical Implications: ensuring stability in an interconnected world
FinTech and Capital Markets: Bridging innovation and institutional finance
Financial Inclusion and Financial Wellness: Technology as a driver
The Next Generation of FinTech Unicorns: Shaping the ecosystem that enables them to thrive
Open Banking, Open Finance, and Smart Data: Mapping the next evolution of data-driven innovation, infrastructure and consumer empowerment
Next Generation Banking: Exploring what the future of financial services will look like as consumer behaviours change and new technologies evolve
Fighting Fraud and Cybercrime: Securing the future of digital finance
Our cover star Shadman Zafar, Founder & CEO of Vibrant Capital, is building a CIO-led model for enterprise transformation. Vibrant Capital is an operator-led investment and company-building platform focused on scaling AI in the real economy. “We don’t spray investments across hundreds of AI startups. We curate a portfolio with purpose – selecting companies that solve the real mission-critical problems CIOs face in scaling AI adoption.”
FNB: Redefining Data Science in Commercial Banking
We also hear from Yudhvir Seetharam, Chief Analytics Officer at South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) on a data science journey characterised by curiosity, culture and the drive for a competitive edge. “Ours is a holistic approach focusing on the customer,” he explains. “Understanding the context of each customer journey and then using that context so that when we interact with you, we’re able to drive the right conversation with the right customer, at the right time, through the right channel and for the right reason. These ‘five rights’ make our interactions with clients more impactful.”
Virginia Farm Bureau: An Enterprise CIO’s Journey
Shifting focus to the world of insurance at the Virginia Farm Bureau, we spoke withan Enterprise CIO at a complex mission-driven organisation. As he approaches retirement, Patrick (Pat) Caine reflects on his career as a CIO and the centennial of an organisation renowned for resiliency, collaboration, commitment to a greater cause, diversity and service to its members. “In my role as CIO, I’ve always been that person who connects the dots between business needs and technology execution. Virginia Farm Bureau is digitally relevant, collaborative, and well‑positioned for the future.”
Mastercard: Protecting Trust in the Digital Economy
Michele Centemero, EVP Services at Mastercard Europe explains why promoting awareness, stronger collaboration and data-sharing, and continued innovation of payments ecosystems, will be critical in reducing the impact of scams and protecting trust in the digital economy. “The combination of AI, robust identity controls and open banking can help protect consumers from scams, whether across card and account‑to‑account payments or in fraudulent account openings.”
Thales on AI Security: How FinServ’s Budget Priorities Signal a Boardroom Shift
Todd Moore, Global VP – Data Security Products at Thales, reveals why making AI security a boardroom priority today, will help firms position themselves to capture competitive advantage, safeguard customer confidence, and define the future of secure innovation. “Balancing AI’s opportunity and risk means embedding security at every stage, from design to deployment and ongoing monitoring.”
Paymentology: The First Live AI-Agent Payment Is a Test for Credit Infrastructure
Thomas Benjaminsen Normann, Product Director at Paymentology, dissects the future for agentic payments and the progress still to be made. “Agentic payments demand something more granular: a clearer account of who or what acted, under what limits, and with what right to create a liability on the customer’s behalf.”
Also in this issue, we hear from Publicis Sapient, on why asset managers must redesign their enterprise for AI-driven decision intelligence; learn from Bitpace why the most resilient payments infrastructure will be the one with the most adaptability; rank the AI maturity of 12 of the largest payments networks in the latest Evident AI Index; and round up the key FinTech events and conferences across the globe.
Thomas Benjaminsen Normann, Product Director at Paymentology on the future for agentic payments and the progress still to be made
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Santander and Mastercard’s live AI-agent payment pushed the industry past the stage of talking about agentic commerce as a future use case and into the reality of a transaction moving through live banking infrastructure. In doing so, it placed an AI agent at the point of spend within a system that still assumes the person initiating the payment is also the one making the decision and carrying the liability.
That assumption is far easier to sustain when a payment draws on existing funds than when it creates a debt that someone must later repay. And may dispute. As soon as an agent moves from guiding a choice to completing the transaction, the usual alignment between instruction, authorisation and liability becomes harder to see.
Card authorisation has long rested on a simple premise: the person using the card is the one deciding to spend. Even when the transaction runs through a wallet, an app or a stored credential, the model still relies on a cardholder who is directly involved in the act of payment.
Agentic payments
Agentic payments stretch that arrangement. The customer may have set the rules, the budget or the merchant preference in advance, but the point of execution can now sit with software acting later and at speed. The question then extends beyond whether the transaction was authenticated to whether the debt it created was taken on with the kind of consent and clarity card systems have traditionally relied on.
Mastercard has responded by building a stronger trust layer around delegated intent. Once software acts on a customer’s behalf, the usual signs of presence and intent at the moment of payment carry less weight than they do in an ordinary card transaction. Santander’s pilot showed that this can be handled inside a tightly controlled framework with predefined permissions.
The challenge becomes very different once the same model moves into ordinary credit flows, where issuers are dealing with borrowing, repayment and dispute risk rather than a bounded test case.
Risk models built on human behaviour
Fraud systems and credit models have been trained to read people. How they spend, how quickly they move, where they buy, and what tends to happen before repayment trouble begins to show. An AI agent, even when acting entirely within a customer’s instructions, is unlikely to look much like that. It may search more widely, compare more aggressively, transact at unusual times and behave with a consistency that looks odd against a human baseline. Some legitimate payments will appear suspicious. Some suspect ones may look routine. Signals that once separated ordinary behaviour from risky behaviour will arrive in forms the system is not used to reading.
Research from Capgemini indicates that 71% of consumers want generative AI integrated into shopping interactions. Meanwhile, 58% say they already use generative AI instead of traditional search for recommendations. That does not mean autonomous purchasing becomes mainstream overnight, but it does suggest the move from AI-assisted discovery to AI-executed transactions will not stay theoretical for long. For issuers, that means transaction systems are about to encounter a new behavioural signature without much history behind them.
The pressure does not sit only with fraud screening. Credit decisioning is built on assumptions about how people build balances, revolve debt, repay over time and run into repayment trouble. An AI agent may be acting entirely within a customer’s instructions while still producing patterns those models were never trained to read cleanly. A sudden increase in spend, an unusual merchant mix or a burst of late-night activity may deserve scrutiny when a person generates it.
The same signals may be perfectly consistent with a software agent searching widely, responding instantly to price changes or executing against preset rules with much greater speed and regularity than a person would. Once that behaviour starts landing in the credit book, signals that once carried meaning around affordability, intent or emerging repayment risk become less reliable as indicators.
Signals the authorisation layer does not carry
The transaction also arrives with gaps that matter more once software is involved. Existing payment messages can identify the merchant, the amount, the credential used and the authentication path. What they do not natively describe is whether the action came from a customer or an agent, what spending authority had been delegated, whether that authority was limited to a category, merchant or price threshold, and whether the funding source was intended to be debit, charge or revolving credit. A payment can be technically valid while still leaving the issuer with too little context about how the decision was made.
A controlled pilot can solve some of that by imposing rules around the transaction from outside the standard message, which is effectively what bounded testing is for. Everyday credit use is less forgiving. If the issuer is expected to approve the payment, apply the right controls, score the exposure and later defend the outcome in a dispute, those signals have to be legible inside the flow rather than reconstructed around it after the event.
At that point, the question is less about whether the payment experience works and more about whether the issuer-side controls underneath it can carry the weight. That includes the ability to apply rules in real time, restrict how a credential can be used, and keep a clear record of how the transaction was authorised and what kind of exposure it created.
The missing context does not stop at authorisation. It follows the transaction further down the line, when an issuer has to explain why a payment was approved, whether the agent acted within its delegated scope. And how that scope should be evidenced if the customer challenges the transaction. Card systems are used to relying on the credential, the authentication path and the transaction record.
Digital versus Traditional Wallets
Agentic payments demand something more granular: a clearer account of who or what acted, under what limits, and with what right to create a liability on the customer’s behalf. The control layer around that decision, including how credentials are restricted and how delegated authority is defined, starts to matter much more than it did in a conventional wallet or stored-card journey.
Infrastructure many issuers built out for tokenised wallets now looks more like part of the control architecture for agent-led spend. Because the payment credential itself may need tighter restrictions than the market has been used to applying.
Santander and Mastercard have shown that an AI agent can now make it all the way through a live payment flow. What follows from that is less about whether software can reach the point of spend and more about what the rest of the stack needs to know once it gets there. If agentic payments are to move beyond controlled deployments and into ordinary credit use, issuers will need clearer ways to tell who acted, under what authority, against which funding source, and with what liability attached. Until those signals travel cleanly through the flow rather than being inferred around it, agentic payments on credit will remain easier to demonstrate than to absorb into everyday card operations.
Money20/20, the world’s leading FinTech show, has announced 250 confirmed speakers from a total of 39 countries. They will take…
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Money20/20, the world’s leading FinTech show, has announced 250 confirmed speakers from a total of 39 countries. They will take the stage at Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok from April 21–23, 2026 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC).
From Infrastructure to Impact – Where Technology Meets Humanity
This year’s theme is ‘From Infrastructure to Impact – Where Technology Meets Humanity’. It will explore how the next wave of financial innovation can deliver real outcomes across the APAC region. From digital public infrastructure and embedded finance to AI‑powered services and inclusive financial design. Money20/20 Asia will examine how technology moves beyond capability to create genuine human impact. With a speaker lineup drawn from across Asia, the show will unpack the trends, breakthroughs, and strategies shaping the future of money.
Money20/20 Asia brings together speakers from over 40 global and regional banks. These include Standard Chartered, HSBC, Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, World Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tonik Bank, Maybank, J.P. Morgan, KASIKORNBANK, and Trust Bank Singapore to name a few. Experts from leading payment providers including Visa, Nium, Thunes, PPRO, Tazapay, Mastercard, Razorpay, Fiserv, Brankas, JusPay will discuss the evolution of payments across the region.
“Money20/20 Asia is a platform for ideas that shapes the industry and this year’s lineup of 250+ speakers reflect the extraordinary progress happening across APAC. From digital assets and payments to AI and financial inclusion, the conversations in Bangkok will define the future of money across the region and beyond. We’re excited to bring together the leaders who are not only observing change, but actively creating it.” Danny Levy, Executive Vice President & MD APAC & Middle East, Money20/20
Speakers Shaping the Future of Finance
The 2026 keynote roster highlights a group of standout leaders shaping the future of finance across Asia and beyond. Some of the keynote speakers include: Faizul Ariff Ali, Governor, Reserve Bank of Fiji, Pichet Durongkaveroj, Executive Director, Bangkok Bank, Peng Ooi Goh, Founder & Executive Chairman, Silverlake Group and Anna Liu, CEO, HashKey Tokenisation
New for this year at Money20/20 Asia is the Intersection Stage. Exploring the convergence of traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), addressing how banks, fintechs, and emerging technologies are reshaping the global financial ecosystem. The stage brings together leaders from major financial institutions and well-known FinTech companies to discuss how innovation, regulation, and new financial infrastructure are transforming areas such as digital assets, trust and cybersecurity, and cross-border payments. Speakers include Siddharth Gupta of Bank of America, Sabih Behzad of Deutsche Bank, Fangfang Jiang of International Finance Corporation, Kenneth Chan of Webull, and Siva Kumar of Sumsub. They will share insights on regulatory innovation, digital asset adoption, developments in stablecoin, tokenisation and blockchain‑enabled settlement. Also how new payment rails are enabling faster and more efficient cross-border transactions.
The show includes the Startup & Investor Park, a dedicated space where leading fintech founders from Asia connect with global investors, enterprise partners, and decision-makers. 20 standout startups from across APAC have been selected, highlighting the Park’s commitment to quality, innovation, and real-world impact. Over three days, the Park will host founder-focused sessions, investor meetups, startup showcases, and pitch competitions to accelerate early-stage growth. Startups will also compete for the Golden Ticket to the 2026 Startupbootcamp Sustainability Singapore Accelerator, which offers SGD 70,000 in non-dilutive prize money, access to the Investment Readiness Program, and expert coaching.
Money20/20 Asia will also feature FinTech unicorns and high‑growth innovators, including Revolut, Bolttech, Fireblocks, Circle, Bitkub, AppWorks, and Incognia, alongside technology leaders such as Meta, Finastra, FIS, and Publicis Sapient.
In addition to the Intersection Stage Money20/20 Asia 2026 will feature three more stages. Each delivering a distinct lens on the future of money:
Radiant Stage: headline keynotes and industry‑defining conversations
Inner Forum Stage: deep‑dive discussions on payments, banking, digital assets, AI, and regulation
Startup Stage: spotlighting emerging founders and early‑stage innovation
Program Highlights from the Agenda
The 2026 agenda highlights the show’s core themes of digital assets, cross-border payments, AI, and regulation. And includes several high-impact sessions:
Day 1: The Future of Tokenised Markets in Asia, featuring HashKey Tokenisation, Fireblocks, Circle
Day 1: Real‑Time Cross‑Border Payments: The Next Leap Forward, with Nium, Thunes, Tazapay, Airwallex
Day 2: AI‑Driven Financial Inclusion Across APAC, with Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tonik Bank, Trust Bank Singapore
Day 2: The Creator Economy Meets Finance at the Intersection Stage, featuring Meta, Publicis Sapient, and leading digital creators
Day 3: Regulation for the Next Decade with regulators from Bank of Thailand, MAS, BSP, OJK Indonesia, Bangladesh Bank, Labuan FSA, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
About Money20/20
Launched by industry insiders in 2012, Money20/20 has rapidly become the heartbeat of the global fintech ecosystem. Over the last decade, the most innovative, fast‑moving ideas and companies have driven their growth on our platform. Mastercard, Airwallex, J.P. Morgan, SHIELD, GCash, Stripe, Google, Visa, Adyen, and more make transformational deals and raise their global profile with us. Money20/20 attracts leaders from the world’s greatest banks, payments companies, VC firms, regulators, and media platforms — convening to cut industry‑shaping deals, build world‑changing partnerships, and unlock future‑defining opportunities in Las Vegas (October 18–21, 2026), Amsterdam (June 2–4, 2026), Riyadh (September 14–16, 2026), and Bangkok (April 21–23, 2026). Money20/20 is where the world’s FinTech leaders convene to grow their brands. It is part of Informa PLC. Follow Money20/20 on X and LinkedIn for show developments and updates.
Radi El Haj, CEO of global payment technology provider RS2, on the shift toward programmable, data-driven financial infrastructure designed for a real-time global economy.
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The financial industry is entering a new phase of infrastructure modernisation. While cryptocurrencies and blockchain continue to dominate headlines, a more pragmatic evolution is reshaping banking from within: tokenised deposits embedded directly into core payment systems.
Tokenised deposits represent a practical bridge between legacy banking infrastructure and next-generation real-time capabilities. Unlike crypto-native assets, they remain fully regulated bank liabilities. But with the added advantage of programmability, automation and real-time settlement logic built directly into the banking stack.
The recently launched Cari Network by five US regional banks signals this shift. It demonstrates how banks are beginning to rethink bank-to-bank payments and settlement at the infrastructure layer.
Moving away from batch-based clearing toward programmable, real-time funds allows institutions to enhance efficiency, reduce settlement risk and modernise core systems without stepping outside regulatory guardrails.
For banks re-entering acquiring, upgrading issuing, or consolidating fragmented payment systems, tokenised deposits represent not a parallel innovation, but an embedded evolution of core processing.
What Tokenised Deposits Really Change
At their foundation, tokenised deposits are digitally represented, insured banking liabilities. The critical distinction is that they remain part of the regulated banking system. This preserves trust, governance and compliance – the pillars that underpin institutional finance.
The transformational value lies in programmability at the infrastructure level. When business logic is embedded into the payment instrument itself, banks can automate reconciliation, conditional settlement, liquidity allocation and multi-party disbursements in real time. Instead of adding layers of complexity on top of legacy systems, tokenisation integrates intelligence directly into the core ledger and processing environment.
For banks operating across issuing, acquiring and cross-border settlement, this reduces friction between systems and enables a more unified, real-time operating model.
AI as the Operational Intelligence Layer
Tokenisation alone is not sufficient. To operate at scale, programmable deposits require an intelligent control layer. Artificial intelligence and machine learning provide that layer.
AI can forecast liquidity requirements across issuing and acquiring portfolios, optimise routing decisions in real-time, detect anomalous behaviour and automate compliance monitoring. As transaction volumes increase and settlement windows compress, predictive intelligence becomes critical to maintaining resilience and control.
In multi-bank or multi-ledger environments, AI also plays a key interoperability role. It reconciles cross-network flows, identifies bottlenecks and dynamically allocates capital across settlement channels. This is where infrastructure maturity matters most.
Banks that embed AI-driven operational intelligence directly into their payment processing architecture will be best positioned to deliver speed without sacrificing stability.
Infrastructure is the Real Challenge
Tokenised deposits are not a feature — they are an architectural shift. Scaling them requires cloud-native, modular processing platforms capable of integrating with existing payment rails, regulatory frameworks and cross-border networks. Without modern infrastructure, tokenised deposits risk remaining contained pilots.
For banks modernising acquiring or issuing capabilities, this becomes a broader transformation programme: upgrading the core ledger, harmonising payment rails, embedding real-time analytics and ensuring seamless interoperability across domestic and international networks.
This is where strategic infrastructure partners become critical. Institutions need platforms that combine:
Cloud-native core processing
Real-time settlement capabilities
Embedded AI-driven monitoring and liquidity management
Open APIs for cross-network interoperability
Regulatory-grade resilience and auditability
Only then can tokenisation move from concept to scalable reality.
Embedding Innovation Into the Banking Ecosystem
Payments innovation succeeds when it strengthens the banking ecosystem rather than bypassing it. Tokenised deposits offer a path to modernisation that reinforces trust, compliance and regulatory clarity. When combined with AI-enabled operational intelligence, they create a responsive infrastructure capable of supporting real-time commerce, embedded finance and cross-border settlement at scale.
Institutions that approach this as an integrated infrastructure strategy — rather than a point solution — will see the greatest impact:
Reduced settlement risk through programmable fund controls
Improved liquidity optimisation across issuing and acquiring flows
Real-time fraud detection powered by AI
More efficient cross-border routing and capital allocation
This is not about replacing banking infrastructure. It is about rebuilding it intelligently.
The Next Phase of Real-Time Banking
The launch of initiatives like the Cari Network signals the beginning of a broader industry evolution. As tokenised deposits mature, collaboration between banks, FinTechs and technology providers will determine how effectively they scale.
The strategic question for banks is not whether tokenisation delivers value — it is whether their infrastructure is prepared to support it.
Those that invest in modern, modular processing platforms capable of integrating tokenisation and AI at the core will establish long-term competitive advantage. They will move beyond incremental upgrades toward a unified, intelligent payments architecture.
Tokenised deposits represent more than a technological enhancement. They reflect a shift toward programmable, data-driven financial infrastructure designed for a real-time global economy.
For banks and technology providers operating at the intersection of issuing, acquiring and settlement modernisation, this marks the beginning of a new era — one defined not simply by faster payments, but by smarter, more resilient infrastructure.
About RS2
RS2 is a leading global provider of payment technology solutions and processing services, offering a unified approach to managing payments across all channels for banks, integrated software vendors, payment facilitators, independent sales organizations, payment service providers, and businesses worldwide. RS2’s platform stands out as a robust cloud-native solution designed for both issuing and acquiring operations. With its advanced orchestration layer seamlessly integrating all aspects of business operations, clients gain access to comprehensive analytics, reporting tools, and reconciliation features. This empowers businesses to effortlessly expand their global footprint through a single integration, while also gaining valuable insights into payment processes and customer behavior, enhancing operational efficiency, increasing conversion rates, and driving profitability.
With AI adoption booming across financial services, Laurent Descout, CEO and co-founder of Neo, explores why the technology has emerged at the right time for payments and what it signals for the industry’s future
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The payments industry is undergoing significant transformation as instant payments become the global standard and ISO 20022 reshapes financial messaging. For financial institutions, these changes are creating a more complex operating environment that demands new approaches to managing payments.
Payments have long been the bedrock of financial systems. Allowing businesses and individuals to pay for the goods and services that keep the world’s economy moving.
Over time, the processes by which payments operate have evolved. From the first wire transfers in the 19thcentury to credit cards in the 1950s. Smartphones and the internet then took payments digital, with online banking, mobile wallets and pay by phone following suit.
Now, the next wave of innovation is beginning to reshape how payment systems operate. With 62% of global organisations reporting that they are at least experimenting with AI agents. The payments industry is no exception. From processing transactions and powering chatbots in fraud detection and compliance, AI is commercially imperative for banks of all sizes.
Emerging at a Pivotal Moment
The growing adoption of AI coincides with global efforts to speed up and streamline payments. Instant payments are fast becoming the global standard.
This shift has been driven by consumer and business expectations, but also by changing regulations. In Europe, the Instant Payments Regulation in 2025. And most recently, SWIFT’s migration to ISO20022 has driven changes in the way payments are processed.
ISO 20022 introduces a single, data-rich standard for financial messaging. Under SWIFT’s migration, which reached a major milestone in November 2025 with the end of the coexistence period, payments can now carry more detailed and consistent information.
This reduces ambiguity and improves data quality throughout the transaction lifecycle. This makes payments easier to track, reducing delays and increasing customer confidence.
Under the upcoming November 2026 deadline, support will end for unstructured messages and retire MT101 request-for-transfer messages. Leaving only structured and hybrid formats. ISO 20022 also underpins modern payment rails and APIs. This enables banks and PSPs to offer instant payments and embedded payment services within corporate workflows.
Furthermore, there are initiatives from SWIFT like SWIFT Go, SWIFT Pre-Validation and SWIFT Case Management. These focus on making payments less frictional, more transparent and faster at post-issuing resolution.
What AI Brings to the Table
Against this backdrop of growing complexity, AI offers financial institutions powerful tools to automate processes, improve decision-making and reduce operational friction. All of these are key attributes for monitoring payment systems and have the potential to speed up processes end-to-end.
One of its core applications in payments is applying machine learning to navigate the complex web of global payment rails, completing transactions more efficiently and with fewer errors.
It also unlocks more advanced capabilities from enriching payment messages, forecasting cash flow, identifying liquidity gaps, and optimising reconciliation processes.
Crucially, AI helps PSPs cope with the increasing complexity of regulation. From document analysis to compliance reporting, AI can scan thousands of pages in seconds, extracting relevant insights and streamlining manual workflows.
This means the end of endlessly searching through paperwork for small details, which can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Advanced AI models can even write and test code, accelerating product development, reducing time-to-market, and making system updates faster and more cost-effective.
Fraud Protection
In addition to promoting the good, AI in payments also keeps out the bad.
In the fight against fraud, AI can recognise suspicious patterns and use algorithms trained on historical data to flag anomalous transactions.
This monitoring occurs in real-time, allowing for immediate action to prevent losses and incorporating machine learning models to reduce the likelihood of false positives.
Importantly, these checks happen silently and frictionlessly, with no disruption to legitimate users or the payment system.
It’s unsurprising, therefore, that 90% of financial institutions are using AI for fraud prevention strategies.
Striking the Right Balance
However, AI is not a silver bullet for the payments industry, and when poorly implemented, it can be ineffective or introduce new risks.
To avoid this, PSPs should reset their expectations and strategically evaluate the most effective use cases for implementing AI, such as streamlining document analysis or automating repetitive tasks, rather than applying it indiscriminately across all areas of business.
AI implementation should be piloted in high-impact areas like fraud detection, compliance automation, and liquidity forecasting, while ensuring it is coupled with robust governance.
A Catalyst for Progress
As AI continues to make payments faster and safer, payment institutions should look towards fintech for best practices on how to integrate AI into systems strategically and cost-effectively. Many of these smaller firms continue to outperform larger banks with AI innovations thanks to their agility.
Max Schertel, Co-founder & CEO of finmid, on why embedded lending will become a core strategic capability across Europe
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Europe has 32 million SMEs and a €400 billion financing gap that banks cannot close. The structural reasons are well understood… While traditional lenders have the capital, they lack the distribution, the data, and the economics to serve these businesses at scale. What has changed over the past few years is that a new distribution channel has emerged: the software platforms these businesses use every day to run their operations. Embedded lending is the mechanism that connects capital to that distribution. But unlocking it at pan-European scale is harder than most players anticipated when they started out in this market.
At finmid, we have scaled embedded lending across the EU27 plus the UK, Switzerland, and Iceland. Doing so has taught us that Europe’s opportunity in embedded finance is enormous, but execution is harder than it looks. Success depends on the ability to navigate regulatory and operational complexity at every layer. The companies that invest in getting this right early will define the next decade of SME finance in Europe. The ones that do not will discover the cost of underestimating it.
The Embedded Lending Opportunity is Unevenly Distributed
That €400 billion financing gap is the embedded lending opportunity. Embedded lending is gaining traction in closing it but not uniformly. The clearest momentum is with large, digitally native platforms in food delivery, mobility, commerce. These are verticals where platforms have transaction data and merchants who are underserved by traditional banks. The platform already has the relationship, the data, and the trust. Financing is the natural next layer.
Geographically, the Nordics lead on digital maturity. Merchants there are already accustomed to managing their businesses through apps. This makes embedded finance products an easier sell. Germany and France carry the largest absolute opportunity given market size. Southern and Central Europe are earlier stage, but the demand from underserved SMEs is, if anything, more acute.
Regulatory Environment
The first challenge in scaling embedded lending in Europe is regulatory complexity. There are shared EU frameworks, but in practice, lending regulation remains deeply local. Disclosure requirements, servicing standards, licensing interpretations, and tax treatment differ across jurisdictions.
The Consumer Credit Directive II harmonises elements of consumer lending across the EU. Commercial lending sits outside that framework, governed by local rules affecting everything, including what constitutes a valid credit agreement.
This complexity is precisely what makes embedded lending difficult to build in-house and why most platforms partner with specialist infrastructure providers instead. Running lending across multiple European markets requires licences, local expertise, and dedicated credit operations. For platforms whose core business lies elsewhere, that investment rarely makes sense. Infrastructure providers exist to absorb that complexity, so platforms do not have to.
Data Access is Fragmented
Even when the regulatory path is clear, the data infrastructure needed is not equally available across Europe. The structural advantage of embedded lending is platform data. Platforms already sit on real-time performance data: daily transaction volumes, GMV trends, customer ratings. Underwriting based on this creates a standardised signal that travels across borders more reliably than either bureau or registry infrastructure. It also opens access to merchant segments that traditional banking systematically excludes because the conventional data to assess them is limited.
That said, other data sources matter too. Open banking, sometimes used to enrich underwriting with live bank account data, is mature in the UK and the Nordics, but less so across of Southern and Central Europe. Public registry data, which underpins the business verification process, varies significantly in quality, coverage, and accessibility by market. The key to making embedded lending work across Europe is not finding a single data source that works everywhere, but building underwriting that can combine multiple data sources based on market.
Operational Complexity Multiplies
The underlying infrastructure has to function reliably across currencies, languages and payment systems. Start with money movement. Mapping the flow of funds across 30 different banking and payment systems is complex engineering. Without it, disbursement and collection become operationally fragile at exactly the moments when they cannot afford to be.
Then there is the local layer. Product and communication in local languages and currencies is table stakes. But how merchants are best reached varies significantly by market. In some, an in-app notification is the most effective channel. In others, physical mail still outperforms digital. Getting this right has a direct impact on merchant trust and platform reputation.
Without a high degree of automation across all of these dimensions, cross-border lending becomes economically unsustainable. AI-driven workflows for screening, risk assessment, and data aggregation enable consistent standards while keeping complexity manageable.
Looking Ahead
Europe’s embedded lending story is still being written. Regulatory frameworks and data infrastructure are maturing and platforms are increasingly treating embedded lending as a core strategic capability. The winners will be whoever has done the unglamorous operational work and built infrastructure that treats Europe’s complexity as an opportunity, not a barrier.
Jack Bingham, Regional Director of Digital Native UK, Ireland & South Africa, Confluent on how data, treated properly, compounds in value to drive digital disruption
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When I talk to founders and tech leaders, one question seems to consistently come up: what separates today’s disruptors from the last decade’s? In 2010, being cloud-first was what made investors sit up and take note. In 2026, it will be streaming-first.
I’ve spent the last year or so working closely with companies that are, quite literally, building their businesses in real time. For them, real-time capability isn’t a department or a layer that supports the business. It is the business. The acid test is simple: how quickly can you capture a critical event – a payment, a login, a failed delivery – and respond with the next best action? That focus shapes how they build products, structure teams, and think about innovation.
Here’s what I’ve learned from them:
Lesson 1: Data is a Product, Not a By-Product
Many traditional companies still treat data as something to collect, store, and analyse later. The new generation of businesses, on the other hand, treats it as a reusable, governed product that everyone can access. When it’s built and shared this way, teams stop rebuilding the same foundations for every new use case. They move faster because they’re working from a single, trusted view of the truth, shortening product cycles, speeding up iteration, and spending more time solving problems that matter.
That mindset, rather than the size of the tech stack or the number of engineers, is what sets disruptive businesses apart. In these organisations, technology, data, and business strategy move in lockstep. Decisions aren’t passed up and down hierarchies, they’re made by teams who understand both the data and the customer problem in front of them.
When you can trust your data and respond in real time, innovation stops being a department. It becomes a reflex.
Lesson 2: Real-Time isn’t a Feature, it’s a Foundation
A few years ago, one of the world’s largest supermarket chains realised it didn’t have a single real-time view of its inventory. Without that visibility, omnichannel experiences were impossible. Once it shifted to a streaming architecture, every transaction became a live event that updated stock, triggered supply chains, and even made it possible to get your groceries delivered straight to your kitchen fridge – coordinated through live inventory data, smart home devices, and real-time security feeds.
That’s the practical power of streaming: it connects what happens in your business to what should happen next so you can provide products and services that take customer satisfaction to a whole other level. Real-time data stops being a reporting tool and becomes the foundation of every decision, interaction, and innovation.
I often ask businesses what they would do differently, if they knew the state of every event in their organisation. The most forward-thinking companies already have the answer. They’re using streaming to turn business events into reusable building blocks, creating new experiences by connecting the data they already have in smarter ways.
Lesson 3: Culture is the Multiplier
Being streaming-first is only half about architecture. The other half is attitude. The best digital enterprises don’t wait for permission to experiment. They map their most important business events, align teams around them, and empower people at every level to react fast and learn faster.
And the difference is visible. Feedback loops are shorter. Structures are flatter. Failure is treated as information. This culture of continuous experimentation is why these companies can move at the pace they do.
We often run ‘Event Storming’ workshops with teams to map their critical business events. The idea is to create alignment – getting people from engineering, product, and operations to agree on what really matters and how those moments connect. That process reveals a lot.
Digital disruptors go beyond simply deploying streaming architectures. They build streaming mindsets. Leadership plays a crucial role here: data must be treated as a strategic asset. If it isn’t up top, it won’t be anywhere else in the organisation either.
Lesson 4: Streaming and AI will Converge
AI is only as good as the data you feed it. Unfortunately, most enterprises are still feeding it yesterday’s data. Streaming-first companies already know this. They’re building intelligent data pipelines that give AI the context it needs to make decisions in real time.
That’s how the next generation of innovators will pull ahead: not by having bigger models, but by having cleaner, faster, more connected data. Streaming is what will let AI move from reactive to predictive… and from predictive to autonomous.
Too many organisations are cutting investment in data while pouring money into AI projects. But AI without quality data is just expensive guesswork. The companies doing this well understand that data has to be a product in its own right. And when business and technology teams design around that shared understanding, innovation follows naturally.
Lesson 5: The Mindset of the Next Disruptors
If I were starting a company tomorrow, I’d look closely at the critical events that run my business. I’d then make sure I had a way to capture those in the stream, make them reusable, and build every product and process around them.
When your business can see and act on what’s happening in the moment, you gain something no traditional architecture can give you: time. And in the next wave of disruption, that’s the only advantage that really matters.
If we look to who we can learn from in the coming months, it’s financial services and healthcare that are moving the fastest. Real-time fraud detection, patient monitoring, and risk management are becoming operational necessities – and these industries will set the benchmark for real-time data excellence.
Looking Ahead to 2026
By 2026, I don’t think we’ll talk about ‘real-time’ as a differentiator. It will simply be how modern businesses operate. Batch systems won’t disappear, but they’ll coexist within a single, streaming-first platform that delivers data whenever it’s needed.
Once every process can react instantly, the question then becomes: can it anticipate? Can it learn? That’s where AI and streaming meet and where we move from reactive to autonomous enterprises that not only respond to the present but adapt to what’s coming next.
Data, treated properly, compounds in value. The decisions you make with it become faster, sharper, and more confident. The companies that understand this will be the ones still leading when today’s titans look like yesterday’s news.
Trilliam Jeong, CEO at WealthBlock on why pairing credit discipline with real-time reporting will deliver a better position to hold onto investor confidence
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There’s no shortage of noise around the direct lending market right now. On one hand, deal activity remains strong, capital continues to flow in and investor appetite hasn’t wavered. On the other, competition is fierce, rates are edging down and macro conditions are less forgiving than they were a year ago.
But strip out the headlines and the fundamentals still look solid. The demand is there, both from borrowers looking for speed and flexibility and from investors chasing yield and consistency. That puts direct lenders in a strong position, provided they’re prepared to adapt.
Operational Shift
One of the most significant shifts underway is operational. We’re seeing real adoption of technology across the mid-market from AI-assisted onboarding to fully digitised investor dashboards. This isn’t just cosmetic. Faster processes and clearer visibility mean capital can move more quickly, investors stay better informed and managers have more room to protect margins, even in a tightening spread environment.
LP expectations are shifting too. Many now expect a consumer-grade digital experience from the platforms they commit capital to. They want real-time access to reports, frictionless communication and clarity around how their money is being deployed. That shift in expectations is accelerating the tech arms race across the mid-market. It’s no longer about who can show the best deck but rather can deliver the best infrastructure. And as investor sophistication grows, that infrastructure is becoming a non-negotiable.
Digital Infrastructure
That shift is also influencing how mandates are awarded. Institutional investors increasingly view digital infrastructure not as a bonus, but as a sign of long-term readiness. Questions that once focused solely on deal pipeline and past performance now extend to data availability, reporting cadence and system resilience. It’s not just about what a manager can deliver but how transparently and reliably they can do it. As more allocators run tighter operational due diligence processes, digital maturity is quietly becoming a competitive edge. Platforms that can demonstrate consistent, tech-enabled processes are better positioned to win, and keep, capital.
That matters, because rates may not stay where they are. Increased competition is already putting pressure on pricing. But firms with strong digital infrastructure are better placed to absorb it. Operational leverage, not just headline yield, is becoming a key differentiator.
Scaling Up
There’s also the issue of scale. Consolidation is real and it’s reshaping the market. The biggest managers are only getting bigger and their resources are hard to match. But size alone isn’t the whole story. Technology is giving smaller and mid-sized players a way to compete on experience even if not on balance sheet. A seamless, professional, tech-forward investor journey can carry real weight with LPs, particularly those who value speed and clarity over brand.
That’s especially relevant for new entrants. There’s no shortage of managers in direct lending and standing out requires more than just a different strategy. Yes, some are carving out a niche in NAV lending, venture debt or structured credit but what really earns attention is trust. That comes from clear communication, repeatable processes and a level of transparency that goes beyond the marketing deck.
The Outlook for Lending
The macro outlook is part of the equation too. With corporate defaults expected to rise, discipline is going to matter more than it has in recent years. Underwriting strength, sponsor alignment and proactive portfolio monitoring are back in focus. Investors will be watching for signals that managers are prepared for downside risk. The tougher the environment, the more exposed weaker systems become. Inconsistent reporting, vague valuation logic or delayed updates might have been tolerated in a bull market – but not now. Allocators want to know how a manager will behave under stress, not just how they perform when everything’s going to plan. That makes operational maturity as important as deal-level returns.
Firms that pair credit discipline with real-time reporting will be in a better position to hold onto investor confidence. Allocators are already asking more pointed questions and looking for managers who can back up claims with data. There’s still plenty of room to grow in direct lending, but it won’t be enough to rely on past performance or broad market tailwinds. The firms that outperform from here will need to be efficient, responsive and trusted. In a more competitive, more transparent and more regulated market, those are the traits that will endure.
Partnership enables financial institutions to expand faster into new markets with automated, consistent and compliant localisation workflows
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Plumery, the digital banking development platform, and Lokalise, a leading platform for continuous localisation have joined forces to embed enterprise-grade localisation functionality, including translation and market adaptation, directly into digital banking experiences. This will enable financial institutions to deliver hyper-localised experiences at scale. Improving accessibility, engagement, compliance and customer satisfaction.
Today, financial institutions increasingly compete on experience, speed, and accessibility. Global banking customers now consider native language support a baseline expectation. This makes it essential for institutions to adopt a multilingual-by-design approach.
Plumery combines developer-friendly, customer-centric digital banking platform with Lokalise’s best-in-class localisation infrastructure. Together, their AI orchestration will help financial institutions expand their customer base. This can be done in a scalable way by launching and updating multilingual journeys faster, with full control and compliance.
Modern Digital Banking
The partnership also removes one of the biggest blockers to delivering modern digital banking. Financial institutions can now deliver high-quality localised digital banking experiences. Moreover, at a fraction of the cost and time, across all channels, without engineering bottlenecks. This reduces operational overhead, speeds up market entry, improves compliance with language- and accessibility-related regulations. All of which delivers a better, more inclusive customer experience. Financial institutions can move faster without increasing operational risk.
“Localisation is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s essential for delivering truly inclusive and personalised banking experiences. Partnering with Lokalise allows us to bring world-class localisation into every digital journey our clients build on Plumery. Together, we’re helping financial institutions launch faster, scale globally, and meet the expectations of modern customers who want banking in their own language, context and culture.”
Danielle Cohen, Head of Product at Plumery
“This partnership is a game-changer for financial institutions looking to scale globally with confidence. By embedding AI orchestration and continuous localisation directly into the Plumery platform, we are empowering customers to easily launch and update multilingual services at a fraction of the cost, ensuring consistent, compliant, and local experiences that accelerate market expansion and drive rapid customer growth.”
Etgar Bonar, CMO at Lokalise
The partnership is live across all markets Plumery and Lokalise serve, with the first mutual deployments already underway.
About Lokalise
Lokalise is the most intuitive and powerful AI localisation platform, trusted and loved by 3,000+ global companies to deliver high-quality human-level translations at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, with advanced AI orchestration, 60+ deep integrations and world-class support, it is built to automate, collaborate, and scale growth while maintaining full brand and regulatory control.
About Plumery
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Plumery’s mission is to empower financial institutions worldwide, regardless of size, to craft distinctive, contemporary, and customer-centric mobile and web experiences.
Plumery operates with a diverse team that embodies a unique combination of seasoned expertise and vibrant innovation. This blend has been cultivated through years of experience at start-ups, scale-ups, and established financial institutions, and most notably at globally leading financial technology companies, where they were instrumental in creating disruptive digital banking solutions and platforms that now serve 300+ banks globally.
Plumery’s Digital Success Fabric platform provides banks with the foundation for success beyond fast-time-to-market by expediting the development of their digital front ends while significantly cutting costs compared to in-house initiatives or solutions with high total cost of ownership (TCO).
Dr Antoni Vidiella, CSO of Financial Services at Globant, on why the next stage of AI in financial services depends on modernising the legacy systems that still underpin banking and FinTech
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Many financial service institutions are now moving beyond simple automation and exploring how to embed artificial intelligence across every layer of their operations, from payments and compliance to customer engagement. As banks and FinTechs continue this shift, the sector is entering a new phase in which real-time intelligence, connected data and adaptive systems will define competitiveness.
Yet unlocking this value requires far more than the introduction of new AI tools. To turn data into meaningful business intelligence and to enable new growth models in digital finance, financial institutions must modernise the systems at their core. Without strong foundations, AI cannot scale effectively or operate in a responsible, transparent or secure way. The potential may be vast, but the path to achieving it begins with the fundamentals.
The Challenge of Legacy Systems
Like many other industries, financial institutions still rely on architectures that were built decades ago. These systems continue to support essential functions such as payment processing and risk modelling, yet their rigidity and fragmentation severely limit the potential of AI. Information remains scattered across mainframes, cloud platforms and on-premises databases. As a result, the data required to train and operate modern AI systems is often incomplete, inconsistent or inaccessible in real time.
This fragmentation reflects a deeper structural issue. Many core banking systems were designed around periodic or batch processing. Fraud detection, credit assessment and compliance monitoring therefore remain reactive, even as customer expectations shift toward instantaneous experiences. The consequence is a widening gap between what AI can theoretically deliver and what institutions can achieve with the infrastructure they currently have.
The scale of adoption shows how urgent this challenge has become. A 2024 study by the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority found that 75 percent of UK financial services firms already use AI, with a further 10 percent planning adoption within the next three years. Yet research in 2025 by Lloyds Banking Group indicates that while institutions are beginning to see gains in productivity and customer experience, many acknowledge that their underlying systems are not ready for the next stage of AI maturity. The ambition is there, but the technical foundations remain uneven.
Modernisation as the Foundation for Scalable, Trustworthy AI
Modernisation represents the most significant step institutions can take to prepare for the intelligent financial systems of the future. Moving to cloud-native architectures, adopting microservices and improving data quality all make it possible to activate AI across an organisation rather than in isolated pilots. These shifts also make the resulting systems more secure, more transparent and easier to govern.
Importantly, modernisation is no longer the slow, resource-intensive process it once was. AI-assisted approaches have transformed what is possible. Automated code analysis, conversion and validation can reduce modernisation timelines dramatically. In one example, more than 11,000 lines of legacy COBOL code were migrated to modern Java services in only 105 hours, a task that would traditionally have taken several months. These advances illustrate how quickly institutions can begin creating the environments required for real-time intelligence.
The global opportunity reinforces the need for speed. AI adoption in banking is accelerating rapidly, with institutions racing to modernise their systems and unlock new operational efficiencies. Those that move first will capture the earliest benefits and operate with a level of agility that older architectures simply cannot match.
How Intelligence is Reshaping Payments and Embedded Finance
Payments provide a clear view of how AI is transforming the financial landscape. As digital transactions grow in both scale and complexity, the industry needs systems that can act instantly and intelligently. AI models can analyse behavioural patterns in real time, reducing false positives in fraud detection and strengthening overall resilience. They can also optimise transaction routing, identifying the most efficient or cost-effective paths in ways legacy systems are not equipped to handle.
These shifts extend beyond payments. Embedded finance is becoming a central feature of retail, mobility, insurance and platform-based services. As the ecosystem expands, it will rely heavily on AI to offer tailored credit decisions, contextual payments and adaptive insurance coverage. These capabilities require unified, real-time data environments that can only be delivered through modernised core systems. Without this foundation, the benefits of intelligent payments remain out of reach.
The Essential Role of Responsible Innovation
As AI takes on a larger role in high-impact financial decisions, responsible innovation becomes a defining priority. Trust must be maintained at every stage of the customer journey. Findings from the Bank of England and the FCA show that 55 percent of AI systems in UK finance involve some form of automated decision-making, though very few operate without human oversight. This balance reflects a clear need for systems that are transparent, explainable and accountable.
Responsible AI requires more than good intentions. It depends on strong governance frameworks, rigorous monitoring for bias and clear visibility into how decisions are made. It also relies on consistent, well-managed data. Modern cloud-enabled infrastructures make these practices more achievable, allowing institutions to meet regulatory expectations while building customer confidence. Legacy systems, by contrast, make responsible innovation significantly harder to sustain because they lack the transparency and control required for effective oversight.
How GenAI is Reshaping Operations and Customer Experience
Generative AI expands the possibilities for transformation even further. In customer engagement, GenAI enables natural, personalised interactions that respond to customer needs in real time. It can simplify onboarding, deliver proactive financial insights and support customers throughout complex journeys without compromising clarity or accuracy.
Within operations, GenAI reduces the administrative burden that regulatory compliance often creates. It can summarise complex legislation, draft documentation and support audit processes far more efficiently than manual methods. In product development, it helps institutions test new ideas, model risk scenarios and understand customer behaviour more quickly, reducing time to market and increasing innovation capacity.
However, all these capabilities rely on a consistent and reliable data environment. GenAI cannot deliver meaningful insights if the data underpinning it remains fragmented or outdated. The quality of the output will always reflect the quality of the foundations beneath it.
Building a Resilient Path to Long-Term Innovation
Modernisation is frequently described as a technical necessity, yet its impact is far more strategic. Institutions that invest now will be better equipped to integrate new technologies, respond to regulatory changes and develop AI-enabled products with greater precision. They will also be better positioned to enhance the customer experience, which increasingly depends on real-time intelligence and personalised insight.
Most importantly, modernisation elevates human expertise rather than replacing it. AI supports judgement, strengthens decision-making and frees teams from manual tasks, allowing them to focus on the relationship-building and strategic insight that define successful financial services.
Creating the Intelligent Financial Institution of the Future
Financial services are entering a new era shaped by real-time intelligence, interconnected digital journeys and deeply personalised experiences. Achieving this vision requires modern, resilient systems that can support advanced AI and GenAI. Institutions that begin modernising now will lead the next decade of innovation and create financial ecosystems that are more adaptive, more secure and more connected than ever before. The future is intelligent, but it can only be built on strong foundations.
Richard Wood, Head of Europe – FI & NBFI at PagoNxt Payments, on the rise of embedded insurance
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As 2026 kicks off executives will once again be asked what moving, what’s shaking, and what will fade away in insurance. But what’s changing fastest in insurance isn’t the product itself, but when, where and how policies are sold. Thanks to the rise of Embedded Insurance, this is now happening at the exact moment a customer commits to a purchase. In its simplest definition, Embedded Insurance combines coverage or protections within the purchase of a product or a service itself, offered in real-time at the point of sale.
This distribution model offers enormous potential. According to McKinsey, by 2030 around 25% of all personal lines premiums could be purchased via embedded propositions, representing over $700 billion in gross written premiums in property and casualty alone (Source: McKinsey, via Deloitte). Consumers are drawn towards comprehensive, connected solutions rather than standalone products, and it’s this that is making Embedded Insurance such a hot topic in the industry. For perhaps the first time in its history, protection is genuinely being matched with real-world behaviour
Simply by making coverage easier to purchase, Embedded Insurance is likely to play a key role in helping to close the global insurance protection gap (the gap between economic losses and those that are insured), which has widened over recent years (Source: Swiss Re Group). Equally, traditional insurance has failed to win over younger generations (Source: LIMRA), with many citing a perceived cost, lack of clarity and distrust as reasons they’re not buying. Without reinvention, the insurance industry risks a dramatic contraction from missing out on an entire generation.
Why Partnerships are Key to Success
To make purchasing a new policy as convenient and seamless as possible, partnerships that blend platforms, insurers, and service providers into cohesive ecosystems are essential. By definition, no single organisation can control the full journey. Insurers don’t own the digital moments where customers make decisions. Platforms can surface offers at scale, but need regulated partners they can trust.
Partnerships reshape the economics of insurance. Embedded channels reduce acquisition costs, open new demographics – particularly younger, underinsured consumers – and create conditions for personalised pricing based on real behaviour, not broad assumptions.
The payment is where any buyer’s intent is clearest, context is richest, and risk is most visible. Insurers can’t reach that moment alone, and platforms can’t underwrite it. Payments providers are the connective tissue. For merchants, payments are where the relationship is strongest. Surface the right protection there and it doesn’t feel like an upsell. Instead, it builds trust, supports conversion, and gives retailers something competitors can’t easily replicate.
What separates a great payments partner from an average one is the ability to bring clarity, compliance and context to the transaction. That means handling customer authentication cleanly, settling funds quickly and maintaining resilient infrastructure that can cope with real-time flows. It also means surfacing protection responsibly, with transparent consent that removes the ambiguity that deters younger generations.
Payments partners able to offer real-time validation, cross-border settlement support, and reliable fraud-screening at scale become central to delivering embedded protection that actually works.
Where Payment-Led Ecosystems will Go Next
The next phase will see protection woven even deeper into payments infrastructure. Transaction-level insight will enable personalised cover bundles. Cross-border settlement will remove friction from claims in travel and logistics. Real-time rails, meanwhile, will make instant payouts a norm. SEPA Instant will only accelerate this shift. As near-instant euro transfers become standard across Europe, the expectation for equally instant premium collection and claims payment will rise, pushing Embedded Insurance even closer to the transaction.
Regulators will pay close attention, as they should. Strong governance, transparent consent and clear communication must underpin every embedded journey. Regulation such as PSD2 and the newer DORA framework underline that operational resilience must be designed into every API call, every authorisation step, and every embedded offer.
As momentum gains, the payment process will be where trust, timing and technology converge. Overtime, protection will be seamless and efficient, but this will not happen in isolation. The next leap forward demands insurance ecosystems are built around the payment itself. This is exactly where insurers, platforms and payment providers will combine their strengths to offer protection that is timely, contextual and genuinely useful.
Radi El Haj, CEO of global payments technology leader RS2, argues that while cost-cutting is important, banks are overlooking AI’s biggest opportunity: fuelling growth through hyper-personalisation, predictive analytics, and dynamic pricing, all while staying on the right side of compliance
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In banking, artificial intelligence (AI) is often portrayed as an efficiency force-multiplier: automating back-office tasks, detecting fraud, reducing cost. Yet the bigger prize is less about cost and more about growth: unlocking new revenue streams through data monetisation, hyper-personalisation and dynamic pricing. At RS2, a platform that powers issuing and acquiring across banks and enterprises globally, we see how these possibilities can move from concept to profitable reality.
Unlocking Transactional Data for Revenue
Banks sit on rich transactional data – what customers buy, how they spend, when they engage. Historically, this data has helped reduce risk, fight money-laundering or optimise operations. But now it can be used to drive growth. According to an EY overview, AI-powered tools enable banks to personalise services, identify cross-sell opportunities and “potentially boost revenue streams.”
Consider a bank that analyses a customer’s payment behaviour, identifies recurring patterns (e.g., frequent travel, high hotel spend) and then offers a tailored premium travel card or concierge-style value add. Or a commercial bank that segments SMEs by payment volume and cash-flow profile and monetises by offering dynamic pricing on foreign exchange or supply-chain financing.
Responsible monetisation demands governance. A recent essay on monetising financial data with AI warns that “you’re sitting on a goldmine of data … but the major caveat is the need to manage risk”. The practical implication: invest in data-quality, maintain strict consent and usage controls, disaggregate personally identifying detail where possible and ensure transparency with customers. As banks move from “can we do this?” to “should we do this?”, the ones that succeed will embed data ethics, consent frameworks and explainability at the core.
Compliance and Innovation: Building Self-Hosted AI Frameworks
Growth-facing AI can’t sail past compliance. Banks need to remain within the bounds of regulatory regimes such as GDPR, PSD2 and CCPA. A key enabler is self-hosted or controlled AI infrastructure that allows experimentation without exposing sensitive data to third-party cloud vendors or uncontrolled derivative uses.
In the UK, the Bank of England notes that the future of AI in financial services demands both innovation and safety – building internal capabilities while contributing to systemic resilience. For banks this means: maintain internal model-hosting (or tightly controlled cloud with data isolation), build a “sandbox to production” pipeline where models are validated for bias, fairness and explainability, and treat regulatory engagement not as a blocker but as a design parameter.
With this architecture in place, banks can push beyond the cost-centre mindset (fraud detection, operations) into growth-mindset use-cases – real-time decisioning, dynamic pricing, micro-segment product design – all while retaining control over data flows, vendor risk and audit trails.
Explainable AI: Trust at the Front-Line
If AI is going to power new revenue models – dynamic offers, predictive cross-sell, hyper-personalised pricing – then customers and regulators alike must trust the outcomes. Enter explainable AI (XAI).
Explainability isn’t a nice add-on: it’s mandatory when AI touches decisioning that affects consumers (pricing, credit, product eligibility). If a customer is offered a differential rate based on their profile, they are entitled to know (in clear language) why. If a regulator challenges the fairness of an algorithmic decision, the bank must show the decision-tree, the bias mitigation steps and the audit trail of model monitoring.
As banks deploy AI in growth-facing scenarios, transparency becomes a strategic differentiator: one bank may claim to offer “smarter offers” – another will be able to document that those offers are fair, auditable and compliant. That traceability becomes a selling point when partnering with fintechs, regulators or corporate clients.
Lessons from Leading Banks: Growth-Not Just Cost-Cutting
While many banks still emphasise cost-cutting, the story is shifting. For instance, research from FIS shows that banks with a strong data strategy are tying AI investments to revenue outcomes, not just automation.
In practice, a global bank uses AI-driven cash-flow tools for corporate clients and is now preparing to monetise the service rather than treat it purely as a cost centre. Another major institution, NatWest, has embedded AI in its digital-assistant ecosystem and already reports improved customer engagement metrics and lower servicing costs.
From the experience at RS2, we see banks and FinTechs that pay attention to platform architecture, data lineage and flexible monetisation workflows succeed faster. The value flows not from a single “AI project” but from embedding AI into the payment rails, product lifecycle, pricing engine and loyalty ecosystem.
It is noteworthy that banks are not alone here: payments-technology providers like RS2 are collaborating with financial institutions to integrate AI into issuing and acquiring flows, offering a way to turn payments data into behavioural insight, and knowledge into value-added services.
Bringing it Together
For banks, the dominant mindset should shift from “AI as efficiency tool” to “AI as growth platform”. That transition requires three foundational capabilities: a clean, consent-driven data ecosystem; an AI infrastructure that balances innovation and control; and an organisational discipline around explainability, governance and monetisation strategy.
At RS2 we believe that the combination of payments technology, platform mindset and global scale gives us a front-row seat to this shift. The banks that lead in the next five years will be those that embed AI not in margins but in revenue lines – crafting new products, offering dynamic pricing, delivering real-time personalisation and monetising payments data in a responsible manner.
The future isn’t about AI simply making existing processes cheaper; it is about re-working how banks generate value. If your AI agenda stops at cost-cutting, you’re leaving the biggest opportunities on the table.
About RS2
RS2 is a leading global provider of payment technology solutions and processing services, offering a unified approach to managing payments across all channels for banks, integrated software vendors, payment facilitators, independent sales organizations, payment service providers, and businesses worldwide. RS2’s platform stands out as a robust cloud-native solution designed for both issuing and acquiring operations. With its advanced orchestration layer seamlessly integrating all aspects of business operations, clients gain access to comprehensive analytics, reporting tools, and reconciliation features. This empowers businesses to effortlessly expand their global footprint through a single integration, while also gaining valuable insights into payment processes and customer behavior, enhancing operational efficiency, increasing conversion rates, and driving profitability.
Marcin Glogowski, SVP Managing Director for Europe and UK CEO at Marqeta, on empowering businesses in the UK
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FinTechs have long supported consumers, with the modern iteration of consumer innovations beginning in the UK in the early 2000s with the launch of the Faster Payments network in 2005. The first peer-to-peer lending platform started in the same year. And in 2007, the UK became one of the first markets to introduce contactless cards. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) lending and payment innovation has paled in comparison.
SMBs are the backbone of the UK economy, generating an impressive£2.8 trillion in revenue every year. Yet despite their critical role, they remain underserved when it comes to financial support.Only £62.1 billion in business loans were issued in the past year (45 times less than SMBs contribute to annual revenue) highlighting just how difficult it can be for SMBs to access the funding they need to grow. This funding gap limits not only individual businesses but also the wider economy that depends on their success.
While FinTechs have poured innovation into consumer products, revolutionising everything from budgeting apps to buy now, pay later (BNPL), SMBs have largely been left behind. This is despite the fact that SMB lending represents one of the fastest growing opportunities for financial organisations.
A report earlier this year by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) highlights that we are on the cusp of a revolution not dissimilar to the one seen decades ago in mortgages, with technological advancements playing a key role. The demand for more efficient payments, smarter cashflow tools and flexible funding solutions is accelerating. Yet many businesses still find themselves navigating outdated systems and slow, manual processes.
The issue is not that SMBs do not see the value in modern financial tools. In fact, they are ready to invest. According to our recent Marqeta 2025 State of Payments report 90% of UK SMBs surveyed said they would pay higher upfront costs for tools that deliver long-term savings and efficiency. What SMBs really want is simplicity, speed and control. They are not emotionally invested in payments themselves – they are invested in running their businesses as efficiently as possible.
A striking finding from the Marqeta report reveals that nearly half (42%) of UK SMB owners still use personal cards to fund business expenses, citing higher credit limits and better rewards as the motivator behind this practice. This reveals an opening for payment solutions to meet businesses with credit solutions that are tailored and personalised to their specific requirements. Smart, data-driven underwriting models that look beyond traditional credit scores and reward businesses.
The SMB Payments Frontier
FinTechs have made great strides in improving financial experiences for individuals, but in doing so, may have missed the mark when it comes to understanding the unique needs of business owners. For SMBs, payments are not just a transaction.
As Marqeta’s findings highlight, UK SMBs increasingly view payment tools as strategic assets rather than mere utilities. From social commerce trends to rewards programs and digital asset management, businesses are seeking solutions that actively contribute to the growth and efficiency of their organisations. Payment providers that offer real-time, flexible tools that reward customers for their engagement are best positioned to capture this rising demand and untapped potential.
Payments are the lifeblood of their operations, tied to cashflow, customer experience and long-term growth, with 52% of UK SMBs surveyed, as part of the State of Payment report, viewing payments as a tactical lever helping them streamline expenses, boost operational efficiencies, and free up cash flow. When payments work seamlessly, business owners can focus their energy where it matters most, serving their customers and growing their businesses.
Beyond payments alone, SMBs are looking for platforms that provide actionable insights and preventative measures that pre-empt major issues. Solutions that anticipate cashflow gaps, suggest repayment plans and automatically identify funding opportunities. The shift from reactive to proactive financial management offers SMBs a market advantage and, critically, represents a new dawn for how fintechs can support their growth.
Connecting the Dots
That is why bridging the gap between payments and funding represents such a powerful opportunity. Embedded Finance is already starting to move the needle, allowing SMBs to access credit directly through their payment platforms. This integration can transform payments from a passive process into an active growth driver. Imagine a world where a business processing card payments automatically receives insights into cashflow, credit opportunities or flexible repayment options tailored to its transaction history.
By combining real-time payment data with intelligent lending models, FinTechs can deliver funding at the point of need, not through laborious processes that may take weeks or months later. This kind of agility can make the difference between a business thriving or merely surviving. It also fosters financial resilience and trust, helping SMBs weather economic fluctuations with greater confidence in their suppliers and improved control.
Too often, the financial world can feel overly complex and fragmented for small businesses. Many rely on multiple providers for banking, payments, invoicing and credit, creating a patchwork of tools that rarely communicate effectively. Fintechs now have the opportunity to simplify this landscape by creating connected ecosystems that serve SMBs holistically. The future lies in frictionless experiences that combine payments, insights and lending under one roof.
Riding the Payments Wave
For FinTechs, the message is clear. The next wave of financial innovation will be about empowering the businesses that keep the UK economy moving. With the right approach, payment platforms can deliver more than convenience. They can provide SMBs with the confidence, agility and financial durability they need to thrive in an uncertain world.
As SMB payments take flight, the question is not whether the opportunity exists, but whether fintechs are ready to power the future and support businesses as they navigate the new payments frontier.
Berkley Egenes, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Xsolla, on the future of frictionless payments in gaming and why convenience is king
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From subscriptions to battle passes and in-game marketplaces, today’s video games are just as much about payments as they are about play. But with players now used to lightning-fast experiences, the way money moves in gaming is undergoing a dramatic shift. In this kind of space, one truth stands out: convenience is king.
In 2025, a slow or clunky payment experience can cost more than just a sale; it can cost a player. As global competition heats up, gaming companies are quickly realising the easier it is for someone to pay, the more likely they are to stay.
Players Expect More Than Just Good Gameplay
Video games have come a long way from cartridges and cash registers. With the rise of mobile gaming, free-to-play models, and digital-first ecosystems, the way people pay and what they pay for has changed completely.
But something else has changed, too: expectations. Players now want to make purchases without stopping the game. No long card forms, no redirects, no confusing fees. Just a quick tap, swipe, or confirmation, and they’re back in the action. It sounds simple, but delivering that kind of seamless experience is anything but.
It’s no longer just about offering the right content; it’s about removing every hurdle between a player and their purchase. Whether it’s a new skin, currency top-up, or unlocking extra content, the process has to feel natural, safe, and crucially, fast.
Speed, Security, and Staying Power
When payments work well, we barely notice them. However, when they don’t, they stand out for all the wrong reasons.
In gaming, timing is everything. A player sees an offer in the middle of a boss fight, and they want to buy. Yet if they’re forced to pause, enter details, confirm identities, or troubleshoot errors, the moment is lost. Consequently, the sale disappears, and the player might even give up altogether.
Security remains essential, of course. As digital fraud evolves, the challenge is building protections without creating extra friction. Gamers expect secure transactions, but they’re not willing to wait around for them.
This is where payments innovation is starting to shine. Tools like tokenised credentials, biometric authentication, and invisible fraud detection are helping strike that delicate balance between trust and convenience.
For game developers, reducing payment friction doesn’t just boost conversions; it also builds trust. A smooth first transaction can turn a casual user into a loyal player. It sets the tone for the entire relationship.
Why Global Games Need Local Solutions
Gaming is a global industry, but payments are still intensely local. What works for a player in California might not suit someone in Cairo or Jakarta, and this is where games can stumble.
Enter Xsolla, a game commerce company that’s quietly powering payment backbones of some of the biggest games worldwide. Xsolla has only one goal: to make it easy for players to pay for the games they love, wherever they are.
Xsolla supports 1000+ local payment methods across more than 200 countries and geographies, from mobile wallets in Southeast Asia to cash-based options in Latin America. This means players can use the payment tools they already trust, without currency confusion, hidden fees, or extra friction.
For developers, it’s a game-changer. Xsolla handles regional taxes, compliance, and localization, making global reach feel simple. The result is that more players complete purchases, higher conversion rates, and greater long-term retention.
In a global gaming world, going local is no longer optional – it’s essential.
Embedded Payments are the New Normal
Imagine spotting a new item in a game and buying it instantly, without ever leaving the screen. No redirects, no passwords, no second devices, just one click and it’s yours. This is the point of embedded payments, and it’s quickly becoming the gold standard.
Rather than treating payments as something which only happens outside the game, developers are increasingly building them right into the experience. Whether that’s a virtual wallet, an in-game currency, or a checkout button inside the character menu, the goal is still the same: to make the payment feel like part of the gameplay.
It’s not just about a better experience for players; it also unlocks new possibilities for game economies. Players can trade items, gift content, or top up in real time, without ever breaking immersion.
Even more complex technologies like blockchain and NFTs are starting to be embedded in this way. Platforms like Immutable, for example, are working to make digital asset ownership feel as simple as buying a power-up, no crypto know-how required.
Web Shops: Gaming’s Direct Line to Players
A growing number of game publishers are launching web shops – standalone sites where players can buy in-game currency, cosmetics, or exclusive offers directly, outside traditional app or platform stores.
Why? It’s partly about revenue. Many major platforms can charge up to 30% in fees, but developers can offer better prices and keep more of the profits.
It’s also about control. Web shops allow for tailored promotions, local pricing, loyalty rewards, and a wider choice of payment methods – all without platform restrictions. But the experience still matters: web shops must be fast, secure, and mobile-friendly to meet modern expectations.
As regulations evolve, expect web shops to become a key part of the payment strategy – quietly reshaping how games are monetized beyond the app store.
The Future of Payments
Gaming is no longer just about graphics, storylines, or even community. It’s also about experience and that includes how players pay. Get the payment experience right, and you gain more than just revenue. You gain loyalty, trust, and longevity. Get it wrong and players won’t wait around for you to fix it.
Convenience isn’t just king, it’s the kingdom. In gaming, it might just be the most powerful weapon of all.
Peter Daunton, Chief Product Officer at Sokin, on why embedded B2B banking has flown under the radar and why that’s about to change
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CFOs are discovering that embedded finance isn’t a feature upgrade, it’s an economic engine. The companies embedding payments, foreign exchange, and financial operations into their platforms aren’t just smoothing workflows. They’re turning cost centres into direct revenue sources. In B2B, where transaction volumes and values dwarf consumer markets, the opportunity is measured in basis points that add up to millions.
The Fragmented Finance Problem
Modern B2B commerce runs on surprisingly fragmented financial infrastructure. A typical platform operator juggles multiple payment processors, separate FX providers, standalone reconciliation tools, and disconnected reporting systems. Each integration point adds cost in vendor fees, manual processing, and error correction. More critically, fragmentation destroys visibility. When financial data lives across siloed systems, CFOs can’t see real-time transaction flows. It’s tough to understand true unit economics, or identify margin leakage until month-end reports surface it.
This complexity has historically been dismissed as “the cost of doing business.” But as platforms have matured and competitive pressure has intensified, CFOs are asking harder questions. Why are we paying multiple vendors to move the same money? Why does reconciliation require a team of three people? And most pointedly: Why are we treating financial flows as overhead when they could be revenue?
Automation Unlocks the Business Case
Embedding financial capabilities consolidates fragmented workflows into a single operational layer. The immediate benefit of this is cost reduction. Platforms replacing point solutions with embedded infrastructure typically see reductions in vendor fees. Furthermore, automation of reconciliation and reporting can eliminate entire FTE allocations. Transaction error rates drop dramatically when money movement, FX conversion, and ledger updates happen in a single system rather than requiring manual data shuttling between platforms.
But cost savings, while compelling, are just the entry point. The strategic opportunity emerges when platforms recognise they’re not just using financial infrastructure, they’re controlling it. And control of financial rails means control of monetisation.
From Cost Reduction to Revenue Generation
When a B2B platform embeds payment processing, cross-border transfers, or working capital financing, something fundamental shifts: financial operations become a P&L line. The platform captures value at every transaction touchpoint.
Payment acceptance generates processing margin, business cards generate interchange, foreign exchange generates spread; all direct revenue that previously went to external processors.
Beyond transaction fees, embedded finance enables new revenue models. Float on customer balances generates interest income. Automated reconciliation and real-time reporting become premium features. Transaction data – properly anonymised and aggregated – provides market intelligence that’s monetisable through analytics products. Platforms with deep payment data can even offer embedded lending, using transaction history as underwriting data to extend working capital financing at attractive rates.
Why CFOs are Driving the Conversation
This economic reality explains why embedded finance discussions have migrated from IT roadmaps to boardroom strategy sessions. CFOs evaluating these integrations aren’t asking “does this improve user experience?”, though it does. They’re asking: “What’s the payback period? How much revenue per transaction? What’s the impact on unit economics?”
The answers are increasingly favourable. Embedded finance implementations in B2B typically show ROI within 18-24 months, faster than most enterprise software deployments and with better margin profiles. For high-volume platforms, payback can be measured in quarters.
More strategically, CFOs recognise that embedded finance fundamentally changes competitive positioning. A platform that can offer seamless cross-border payments, instant settlement, and integrated reconciliation isn’t just improving automation for the business, it’s also driving more predictable cash flow on repayments for suppliers or enabling market leading payment terms to customers. And in B2B markets where customer acquisition costs are high and sales cycles are long, retention economics matter enormously.
The Infrastructure Question
None of this works if the underlying infrastructure is fragile. B2B transactions involve larger values, more complex approval workflows, and stringent regulatory requirements. Platforms can’t afford the checkout failures or compliance gaps that might be tolerable in consumer contexts.
This is why successful B2B embedded finance implementations treat infrastructure as a first-order concern, not an afterthought. They’re built on banking-grade rails with redundancy, real-time monitoring, and automated compliance checks. When a $2M cross-border payment needs to clear in 24 hours across multiple regulatory jurisdictions, the system either works flawlessly or it destroys customer trust.
The platforms winning in embedded B2B finance understand this. They’re not bolting payments onto existing workflows, they’re architecting financial operations as core platform capabilities, with the reliability and visibility their customers’ CFOs demand.
The Strategic Imperative
Embedded finance in B2B has moved beyond experimentation. The unit economics are proven, the technology has matured, and customer expectations have shifted. Businesses that treat financial capabilities as strategic infrastructure rather than vendor-managed utilities are seeing both cost structures and revenue models transform.
For CFOs, the question is no longer whether to embed finance, it’s how quickly they can make it a profit centre.
Lyall Cresswell, Founder & CEO, TEG on how integrated payments are unlocking growth for SMEs in the UK’s £170bn transport and logistics sector
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Consumer fintech is booming. From instant payments to embedded finance, digital innovation has transformed how individuals manage money, access credit, and transact with businesses. Yet in B2B markets, embedded finance adoption remains stubbornly low. The question is: why?
Instant settlement alone doesn’t solve this problem. But when combined with embedded compliance it transforms how fragmented B2B markets operate. This infrastructure enables large enterprises to scale their supplier bases from dozens to thousands while giving SME carriers immediate access to working capital, all without personal financial risk.
The answer becomes clear when you examine the UK’s £170 billion logistics sector. Employing over 8% of the workforce, it’s a low margin industry ripe for financial innovation, but in reality, highly fragmented with many SME operators. Large operators at the top of the supply chain are simply unable to verify, onboard and manage large networks of suppliers through traditional methods. This creates delays and friction. I’ve watched this dynamic play out over 25 years building TEG. Smaller operators tell us the same story: ‘I need money now, not next month’. Cash flow isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s existential.
The barrier isn’t payment speed alone. It’s trust at scale. Integrated payment networks, combining instant settlement with embedded compliance and verification, create the infrastructure that enables these fragmented markets to operate differently.
Why Embedded Compliance is the Missing Link for B2B FinTech
Large enterprises don’t limit themselves to a small pool of known suppliers by choice. They do so because onboarding and compliance costs make broader collaboration prohibitively expensive. Each new supplier relationship requires verification of insurance, licensing, VAT status, and payment setup. This friction doesn’t just slow things down, it fundamentally constrains supply chains.
Recent research we conducted across six leading UK third party logistics providers (3PLs) revealed the scale of this challenge: 83% audit fewer than 10% of their subcontractors annually, and only 33% use eSourcing technology. These aren’t signs of negligence. They’re symptoms of a system where verification and onboarding are simply too resource intensive to scale.
Traditional payment solutions, from early payment programmes to invoice finance, address cash flow symptoms but miss the fundamental barrier. Without infrastructure to verify and onboard new trading partners confidently, enterprises remain trapped working with familiar suppliers even when capacity constraints or cost pressures demand alternatives. Meanwhile, SME carriers aren’t just delayed in payment, they’re excluded from opportunities entirely.
This dynamic turns large enterprises into inadvertent gatekeepers, not by choice, but because they lack the infrastructure to safely open their networks. The result is a continuous loop: constrained supplier choice for buyers, limited market access for SMEs, and a fragmented sector unable to collaborate efficiently. The solution requires rethinking the relationship between payments and compliance entirely. Integrated payment networks, embedding compliance verification directly into payment workflows, solve both problems simultaneously.
Building Trust Infrastructure Through Verified Payment Networks
The breakthrough comes when payment infrastructure and compliance verification integrate seamlessly. At TEG, we’ve built this through SmartPay’s integration with Trustd, our digital identity verification platform, embedding compliance directly into payment workflows.
The model is straightforward: carriers are verified once through real time checks of KYC, AML, VAT status, operating licences, and insurance credentials. Once verified, they can transact across the entire network. This “verify once, transact everywhere” approach removes the need for repeated onboarding across different customers or business units.
The operational impact has been significant: 90% faster invoice processing, 80% fewer supplier queries, with over 1 million invoices paid through the platform in 2025. By year end, the TEG rollout will connect 2,500 customers with 7,500 suppliers, demonstrating adoption at scale across the logistics sector.
But the real transformation lies in shifting from credit based to transaction based finance models. Many carriers have historically relied on credit cards and overdrafts to bridge cash flow gaps, costly stopgaps that eat into already thin margins. Traditional invoice finance excludes many SMEs because lenders must manage risk without transparency, often retaining portions of invoice value and demanding personal guarantees.
SmartPay changes this by leveraging verified transaction data to provide instant, non recourse access to full invoice value minus fees. No retention, no personal guarantees, simply immediate working capital based on actual trading activity. This unlocks early payment facilities for carriers who previously had no alternative to expensive short term credit.
This creates powerful network effects. As more carriers join the verified payment network, enterprises gain confidence to work with a broader supplier base. More suppliers mean better capacity, more competitive pricing, and greater resilience. For SME carriers, verified status opens doors to opportunities previously out of reach.
Verification Infrastructure and Working Capital Access
It’s crucial to understand that verified payment networks operate on two distinct but complementary tracks.
Unlocking working capital addresses the SME challenge. In a sector where margins run as low as 2% and payment cycles stretch to 90 days, liquidity is existential. Without working capital, SMEs can’t hire staff, expand capacity, or invest in growth. They’re forced to choose clients based on payment terms rather than strategic fit.
Instant settlement delivers immediate access to working capital for wages, fuel, and expansion. The UK Small Business Plan identifies late payments as one of the biggest barriers to SME growth—instant settlement directly addresses this constraint, enabling carriers to accept larger contracts and scale their operations.
These two tracks reinforce each other. Enterprises gain access to a larger, verified supplier base. SMEs gain both market access and the working capital to serve those opportunities effectively. The result is a more efficient, collaborative market structure.
The Fragmented Market Opportunity
While logistics provides the proving ground, this model applies to any fragmented B2B sector where compliance complexity limits collaboration. Construction, facilities management, and professional services all face similar dynamics: thin margins, extended payment terms, high onboarding friction, and SME suppliers excluded from opportunities.
The key requirement is neutral, collaborative infrastructure that provides a standardised verification model without competing with participants. In sectors where supplier qualification is straightforward, instant payment alone may suffice. But in regulated industries with complex credentialing requirements, verified payment networks become essential infrastructure.
The value isn’t in handling compliance alone. It’s in creating a trusted, shared layer that all participants can use without concern that the platform itself will compete with them.
The transformation only occurs when you solve both problems simultaneously: enterprises need neutral, trusted verification infrastructure to expand their networks confidently, and SMEs need instant settlement to operate sustainably within those networks. In fragmented markets where no single player can create industry wide standards, this shared infrastructure becomes essential. Address one without the other, and you’ve solved neither.
Trusted Collaboration at Scale
The narrative around embedded B2B finance needs reframing. It’s not about faster payments. It’s about removing the friction that prevents enterprises and suppliers from working together effectively—it’s about enabling trusted collaboration at scale. True transformation happens when payment infrastructure, compliance verification, and transaction transparency operate seamlessly together to unlock cash flow and expand market access for both sides.
Across TEG’s network of over 9,000 logistics businesses, we’ve seen how verified payment networks can reshape fragmented markets. Large enterprises can finally collaborate with the breadth of suppliers their operations demand. SME carriers can access opportunities and capital previously out of reach. The entire sector operates more efficiently.
This is the path to unlocking B2B embedded finance adoption: build infrastructure that solves the whole problem. Verify once, transact everywhere, and unlock cashflow. When enterprises can open their networks confidently and SMEs can operate sustainably within them, you create the conditions for genuine market transformation.
The technology exists. The business case is proven. We’ve demonstrated it works at scale. The question now is which sectors will move first to build the trust infrastructure their markets desperately need.
Alex Mifsud, CEO and co-founder of Weavr.io, on how embedded finance is the perfect solution for employee retention
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To earn loyalty, stop making your team act like the company’s lender. In the war for talent, few things corrode trust faster than asking employees to bankroll the business they work for. Across the UK and Europe, 42 percent of employees say waiting for expenses harms their financial health, while 36 percent say it affects their mental wellbeing. Behind those percentages are real frustrations: professionals dipping into overdrafts to cover hotel bills, freelancers waiting weeks for per diems that never quite arrive, and finance teams juggling hundreds of delayed claims.
In Twisted Sifter recently, one worker described waiting a month for reimbursement of a modest $268 business expense – only to receive $84 and “lose all motivation to go the extra mile”. It’s a small story, but it captures a bigger truth: when employees feel the system works against them, they stop believing in the company that designed it.
The Retention Cost of Reimbursement
Most businesses don’t connect their expense process with employee retention, yet the link is clear. Work-related stress costs the UK economy £28 billion a year, largely through lost productivity and attrition. Meanwhile, research shows that happier employees drive better results: “Company profits are much higher – and turnover is much lower – when employees feel positive and supported”.
Reimbursement systems do the opposite. They impose a financial burden on staff, add administrative friction, and create daily reminders that the company’s systems aren’t designed around their needs. According to HR News, UK employees collectively front an estimated £51 billion a year in work-related expenses before being repaid.
The fallout is predictable: financial anxiety, or even just annoyance, leads to disengagement; disengagement leads to turnover. Replacing a skilled employee can cost up to 1.5 times their annual salary once hiring, onboarding and lost productivity are included. That’s a high price to pay for outdated workflows.
Where SaaS Platforms Meet the Problem
Many purpose-built expenses management SaaS platforms have closed the gap and now offer end-to-end expense experiences, but the opportunity extends far beyond the category itself. HR systems that handle onboarding and travel approvals, accounting platforms that oversee budgets, even workforce and travel platforms that coordinate trips all touch the same underlying workflow; employees spending on behalf of the business.
A common pattern still emerges when employees need to travel for work, for example. They request trip approvals in one tool, capture receipts in another, and submit claims through a third. Finance teams then reconcile spend manually. Even where processes are digital, they often live in separate tools; approvals in one place, receipt capture in another, reconciliation elsewhere.
This fragmentation limits what SaaS platforms can achieve. They automate forms and digitise reports, but the process still ends with an employee waiting for a reimbursement that shouldn’t exist. For product and strategy leaders, this is an opportunity hiding in plain sight: the chance to redesign expense workflows around real-time spending rather than post-hoc repayment.
Business Travel: The Perfect Illustration
Corporate travel exposes this inefficiency in its rawest form. Most travel platforms monetise only pre-trip spend – flights, hotels and transfers – leaving meals, taxis and incidentals out of their reach. Yet by 2027, global business travel spending is forecast to reach $1.8 trillion, with a significant share of that occurring during the trip itself.
It’s also where employees feel the pain most acutely. Travellers frequently use personal cards abroad, juggle currency conversions, photograph receipts on their phones, and then upload them into another system days later. Managers approve after the fact; finance reconciles even later. Three tools, three teams, one frustrated traveller.
Now imagine that flow redesigned. Pre-approved budgets are assigned before travel, spend happens seamlessly during the trip, and reconciliation is automatic. Employees never pay out of pocket. Finance teams see every transaction as it occurs. The SaaS platform at the centre of this becomes indispensable – not because it automates forms, but because it eliminates friction. For the traveller, it means simplicity. For finance, control. And for the platform, visibility into the full journey, richer data on spend patterns, and incremental revenue from card transactions that flow through its ecosystem.
The Art of The Possible
This isn’t about layering FinTech complexity onto software. It’s about simplifying the experience by unifying what should never have been separate: approval, payment and reconciliation. We’ve already seen how embedded finance reshapes customer experience in other industries – e-commerce, ride-hailing, even healthcare. The same logic applies here: when money moves at the speed of the workflow, satisfaction follows.
For SaaS platforms, the implication is profound. The closer a product gets to the flow of funds, the deeper its integration into the customer’s operations. That’s not just a revenue opportunity; it’s a retention strategy. Bain & Company describes embedded finance capabilities as “a way for software platforms to become systemically irreplaceable”. Expense management may be where that principle finds its purest expression. Few workflows touch as many people, as often, or with as much potential frustration. Fixing it is not just good UX; it’s good economics.
For SaaS leaders: A Reframing, Not a Roadmap
There’s no single architecture for the future of expenses. Each platform, whether in travel, HR or accounting, will interpret it differently. The point is to stop digitising the reimbursement process and start designing for prevention, where policy, payment and visibility converge. In practice, that means mapping friction, owning the journey, and measuring how faster, stress-free processes impact satisfaction and retention. When your platform participates directly in how money moves, your relationship with the customer becomes foundational, not functional. The art of the possible here isn’t about FinTech sophistication. It’s about empathy in design.
Retention and Reputation are Built, not Bought
Retention isn’t earned through perks or slogans; it’s built into experiences that show respect for people’s time and money. Expense reimbursement may seem trivial, but it’s a daily ritual that shapes how employees feel about their work, and how customers feel about the tools they use. A recent survey found that employees left out of pocket by slow expense reimbursements are significantly less likely to recommend their employer to job-seekers. That makes expense friction not only a retention issue, but a reputational one.
If the last decade of SaaS was about automating the back office, the next will be about humanising it. When expense workflows are rewired so that approval, payment and reconciliation flow as one, everyone gains: employees, employers and the platforms that serve them. Because when you stop making people act like the company’s lender, they start acting like its advocate.
Abdenour Bezzouh, Chief Technology Officer at myPOS on how AI is revolutionising FinTech from reactive to proactive solutions
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AI is significantly changing the way small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances. In the UK, the number of SMEs adopting AI tools has increased 32-fold between 2022 and 2024. Meanwhile, average spending on AI tools has risen nearly sixfold over the same period. Once seen purely as a tool for automation, AI now plays a much more proactive role. It helps businesses anticipate cash-flow gaps, prevent fraud, and deliver more personalised customer experiences.
As the technology becomes more embedded, one question looms large. How do we ensure that automation strengthens, rather than replaces, the human relationships at the core of financial services? The answer lies in designing AI to improve human decision-making. Forward-thinking FinTechs are leveraging AI to build trust, enable inclusion, and prevent issues before they ever reach the customer. This shift, from reactive problem-solving to proactive service delivery, represents one of the most significant evolutions in digital finance.
At myPOS, we’re focused on designing AI to augment human decision-making, enabling our teams to intervene where empathy, context, or judgement is needed. For example, our AI flags unusual transactions in real-time. But instead of automatically blocking them, it alerts our human teams, who can access the situation and act with the right context.
From Reactive to Proactive: The New Standard in Trust
For decades, financial services have operated reactively: a transaction failed, then a customer called; fraud occurred, then an investigation began. AI makes it possible to reverse that logic. By analysing transactions in real time, algorithms can detect unusual patterns that may signal fraud or technical disruptions. This alllows companies to act before the customer even notices a problem.
This proactive approach is becoming central to trust in the FinTech industry, both in the UK and globally. It prevents disruptions, reduces disputes, and allows businesses to run more smoothly. The same principle now applies to onboarding, where document verification and compliance checks that once took days can now be completed in minutes with AI-assisted tools. When technology removes unnecessary friction, users feel more confident that their financial services will ‘just work’.
Augmenting, Not replacing, Human Judgement
Although AI can process information faster and with more accuracy than any human, it lacks emotional intelligence. In fact, a survey found that nearly 70% of UK consumers say AI chatbots fail to understand emotional cues. While AI can identify anomalies in data, it cannot detect the frustration in a customer’s voice or the urgency behind a small business owner’s request. The future of FinTech clearly depends on improving the speed and accuracy of human decision-making.
A common mistake organisations make when deploying AI is focusing on the wrong metrics. Success is often measured solely by ‘deflection rates’, or whether a bot resolves an issue without human intervention. This approach overlooks the true indicators of quality service: first-contact resolution, customer trust, and the likelihood that users will recommend the service. Prioritising these outcomes leads to AI supporting meaningful experiences rather than just reducing manual workload.
Ethics and Transparency
As AI becomes a key driver of financial decisions, ethical responsibility must be treated as a core design requirement. The principles of fairness, explainability, and accountability need to underpin every aspect of an AI system, from data collection to deployment.
For example, transparent decision-making allows customers to understand why a transaction was flagged or a decision made, turning AI into a trust-building tool rather than a black box. At myPOS, for example, every on-device decision is explained and complimented by a ‘request human review’ button. By clicking it, merchants are redirected to a live analyst within two business hours. Crucially, human oversight is needed to interpret AI outputs, make contextual judgments, and intervene when automated systems may misclassify or misrepresent a user’s situation. Ultimately, AI ethics is foundational to trust, which only humans can fully maintain.
A Smarter Relationship with Customers
AI’s predictive capabilities are also changing the fundamental nature of customer relationships. Instead of responding to problems, FinTechs can now anticipate them: identifying cash-flow gaps before they occur, suggesting actions to improve financial stability, or alerting users to potential risks early.
This proactive intelligence significantly enhances trust, shifting interactions from transactional to consultative. It empowers small and medium-sized businesses to make data-driven decisions that once required dedicated financial teams, while freeing human representatives to focus on higher-value conversations – those that demand empathy, judgment, and nuanced understanding.
Personal, Prediction, and Human
The next phase of FinTech innovation will be defined by how seamlessly AI blends automation with personalisation. We’re already seeing the rise of conversational commerce, embedded payments, and tailored financial insights delivered directly at the point of sale. As these capabilities expand, so will expectations around transparency, accountability, and empathy in how AI operates.
The future of FinTech is smarter, faster and human centric. AI will continue to handle the repetitive and reactive, but people will remain essential for what truly matters: understanding, trust, and connection. When businesses design AI around these core values – fairness, explainability, and empathy – the technology will strengthen the human relationships that keep the financial world moving.
Michael Heffner, Head of Global Industry and Value at Appian, on how banking’s complexity and regulatory rigour make it the perfect proving ground for agentic AI
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Let’s be frank: AI is nothing new in banking. For decades, technologies like machine learning (ML) and robotic process automation (RPA) have supported incremental efficiency gains in financial services, refining everything from risk models and fraud detection to credit scoring and claims processing.
Yet for all their speed and accuracy, these systems share one key limitation: they rely on explicit human prompts to complete their tasks. In other words, traditional AI assists; it doesn’t truly act.
From Incremental to Intelligent
AI’s evolution in banking has largely focused on targeted optimisations. Helpful, but insufficient to materially reshape core operations; automating high-volume, rule-based workflows that make life a little easier but are rarely transformative.
Think of tasks like scanning for suspicious transactions, handling data entry, or deploying chatbots to manage basic customer queries. Useful, yes. These improvements, while valuable, rarely translate into structural or enterprise-level transformation.
Despite their pattern recognition and predictive capabilities, most AI systems still stop short of acting on their insights. They generate recommendations or alerts, then wait for a human to decide what happens next.
Agentic AI marks a major leap forward. It doesn’t just generate content. Agentic AI perceives, learns, and acts with minimal human input. It can independently determine which tools or platforms to integrate with, choose the best course of action based on its set goals, and continually improve as it learns from outcomes.
Why Banking is Fertile Ground for Agentic AI
Highly regulated and flush with data, banking is — on paper at least — ideally suited to agentic AI. The sector’s complex layers of risk management, compliance requirements, and forward-thinking customers create endless opportunities for autonomous systems that can adapt and act within defined guardrails.
Fraud prevention is an apt example. Where traditional AI might identify a suspicious transaction and send it to a human for review, agentic AI can make decisions and put them into action. Immediately placing a temporary hold on the account or escalating the case to a human employee based on a real-time assessment of risk.
Credit risk is another perfect use case. Instead of static models recalibrated quarterly, agentic AI can continuously update risk profiles as new data streams in, adjusting lending limits or recommending action without the need for human input.
Breaking AI Out of the Back Office
Old habits die hard. Despite its autonomous potential, many banks still confine AI to the back office. Using it for repetitive, low-risk tasks that make processes faster but not fundamentally different. Even when AI is deployed, humans often need to manually review every output before any real action can be taken.
But that’s changing fast. A new generation of AI-driven agents is emerging to support both employees and customers. Acting as copilots or digital teammates, these systems help staff navigate complex compliance requirements and guide customers through products and policies, all while explaining their reasoning.
The benefits are already evident. For example, lending cycle times are being dramatically reduced using AI agents. Where the traditional loan process is slow and involves a lot of paperwork, an AI-assisted cycle sees the automation of time-heavy tasks like document sorting, extracting key financial details, and flagging suspicious activity.
Crucially, these systems don’t just provide rote, box-ticking answers. They also explain their reasoning, allowing users to understand and trust the information they receive.
Regulating the Rise of Autonomy
Of course, with greater autonomy comes greater accountability. The EU’s upcoming AI Act and similar global frameworks are reshaping how banks deploy advanced AI systems. With their risk-based classification, these laws place banking firmly in the ‘high-risk’ category — demanding transparency and rigorous data governance.
For agentic AI, this means accountability must be built in from day one. Every decision, recommendation, or automated action should be logged, explainable, and auditable. Humans must always retain the ability to step in and take control.
This explainability is a competitive differentiator as much as it is a compliance requirement. In a sector built on trust, transparency is what allows banks to balance innovation with integrity, using AI to elevate both performance and confidence.
Overcoming Process Debt
Leaving the past behind isn’t always easy, and even the most sophisticated AI can’t deliver results if it’s trapped inside outdated workflows. Many banks are still burdened by process debt.
Process debt refers to the accumulated inefficiency embedded in legacy workflows. Anything from outdated sequencing and institutional habits to procedural guardrails that were set in motion years ago but have long since outlived their usefulness.
Unlike technical debt, which can be mapped and fixed through IT audits, process debt is cultural. It’s embedded in the way things have always been done.
Agentic AI offers a way out. By redesigning workflows around intelligent agents, banks can eliminate redundant steps, automate decision-making, and reduce operational friction, without compromising oversight or control.
A Future Without Bounds
Agentic AI represents a line in the sand, shifting banks from relying on systems that merely predict and automate to collaborating with those that can reason and act.
It’s a chance to move beyond the limits of legacy systems toward a model of continuous, intelligent operations. But success will depend on one thing: deploying this technology responsibly, with governance, transparency, and human oversight at its core.
By doing so, banks can unlock new levels of agility, efficiency, and innovation. And they’ll be setting a new standard for how the industry competes.
Stock Investing has become increasingly popular over the last few years. The self-directed investing trend is in full swing and…
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Stock Investing has become increasingly popular over the last few years. The self-directed investing trend is in full swing and retail investors are looking for smarter and better ways of looking at the markets to identify winning stocks. A plethora of web services and chats now exist solely to service this market. Many of these services process the same limited types of data, such as market prices and tape, fundamental data, filings or even news sentiments.
Navigating Investment Services
How can investors navigate this crowded landscape of services? It all depends on what the investor is looking for. Broadly, there are three levels of investing behaviour and tools:
Level 1: The Stock Tip.
This investor just wants a stock tip – simply what to buy and when to sell without trying to understand the why. He may “ask the audience” and use a Telegram chat or Discord chat service for that, “phone a friend” who just takes a “50/50” guess. The platforms providing these services are usually unsophisticated operations often with one or two individuals animating a series of chats. Speculation, misinformation and meme stock “pump and dump” schemes are frequent.
Outcome: This looks great on the surface as the user gets an immediate stock tip, but what happens later is worrying. The investor will have no idea about when to sell since they did not work to understand the real reasons of why the trade has been initiated in the first place.
Level 2: Raw and Calculated Data
The investor relies on data platforms for research and to decide how to identify promising candidates. From Yahoo Finance to Investing.com, many platforms offer raw and calculated data in tables and charts. These include financial data from the company (either as reported or harmonised), analysts’ recommendation price targets or estimates, company filings (13F, Form 4, 8k …) even public databases of senatorial and congressional registered trades.
This overabundance of data can create information overload, sometimes leaving users more confused than when they started. With hundreds of fields and ratios, it takes significant financial literacy and experience to know where to look, which metric to focus on and the ones to leave out. Coupled with the information already available via a brokerage platform, often the investor is now facing a “wall” of data. Recently, new conversational AI tools that use natural language have been touted as game changers that can make sense of it all. Unfortunately these tools come with their own limitations and biases that are not always visible..
Outcome: The investor is more confused than at the beginning of the process, unless he is trained in using the right metrics for his analysis, this is a losing game. These ChatGPT-like platforms bring a false sense of intelligence as they combine news and data from various sources in a nice summarized paragraph, which is neither reliable, accurate or fool-proof.
Level 3: Derived Proprietary Data
At this level, the investor would turn to a team of financial market professionals who would generate proprietary rating or scoring for each stock helping an investor focus on the right opportunities.
These methodologies are either “proven” or “tested” representing many years of financial market expertise. This layer of human experience makes all the difference in generating valuable insights. Investor’s Business Daily has one of the best known services, providing ratings alongside a respected news bureau that has helped investors for decades.
This approach is probably one of the best for a serious investor – one that would consume this proprietary derived data and combine it with news and other market events for a comprehensive investing picture.
Level 4: LLMs
This level of investing is where not only human experience and skills are in the mix but also Large Language Models processing vast amounts of unstructured data. It is processed from news or filings for a comprehensive view of market conditions and sentiment from text based data. It also brings the most important “human insight” contained in the ranks and scoring in the service.
Stock Investing Solutions
Beyond this vertical hierarchy, there is also a horizontal challenge; that is that the breadth of data is also an issue. Many platforms provide their own niche services, such as focusing on 13F filings, a specific technical analysis, earnings estimates or option flow. As a result, investors often end up subscribing to several services to gain a comprehensive view of the market.
The solution: a flexible, comprehensive platform that delivers everything an investor may need including scoring, rankings and proprietary indicators but while integrating AI models to enhance and supercharge research efforts.
Making data meaningful is the future of investing. Human expertise can be blended with intelligent technology, while modern platforms close the intimidation gap between professional insight and everyday understanding. The world is overflowing with information and trustworthy innovation lies in simplification.
Alex Carteau is the CEO and Founder of EPSMomentum, with more than 25 years of expertise in financial market software across Asia, Europe, and the United States. He spent more than a decade at Bloomberg, advising investment managers through advanced data and market insights. Following his work on Bloomberg’s specialised equity derivatives team, he expanded his career with leadership roles at RaisePartner and TradingScreen.
At EPSMomentum, Alex applies his deep knowledge of hedge fund technology, stock-picking analytics and trading systems to create tools that simplify investing for everyday investors. Drawing on his background in financial technology, his work emphasises clarity and actionable insights. With a drive to challenge outdated approaches, he is committed to providing investors with professional-level resources and advancing the evolution of smarter investing drawing on insight gained over decades of experience.
ClearBank research finds half of large firms say embedded finance will drive new revenue, but concerns over outdated systems, implementation challenges, integration and customer trust loom
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New research from ClearBank reveals that large UK businesses now view embedded financial services as a strategic boardroom decision and business growth driver.
It found that despite growing enthusiasm for embedded finance’s potential to deliver these services, many companies are still held back by fears of regulatory requirements, technical complexity, and ongoing concerns around finding the right partner to deliver at scale.
A Boardroom Priority: Nearly Half of Corporates see Embedded Finance as a Revenue Driver
Implementing embedded finance has rapidly moved from a niche innovation to a strategic boardroom decision. Survey results found that 38% of C-suite leaders cite embedded finance as important for their company’s growth, reflecting the shift in mindset from viewing it as a back-office payments tool to a driver of competitive advantage.
Crucially, nearly half (48%) of corporates surveyed see embedded finance as a way to improve payments and launch new revenue-generating services. These services range from offering own brand accounts to saving tools and lending services. For many, the potential increase in revenue is compelling, with more than a quarter (28%) of the view that embedded finance could help drive double-digit revenue growth for their business. 67% believed growth would be at least 5% and just over a third (39%) suggest between 5-10% of revenue growth.
“Embedded banking allows businesses to integrate payments, lending and account services directly into their customer propositions. For corporates, this is a real opportunity to create stronger relationships with customers while also building new and potentially significant revenue streams for the business. We believe we’re on the cusp of the embedded economy.
“For any business looking to remain competitive in the digital age, these services can no longer be seen as ‘add-ons’. They are becoming essential infrastructure to deepen customer loyalty and open new revenue streams.
“We see this shift first-hand through the financial services clients already embedding our infrastructure. That experience gives us a clear view of how the same approach can be applied to corporates more widely and why embedded finance is such a significant opportunity across industries.”
Emma Hagan, ClearBank UK CEO
Cross-Sector Growth: Companies Across Consumer Products & Services, Retail and Healthcare Have Biggest Appetite for Embedding Financial Services
Although embedded finance has often been associated with the retail sector, interest is broadening across other sectors. Research found that appetite was highest in consumer products and services (23%), retail (20%) and healthcare (18%), with the likes of the payroll and travel industries increasingly seeing the potential to integrate financial services into their customer journeys.
Of those companies surveyed that said they are actively considering offering embedded financial services within their own platforms, payment services were most considered (16%), followed by insurance (13%) and lending (13%). This signals a structural change in non-financial companies as they look to add layers of value and deepen engagement and loyalty with customers.
Untapped Potential: Only 19% Have launched Embedded Finance Services – Challenges Slowing progress
While appetite for embedded finance is growing rapidly, adoption is still maturing. Three-quarters (75%) said they would offer embedded finance today if it were easy to implement. This gap between ambition and reality underlines the perception that embedded finance is still typically difficult to employ and highlights the need for a new type of partner to tackle practical obstacles before broader uptake can occur.
When asked about the challenges corporates faced, some firms pointed to the technicalities of setting up such an offering in terms of integration challenges (61%), regulatory compliance (49%) and lack of technical expertise (44%)
Beyond the technical barriers, businesses also flagged reputational and regulatory risks such as greater regulatory scrutiny (57%), a loss of customer trust (52%) with reputational damage if the service fails (65%).
Taken together, these figures highlight that while embedded finance is seen as a major growth opportunity, corporates remain cautious. Success will depend not only on demonstrating the revenue potential but also on reducing risks during implementation through providing trusted infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and a smooth integration path that allows businesses to move from intent to action with confidence.
The Benefits & Motivations: Convenience & Customer Loyalty
For many corporates, embedded finance is first and foremost about strengthening customer relationships. Over half of firms 63% highlighted the opportunity to deliver a more seamless and convenient experience, positioning embedded finance as a customer service differentiator as much as a commercial driver. A further (57%) saw offering embedded services as a way of improving customer loyalty through creating more frequent and valuable touch points.
“Traditional banks we have found, give you a good brand halo and risk expertise but the cycles are killing us. They are slow, the integrations are not really bespoke and the slower cycle of development and keeping up to track with regulation has been the problem consistently.” (spokesperson from consumer industries)
About the Report
Ronin conducted interviews with 30 Senior Business Leaders at UK-based organisations across technology, healthcare, consumer, retail, travel, energy, and utilities sectors, along with surveying 200 Senior Business Leaders on the evolving nature of payment strategies, with a particular focus on the role of embedded finance in enabling new services and revenue streams. The interviews took place over August and September 2025.
Chirag Shah, Founder & CEO of Pulse, on ULI, and what it could mean for lenders and their customers
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The UK’s financial services ecosystem is currently in the process of profound transformation. Traditional lending frameworks, characterised by siloed systems, static risk models, and manual processes, are no longer fit for purpose. They’re outdated and ineffective, unable to answer the needs of today’s digital economy. With the growth of embedded finance, real-time data, and rising customer expectations, financial institutions, platforms, and regulators are having to rethink their infrastructure from the ground up.
Initiatives like Open Banking, Making Tax Digital (MTD), and Open Accounting have already laid the groundwork for greater data accessibility, meaning that data is not only available but useable. But with that usability comes greater expectations – both businesses and consumers expect instant decisions, seamless experiences, and personalised products. The problem is that the lending infrastructure that should be able to deliver on this promise remains fragmented. Lending decisions are still difficult to make because data is scattered, while processes are duplicated and manual. While lenders, platforms, and regulators are unable to work in unison. The Unified Lending Interface (ULI) is emerging as both a technical solution and the next generation of lending infrastructure in the UK.
What is ULI?
ULI is a standardised interoperability framework that governs the exchange of credit-related data, events, and permissions across lending ecosystems. Unlike a product or single platform, ULI acts as an underlying protocol, a form of modular APIs, data schemas, and event models that make it easier for lenders, platforms, and borrowers to interact in a consistent, secure, and scalable way. The idea being that if data can be standardised and exchanged in real time, credit decisioning and servicing can become significantly more efficient, transparent, and inclusive.
What this looks like in real terms is:
The use of standardised data models for origination, underwriting, and loan servicing
Real-time event streaming for repayments, defaults, and restructures
Cross-lender affordability and exposure checks
Secure, user-driven consent mechanisms
Customisable APIs to suit various regulatory and operational contexts
In-built analytics and reporting tools for compliance and performance
ULI is not yet a formal regulatory term, but its equivalents are already emerging in industry-led pilots and fintech platforms. In my view, its adoption would be the next logical step in the evolution of UK lending.
The Challenges That ULI Could Solve
Despite the rapid uptake of embedded finance, the underlying infrastructure that should power and enable it has begun to fall behind. This disconnect has created multiple pain points that need to be addressed if innovation and effective risk management are to continue.
One major challenge lies in siloed integrations. Many lenders rely on custom-built connections with each distribution partner, which typically results in fragile systems that are difficult to scale and costly to maintain. This is not only inefficient, it makes it harder to respond to changing market demands.
Risk visibility is another concern. As things stand, most lenders assess credit exposure in isolation, which means that a business could have multiple existing loans on different platforms with no aggregated affordability assessment. This creates obvious blind spots, increasing the chances of overextension and missed risk signals.
Borrowers themselves are often unaware of why or how credit decisions are made or how their data is used. This opacity leads to a lack of trust, and can deter people from responsible borrowing. And regulatory friction adds further strain. Many institutions still rely on outdated tools for supervisory reporting, including batch files and CSVs, which are prone to error and inefficiency. This creates compliance burdens and slows down oversight.
Lastly, customer concerns around data sharing presents another barrier. Without clear, user-driven consent frameworks, individuals and businesses are reluctant to share financial data. This not only limits lenders’ ability to personalise offerings but also undermines accurate risk assessment.
The ULI directly addresses these challenges by introducing a common framework for interoperability. It brings much-needed structure to an otherwise fragmented ecosystem, enabling lenders and platforms to work together more efficiently without stifling innovation. It also helps restore trust to all users.
How ULI Works
Rather than acting as a centralised system, ULI operates as a distributed interoperability layer, purpose-built for credit. It works in four general phases:
Standardising loan origination
ULI defines a shared schema for different credit products, whether that’s long-term loans, merchant cash advances, invoice financing, or credit lines. This shared language allows platforms and lenders to integrate quickly and consistently. My company has already pioneered this approach, embedding ULI frameworks into platforms that support the entire loan lifecycle, from application to disbursement, collections, and ongoing management.
Affordability and risk aggregation
A critical ULI function is its ability to aggregate exposure across multiple lenders in real time. This enables federated credit checks, prevents borrower overextension, and enhances regulatory oversight. Again, this is something that my company is already doing, with a solution that integrates with ULI to assess a borrower’s receivables, providing granular visibility into cash flow and repayment capacity.
Real-time event notifications
With ULI, you also introduce real-time event notifications that allow key loan events, such as repayments and missed instalments, to be monitored in real-time. This enhanced visibility enables lenders to monitor risk continuously, rather than relying on retrospective data. It also allows for the automation of collections to streamline the response to any such events. Additionally, lenders can make easy adjustments to credit limits based on a borrower’s behaviour and financial performance over time. Essentially, bringing both control and flexibility to lending.
Streamlined application journeys
ULI also helps streamline multi-lender application journeys through a single interface. Our system, for example, allows for automated underwriting, with over 95% of applications decisioned in under 60 seconds. This means that loan applications can be completed in minutes, drastically improving both lender efficiency and borrower experience.
Is The UK Ready For ULI?
Several recent developments suggest that, from a regulatory standpoint, the UK is uniquely positioned to adopt ULI, or similar. First, there’s the government’s Smart Data agenda, which is expanding the legal framework to support cross-sector, user-permissioned data sharing, which is an essential foundation for interoperable lending. While the ongoing development of Open Finance reflects a clear determination to build modular, interconnected financial services systems that mirror the goals of ULI. At the same time, increased regulatory scrutiny of traditional credit bureaus signals a broader appetite for more transparent, real-time credit models that can better serve both lenders and borrowers. As such, ULI wouldn’t replace existing financial infrastructure, it would complement it. Helping to modernise business lending and improve access to credit.
Financial services have become increasingly modular. It’s an approach that answers the evolving needs of today’s digitally driven businesses. A side effect of that is a lack of standardisation and agility. ULI provides a solution to resolve that problem. By empowering lenders with real-time data, simplifying compliance, and creating a more inclusive and transparent borrower experience, it signals a move towards more responsible finance. In my book, that’s the future of lending.
Toine van Beusekom, Strategy Director at Icon Solutions, on embracing a transformation strategy for payments
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For banks, change is no longer something they can simply let happen. They need to make it happen.
This marks a significant shift from the past decade, where the demands of complying with major regulatory initiatives – such as the migration to ISO 20022 in combination with support for instant and cross-border payment schemes – prompted action above all else. This is unsurprising, as you really don’t want to mess with regulators and miss imposed deadlines.
But as a defining regulatory era starts to wind down, things stand to be much different. Without the next deadline looming to provide direction, suddenly the road ahead feels more uncertain.
This is a good time for banks to step back, take a hard look at the current state of their payments ecosystem, and ask themselves some honest questions. Have regulatory requirements been addressed as part of a strategic approach to transforming the infrastructure to realise long-term business value and competitive differentiation? Or have they been barely met by short-term fixes, workarounds, gaffer tape and hope?
For most banks, it is likely more the latter than they would care to admit. And this has huge implications as they look towards meeting the demands of the future.
Are Banks Truly Ready For ISO 20022?
ISO 20022 migration, which has largely dominated the change agenda over recent years, is a perfect illustration. After years of work and investment, banks should now, in theory, boast a modern payments ecosystem capable of high-performance, real-time ISO 20022 processing. Yet the reality is that many still possess fragmented and complex estates that rely on various individual processing engines for different payment types, with an ISO 20022 mapper used around the edges to support low real-time volumes. This means that, despite huge investments, banks may find themselves unprepared as ISO 20022 volumes start to ramp up.
Now comes the big problem – which extends far beyond ISO 20022. Using the regulatory agenda as a pretext for securing more budget to pay down the existing technical debt and patch a solution is no longer the failsafe option it once was. Instead, addressing the challenges now relies on the much harder work of building a compelling and viable business case for change.
Consolidation: Spend Less Money. Make More Money. Don’t Go To Jail
Happily, there is a way to finally break free of the constraints of outdated, legacy infrastructure: consolidation. In fact, any bank in the business of processing payments should now be looking to work towards a single, consolidated infrastructure capable of supporting any payment, anytime, anywhere.
The business case for consolidation is clear, as it is foundational to the three key pillars of any transformation strategy. Banks spend less money by using standardised and open technologies to realise scale economies and lower the cost per transaction. They make more money as it is far easier to bring new products to market quickly or deliver value-added services. Finally, and with resiliency and compliance in the spotlight amid high-profile outages and geopolitical manoeuvring, they avoid jail through increased performance and transparency.
A Smarter Approach To Consolidation
The key question then becomes how to consolidate. 20 years ago, ‘consolidation’ meant a big bang, a years-long transition programme to a black-box payments hub costing hundreds of millions and leaving banks entirely reliant on a single vendor. Unsurprisingly, all these projects failed at Tier 1 banks. Yet the significant challenges of building entirely in-house have also been laid bare in recent times by well-documented project overruns, never realised benefits and blown budgets.
Today, we are seeing a new approach. To stay in control of their costs, build and risk, banks are increasingly turning to leverage flexible payment development framework solutions that allow them to sustainably move towards a consolidated payments processing infrastructure.
Success here demands a clear strategy outlining why transformation is needed, what ‘good looks like’ in terms of the target state, and finally how to actually get there. Guided by this blueprint, banks can then leverage a feature-rich development framework to reimagine the payments processing value chain – moving away from a horizontal end-to-end approach for single payment types and towards decoupled, vertical, bespoke, service-aligned flows.
This progressive, gradual approach to transformation helps to realise immediate benefits that compound over time as more flows migrate over, while enabling banks to meet the requirements of new payments types, clearing and settlement methods, markets and use-cases as they emerge.
Lead Payments Forward
Looking more broadly, consolidation represents a chance to finally end the cycle of short-termism and reactivity that has for so long inhibited and disincentivised meaningful, strategic change and contributed to huge technical debt. For the first time in decades – perhaps ever – banks have an unmissable opportunity to take control, transform on their own terms and truly lead payments forward. But can they recognise and seize the moment amongst all the noise and hype?
The Financial Transformation Summit (FTS), presented by MoneyNext, took place June 18-19 2025 at London’s ExCeL Centre, Royal Victoria Dock. With over 2,000 attendees, 300+ speakers, and 400 roundtables, it stood out as one of the most immersive and interactive events in the financial services calendar.
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FinTech Strategy hit the conference floor at the heart of the action delivering insights from experts across Banking, Insurance, Wealth, and Lending at Financial Transformation Summit (FTS).
Financial Transformation Summit attendees from banking, insurance, wealth, lending, fintech, consultancy, and regulatory sectors convened for two days packed with keynotes, panel talks, immersive demos, and networking among 60+ exhibitors and startups.
Co-located streams – Banking, Insurance, Wealth, and Lending part of themed zones– meant that ticket-holders could explore adjacent sectors fluidly across a guiding theme: culture, collaboration, and customer centricity driving tech adoption and transformation.
Programme Highlights
Keynotes & Panels
1. Data Silos & Cross‑Institutional Collaboration
A panel featuring senior leaders from EVLO, Aon, Schroders, and Brit Insurance tackled how institutions – despite collectively spending over $33 billion annually on data – still struggle to collaborate due to privacy concerns and regulation. Innovative solutions included federated learning, anonymised client IDs and consent-backed APIs.
2. Digital Insurance via Wallets
Anna Bojic (Miss Moneypenny Technologies) unveiled a fresh take on insurance – embedding policy and claim data into Apple/Google Wallets. The idea: dynamic customer interaction directly from smartphone wallets, enhancing real‑time engagement and retention.
3. ESG Economics & Market Reality
Marc Kahn (Investec) challenged ESG orthodoxy, urging firms to emphasise human and planetary wellbeing – beyond purely financial returns – to capture stakeholder trust and sustainable growth.
4. People & Psychological Safety
Kirsty Watson (Aberdeen Group) and Vikki Allgood (Fidelity International) underlined that technological investments are futile without organisational design and psychological safety. Allgood cited a McKinsey study revealing only 26% of leaders build teams with a sense of safety – a critical step toward innovation.
5. Human‑Centred AI
Monica Kalia (Planda AI) championed AI that models individual financial contexts – recognising diversity within demographic cohorts and personalizing services accordingly.
Roundtable Experiences at FTS
At the event’s heart were the TableTalk roundtables – 400+ small-group sessions, each led by a subject-matter expert. These were limited to six participants each, enabling deep, peer-led discussions on themes like:
AI in risk and compliance
Open banking integration
ESG data standards
Cyber resilience
Change management and culture adaptation
Attendees consistently praised their interactive nature – far removed from the stage‑focused “listening” format often critiqued at other conferences.
Demonstrations & Exhibitor Showcase
Over 60 exhibitors presented tech-driven innovations: Generative AI, open‑banking APIs, ESG reporting tools, embedded finance solutions, and more. A few standouts were:
CRIF highlighted AI-powered credit scoring with ESG overlays – promising dynamic risk assessments backed by sustainability data
Emerging FinTechs demoing AI compliance engines, digital wallet insurance packaging, and data-sharing platforms
Hylanddemonstrated the intuitive end-user experience of its Hyland Content Innovation Cloud™ and showed how easy it is to configure, tailor and deploy solutions that can empower key stakeholders across any business
The demo zone allowed engaging, hands-on exploration and real-time Q&As; it complemented the content with practical insights.
Standout Themes & Strategic Insights
1. Tech is Not Enough Without Culture
Recurrent messaging emphasised that culture, trust, governance, and psychological safety are foundational – not secondary – to digital initiatives. Technology alone won’t deliver transformation without a people-first mindset.
2. Cross‑Sector Data Collaboration
Despite heavy investment, institutions still operate in silos. Shared, secure infrastructure and regulatory-aligned frameworks are being prototyped, but broad adoption remains a work in progress.
3. AI-as-a-Personalisation Backbone
AI is shifting from automation to empathy. Organisations showcased tools to hyper-personalise offers yet maintain privacy and inclusion – moving beyond outdated demographic frameworks into genuine behavioural understanding.
4. Embedded Finance & Digital Wallets
Insurance via wallet applications and embedded finance models point to seamless customer journeys – less app hopping, more value delivered at the point of need.
5. Rebalancing ESG & Profit Metrics
Speakers emphasised integrating ESG factors into performance metrics – not just for compliance, but as an operative advantage anchored in long-term stability and stakeholder trust.
Who Should Attend FTS Next Year?
Ideal for:
Transformation and change leaders
CTOs, CIOs, and Heads of Innovation
Data and AI strategists
Operational and HR leaders focused on culture
FinTech innovators and solution providers
If you’re crafting digital transformation strategies, an attuned leader in financial services, or a consultant embedding tech in legacy environments, this summit provides rich, actionable content.
Expect next year’s event to build on this foundation:
More AI-specific tracks, possibly Generative AI streams
ESG deep-dives with case studies on implementation
Expanded regulator involvement around data governance and cross-border compliance
FTS: Final Verdict
Overall, the FTS 2025 delivered on its brand promise:
Interactive and inclusive: 400 roundtables empowered voices across levels.
Cross‑sector learning: Banking, Insurance, Wealth, and Lending streams offered both breadth and depth.
Insightful keynotes: Big ideas on AI, ESG, data-sharing, and culture were well-explored.
Real-world relevance: Exhibitor demos connected theory with practice.
Networking with purpose: Opportunities to engage, learn, and collaborate were abundant.
The Financial Transformation Summit struck a compelling balance between big-picture vision and granular, execution-level insight. It emphasised that while technology enables; culture, customer centricity and collaboration drive real progress. The format – with its roundtables, demos, and keynotes – offered a dynamic platform for knowledge exchange.
If you attended, chances are you left with practical next steps. If you didn’t, you missed one of the most interactive, future-focused events shaping financial services transformation today.
FinTech Strategy spoke with Veritran’s CMO, Jorge Sanchez Barcelo, at Money20/20 Europe to find out more about the tech firm’s partnership with Manchester City reimagining CX to create a frictionless digital experience for fans
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Money20/20 Europe Exclusive
In an era where technology defines the customer journey, Jorge Sanchez Barcelo, Chief Marketing Officer at Veritran, is leading a bold charge into a new frontier: one where financial technology fuses with fandom, and CX becomes both frictionless and deeply personal.
Jorge’s professional journey has always followed the arc of digital transformation. From his earlier roles at AT&T and Banorte to now helming marketing at Veritran, a global technology company, his mission is clear: make life easier, better, and more secure for end users – whether they’re banking customers or football fans.
“Our technology without a purpose is nothing. It’s just code,” Jorge says. “We build for people. And that purpose has taken us far beyond banking.”
From Buenos Aires to Global Ambitions
Founded in Buenos Aires almost 20 years ago, Veritran started building mobile applications before the iPhone even existed – when, as Jorge jokes, “phones were just for calls, texts, and the occasional game of Snake”.
“Our guys were visionaries,” he continues. “They were talking about applications when we didn’t even have smartphones. Back then, you had to build a separate app for every phone model because we didn’t have iOS or Android,” he recalls.
Despite those early technical hurdles, the company maintained a singular focus: democratising access to financial services. “Once a person starts managing their own finances, they gain control,” reasons Jorge. “And control is the first step toward growth.”
That mission has proven timeless, and borderless. Today, Veritran has a solid footprint across Latin America and has expanded into the US and Europe.
Why Experience Matters More Than Ever
Jorge is acutely aware that in financial services, trust is everything. A slick PowerPoint is not enough to win over banks.
“When I meet with a financial institution, they don’t want theory. They want proof. They want to see our tech working in the real world. But many banks are reluctant to share their strategies, even with non-competitors.”
This desire to demonstrate capability led Veritran to seek a bold new marketing approach – one that would provide a visible, secure, and non-competitive environment to showcase its tech.
Enter Manchester City: A Blueprint for CX Innovation
The solution arrived via the pitch, not the boardroom. Veritran entered into a partnership with Manchester City, one of the best football teams in the world.
“Manchester City is digitally five to seven years ahead of most clubs,” says Jorge.
Veritran’s technology now supports key digital operations at Manchester City, helping the Club streamline processes such as user registration, membership management, and ticketing. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to innovation and operational excellence.
What began as a strategic partnership has evolved into a strong example of how financial technology can reinforce digital infrastructure in the sports sector. As more organisations seek reliable and scalable solutions, the model developed with Manchester City demonstrates the value of secure, efficient platforms designed to support long-term digital growth.
Breaking the Sponsorship Mold
Unlike traditional sports sponsorships, which often come with hefty price tags and limited strategic collaboration, Veritran’s deal with City was rooted in partnership.
“Our partnership is beneficial for both companies, we share value,” explains Jorge. “With the brand reach of Manchester City’s clubs we have been able to promote our company worldwide.”
This model has opened the door to future collaborations, not only with sports clubs, but also with entertainment companies in the US who are eyeing similar digital transformations.
Applying FinTech Learnings in New Territories
As Veritran enters new markets, they carry the lessons of regulated finance into less restricted sectors.
“In banking, every innovation has to pass through layers of regulation,” notes Jorge. “But in entertainment or sports, you can think outside the box and start with the experience, not the compliance checklist.”
That freedom has allowed Veritran to experiment with new ideas, such as smile-based stadium access or face-based payments.
“We call it ‘mouthful access’ – just smile, and you’re in. You can’t do that in banking… yet.”
Blending Brand and Utility: A New Era for Embedded Finance
What sets Veritran apart isn’t just its technology stack – it’s the way it applies that stack to create emotional resonance and operational value in new settings. For Jorge and his team, the convergence of financial services and lifestyle touchpoints is the most exciting, and underexplored, frontier.
“When we embed finance into a stadium or a music festival, we’re not just processing payments,” he explains. “We’re creating seamless, branded experiences that extend customer relationships beyond the bank branch or app.”
This philosophy echoes a wider FinTech trend: the shift from siloed services to contextual, embedded finance – delivered where customers already are, not where institutions want them to be.
As financial brands seek new ways to engage digitally-native consumers, Jorge believes partnerships with lifestyle, sports, and entertainment brands offer huge untapped potential.
Jorge notes that younger generations expect everything to be digital, instant, and intuitive. They don’t separate banking from shopping or attending an event, it’s all part of one journey. “If we can integrate services invisibly into those moments, that’s where the magic happens.”
He’s quick to add that the financial industry still has work to do in aligning with this shift – both culturally and technologically.
“It’s not just about APIs or infrastructure. It’s about mindset. The organisations that embrace this new way of thinking – who see CX as a shared responsibility across ecosystems – will lead the next decade.”
With Veritran’s cross-industry collaborations accelerating, Jorge is confident they’re not just shaping financial journeys – they’re reshaping everyday experiences.
Embedding Finance in the Fan Journey
Jorge sees a massive opportunity to embed financial services into sports and entertainment ecosystems, particularly in underbanked regions like Latin America.
“In the UK, stadiums are already cashless. In Latin America, we still have guys walking around selling Coca-Cola for cash from their pockets. We want to change that.”
By introducing digital wallets, biometric payments, and embedded insurance services (e.g., ticket protection at the point of sale), Veritran enables clubs to become financial service providers.
“Imagine buying a match ticket and adding travel insurance in one click. That’s the level of seamless we’re aiming for.”
Pain Points Driving Demand
So what are clients asking for?
Jorge says it comes down to three priorities:
Integrated Payments Ecosystems Clients want unified platforms that support seamless payments across channels and partners
Digital Onboarding & Identity Reducing friction while enhancing security is top of mind – especially in customer acquisition
End-to-End Security Suites With AI-driven fraud and evolving regulations, security isn’t optional; it’s a strategic asset
Veritran’s flexibility as a tech partner, not just a vendor, allows it to co-create with clients. This often means integrating with their existing partners, such as banks, card networks, or insurers.
What’s Next for Veritran?
According to Jorge, the company is at a pivotal moment. Its technology is gaining traction in new verticals with strong investment appetite – such as entertainment and live events.
“These sectors have the budget and the ambition. No one’s serving them with the kind of Fintech-grade CX we provide.”
The company is also exploring opportunities in public transportation and other infrastructure-heavy sectors where transactions are frequent and still inefficient.
“Everywhere there’s a transaction, there’s an opportunity to simplify.”
FinTech is set to play an expanding role in everyday life whereJorge believes the very definition of FinTech is evolving.
“It’s not just about banks anymore. If you buy a coffee, book a train, or enter a concert – those are all transactions. And if we can simplify them, that’s FinTech too.”
That’s why Veritran sees future growth in collaborative ecosystems where banks, brands, and non-traditional players converge to serve the customer journey holistically.
Why Money20/20?
Jorge credits the annual Money20/20 Europe conference with helping shape Veritran’s partnerships – including the initial connection with Manchester City.
“It’s one of our top five global trade shows. We don’t just send a team – we send our top execs, including our CEO. It’s where deals happen.”
Building with Purpose for the Future
In an industry flooded with features and hype Veritran differentiates by staying grounded in user value.
“Tech for tech’s sake is meaningless. But tech that improves how someone lives, spends, or connects – that’s everything,” says Jorge.
From its Argentine roots to a global stage, Veritran’s journey underscores one enduring truth: In customer experience, the future belongs to those who build it with purpose.
Our cover star Rebecca Fitzgerald, Director of Data & AI at Yorkshire Building Society, reveals a digital transformation journey meeting…
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Our cover star Rebecca Fitzgerald, Director of Data & AI at Yorkshire Building Society, reveals a digital transformation journey meeting customers, wherever they are.
Yorkshire Building Society: Data, AI & Inclusive Leadership
Our cover story focuses on the data revolution taking place at Yorkshire Building Society (YBS)… Navigating this journey of change is Director of Data and AI, Rebecca Fitzgerald. Her ambitious vision is to transform the 160-year-old mutual through ethical, human-centred data strategies and AI innovation. In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, she aims to ensure YBS does not just keep up but leads from the front.
“I’m accountable for developing and implementing strategies to enhance data-centricity and drive value from data and AI for our customers and colleagues,” Rebecca states. This directive is grounded in strong governance, positive data culture, and the empowerment of people through data literacy and technological upskilling.”
Tyme Group: Scalable Global Digital Banking
Dietmar Bohmer, Chief Analytics Officer at Tyme Group, on operationalising innovation, cultivating a culture of empowerment and driving transformation from the inside out…
“It’s been wild ride from a technology point of view,” admits Dietmar… Today, that foresight is paying off. The cloud-native architecture has provided Tyme with the elasticity, resilience, and speed it needs to support its rapid growth across emerging markets. “With each new deployment, the organisation has evolved and refined its technological foundation,” notes Dietmar. “When the time came to launch GoTyme Bank in the Philippines, lessons learned from the rollout of TymeBank in South Africa enabled the team to rethink and redesign their stack, optimising for scale, performance, and localised feature delivery.”
ČSOB: A Digital Transformation Journey
ČSOB Slovakia is undergoing a major transformation aimed at future-proofing its technology, enhancing customer experience, and reinforcing its leadership in digital banking. Under the stewardship of its CIO Ludek Slegr, the bank’s IT team is navigating a major upgrade of its responsibility, overhauling core IT systems and implementing agile methodologies to meet its strategic goals. At the heart of this transformation is a focus on delivering value through technology, supporting people development, and fostering sustainable innovation.
“The next step for digital-first is continuous improvement of straight-through processing ratio, i.e. reducing involvement of manual work in our processes.”
Money20/20 Europe
FinTech Strategy also reports from the conference floor at Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam. Bringing together the world’s leading innovators, institutions, investors, and influencers from across the FinTech and financial services spectrum, more than 8,000 delegates from over 2,300 companies were in attendance… We sat down with Standard Chartered’s Head of Digital Assets – Financing & Securities Services, Waqar Chaudry, to discuss how the bank is connecting traditional with digital, collaborating with FinTechs and taking a measured approach to entering the crypto market. And we spoke with Veritran’s CMO, Jorge Sanchez Barcelo, to find out more about the tech firm’s partnership with Manchester City which is reimagining CX to create a frictionless digital experience for fans.
Financial Transformation Summit
The Financial Transformation Summit at London’s ExCel is one of the most immersive and interactive events in the financial services calendar. As a media partner, FinTech Strategy took the temperature of industry innovation at our stand with on camera hot takes from the tech leaders pushing the boundaries at Hyland, Fidelity, HSBC, Citigroup and more…
Also in this issue, we keep you up to date with the key FinTech events across the globe; and read on for more insights from InsurTech disruptors Qover, lending innovators iwoca and investment experts Eastern Horizon…
Our cover story explores the digital transformation journey of RAKBANK in the UAE. Head of Digital Transformation, Antony Burrows, reveals the agile practices, enterprise-wide enablement and people-first culture delivering digital banking with a human touch.
“Culture is the cornerstone,” Antony stresses. RAKBANK codifies this into its Four Cs Framework – Connect, Communicate, Collaborate and Celebrate. “Here in the UAE, banks are pivoting from a model of ‘we know everything’ to recognising that one of the best ways to deliver continuous change and value to customers is through partnerships with startups and FinTechs. It’s no longer banks versus startups – it’s banks and startups, working together for the customer. This shift is especially meaningful as banks expand beyond traditional services to focus on customers’ broader financial lives.”
MTN MoMo: Empowering Africa Through FinTech
Hermann Tischendorf, Chief Information & Technology Officer at MTN MoMo (the telco’s mobile money division) reveals a bold roadmap for leveraging FinTech to drive financial inclusion across the African continent.
“MoMo is comparable in monthly active users to some of the top ten FinTechs globally. We’re playing in the same league as Revolut or Nubank – but in much more complex markets,” notes Hermann. “Access to financial services is fundamental. Without it, people are excluded from the global economy. Our services are the equaliser allowing individuals in frontier markets to participate in trade, store value, and ultimately improve their quality of life.”
Republic Bank: Building a Digital Bank
Republic Bank has been serving customers via its branches for over 185 yearsand now serves 16 different countries across the Caribbean and beyond. It’s “a regional bank with a growing global reach,” explains Group Chief Information & Digital Transformation Officer, Houston Ross.
His team is building a digital bank during a Year of Delivery and Accountability (YODA). “When we talk about digitalisation it’s a journey that never ends. And product is the vehicle to make sure we’re continuously improving.This is our digital pathway and we have to change minds in terms of going beyond the challenges to achieve what’s possible with the right frameworks, tools and processes for our people to serve our customers.”
In today’s digital economy, finance is no longer confined to banks. Thanks to embedded finance, financial services are being integrated…
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In today’s digital economy, finance is no longer confined to banks. Thanks to embedded finance, financial services are being integrated directly into non-financial platforms. This allows customers pay, borrow, insure, or invest without ever leaving the app they’re using. For businesses, embedded finance unlocks new revenue streams and deeper customer engagement. In 2025, here are five of the top FinTech solutions leading this revolution.
Stripe has become synonymous with online payments, but Stripe Connect takes it further… It enables platforms like marketplaces, SaaS apps, or gig platforms to onboard sellers, manage payouts, and handle compliance seamlessly. Its APIs offer modular, customisable solutions for embedding payment flows, KYC, tax reporting, and global transfers.
Why it leads: Stripe Connect simplifies complex financial operations. It gives platforms the ability to become payment facilitators without becoming regulated entities themselves.
Railsr provides a modular platform that allows brands to embed banking, payments, and credit products into their own apps. Whether it’s issuing branded debit cards, offering BNPL, or enabling in-app bank accounts, Railsr acts as the financial layer beneath consumer-facing businesses.
Key strength: It provides a single, developer-friendly API to access multiple financial services. This speeds up time-to-market, reducing infrastructure complexity.
3. Unit – Embedded Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS)
Unit is a US-focused BaaS provider that helps FinTechs and software companies embed features. These include checking accounts, cards, ACH payments, and lending directly into apps. Its toolkit includes compliance workflows, ledgering, and integrations with banking partners.
Why it stands out: Unit’s out-of-the-box functionality allows tech companies to go from idea to launch in weeks, not months. Furthermore, staying compliant with US banking regulations.
4. UpLift – Embedded BNPL for Travel and Lifestyle
UpLift is a niche embedded finance provider focused on travel, hospitality, and lifestyle experiences. Its BNPL tool is integrated directly into checkout pages for airlines, cruise lines, and vacation providers. This allows consumers to split costs into manageable monthly payments.
Unique angle: By focusing on high-ticket discretionary purchases, UpLift helps merchants increase conversions and average order value. Moreover, giving consumers more flexible options.
5. Qover – Embedded Insurance for Digital Platforms
Qover is a leading embedded insurance provider that enables companies to integrate customised, white-labelled insurance directly into their apps or services. From gig platforms and neobanks to mobility and travel apps, Qover supports multiple insurance lines. These include motor, health, cyber, and income protection—across more than 30 countries in Europe.
What sets it apart: Qover’s modular APIs let businesses plug insurance into user journeys with minimal friction. It also handles underwriting partnerships, multilingual customer service, and real-time claims dashboards, offering full-stack support.
Why it matters: Qover empowers platforms like Revolut and Deliveroo to offer relevant protection at scale. Moreover, boosting user trust, engagement, and retention without building insurance infrastructure from scratch.
Embedded finance is transforming how financial products are delivered… Moving from standalone services to contextual, on-demand experiences. Tools like Stripe Connect, Railsr, Unit, UpLift, and Cover Genius empower companies to embed finance where it adds the most value: at the point of need. For FinTechs, retailers, travel firms, and SaaS platforms, these tools represent the future of customer-centric finance—convenient, invisible, and deeply integrated.
Richard Chadwick, Chief Risk Officer at Simply Asset Finance, on unlocking the UK economy and supporting SMEs with eID
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How can Electronic Identification (eID) helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs)? They are the engine of the UK economy, representing 99.9% of UK business. They create almost two-thirds of the country’s jobs (61%) and contributing over half of national CDP (53%). Yet, despite their pivotal role, SMEs are still held back by a staggering £22 billion funding gap. Too often unwieldy, time consuming, and costly approval processes dent ambition. This loads the cost base of the UK’s wealth generators. While robust guard rails are central to the financial process, providing an essential safeguard for investors, the compliance process can still be reimagined. Indeed, innovation is essential. For example, implementing vital AML and KYC regulations alone currently cost financial institutions a staggering £34.5 billion per annum. By harnessing the power of technology, we have the power to lighten the load for businesses. This can unlock the elusive growth that could fuel the UK economy. Electronic ID could be the key to closing this funding gap. This digital solution for verifying the identity of individuals and organisations can simplify compliance. Also unlocking sustainable growth for SMEs. However, its successful adoption and implementation will depend on how the industry collaborates with the Government to drive this change forward.
The Problem
Businesses must meet – sometimes strict – lending criteria to be approved for a loan. They must also pass compliance checks with every lender, bank or financial institution they deal with before receiving any funds. Not only is this road to funding often cumbersome, but it can also be infuriatingly slow. For those that look to explore other funding routes, SMEs find other hurdles. Unlike their corporate counterparts, SMEs frequently enter funding rounds at a disadvantage. This is because they don’t have the same familiarity on the process and are less able to fall back on pre-existing relationships. Moreover, they are likely to have less capacity to absorb time-consuming admin. Furthermore, given the cost of the checks weighs heavier on smaller transactions, SMEs can be intrinsically at a disadvantage. As for lenders, a process which was designed to curb fraud and financial crime, has inadvertently turned into an administrative quagmire with inefficiencies for their customers. This regulatory burden on lenders is now so high that it surpasses double the UK government’s policing budget. A clear signal that the system needs urgent reform. Exacerbating this issue is the persistent threat of identity fraud, which continues to undermine efforts to streamline and secure the system. It is the dominant fraud type reported to the National Fraud Database, accounting for 64% of filings. The fallout is severe, with resources that could be channelled toward business growth instead diverted to mitigating fraudulent activity. Needing to direct resources to tackle the issue adds extra pressure on both SMEs and lenders, as well as holding back growth and competitiveness. Without a smoother and more secure framework, these challenges will keep chipping away at the UK’s ability to support its SMEs and stay a leader on the global economic ladder.
The Solution
Electronic Identification (eID) could be the catalyst for a more efficient and secure future. By allowing individuals and businesses to verify their identities digitally, it could eliminate inefficiencies of paper-based processes. Reusable, certified digital identities would have clear benefits. Simplifying due diligence for SMEs, cutting compliance costs for lenders, while reducing fraud and ensuring funds go to legitimate businesses. If adopted, this shift could free up resources for reinvestment in innovation and growth, unlocking broader economic opportunities. Recognising the transformative potential of eID, the UK government introduced a data bill to establish a legal framework for electronic identity processes. However, progress has been slow. Without decisive action, the UK risks falling behind global front runners like Estonia. For over two decades, we have witnessed Estonia’s eID system become the cornerstone of its digital economy. It enables citizens to pay bills, sign contracts, access health records, and even vote online. By seamlessly integrating eID across both public and private sectors, Estonia has leapfrogged nations still reliant on traditional authentication methods. To keep pace, we believe we must prioritise eID adoption, while addressing barriers such as public concerns over data privacy. While we recognise eID as a straightforward choice, we cannot gloss over public concerns about data privacy and security. These remain a significant hurdle, especially in the wake of high-profile data breaches. Many people are hesitant to share personal information. This makes it crucial for the government and financial institutions to build trust. Here, financial services could serve as a key example and use case. If we as an industry demonstrate the tangible benefits of eID – such as faster loan approvals, reduced fraud, and improved user experiences – we can help to persuade both businesses and the public of its value. Transparent policies and robust data protection measures will be essential in fostering this trust. These can showcase eID’s ability to enhance security and give individuals greater control over their personal data.
The Benefits of eID
The potential benefits of eID adoption would extend far beyond SMEs, offering opportunities for a wide range of sectors. This could even see efficiencies in areas like securing mortgages or opening bank accounts for consumers. Also reducing delays and improving confidence in financial transactions. For financial institutions, eID would reduce exposure to identity fraud, enhance efficiency, and lower operational costs. When combined with Open Banking, eID has the potential to revolutionise the funding approval process. It can offer seamless, data-driven solutions that benefit both businesses and lenders. Moreover, eID’s applications could reach far beyond financial services. Across various industries, such as healthcare, education, and retail, digital identity can foster innovation, security, and drive efficiencies.
Looking Ahead
The UK stands at a unique crossroads, with the chance to lead the way in eID adoption and revolutionise not just the SME funding landscape, but the entire economy. By tackling regulatory inefficiencies, fighting fraud, and building public trust, eID could unlock billions of pounds for SMEs. This could drive growth, innovation, and a new era of economic opportunity. Countries like Estonia have already showcased the transformative impact of digital identity systems. The UK must now act quickly to implement and promote eID solutions. With the right policies in place and strong public engagement, the use cases of eID are potentially endless.
By embracing eID, the UK can close the funding gap for SMEs while retaining its position at the forefront of digital transformation. This isn’t just a technological shift-it’s the key to unlocking a new chapter, where a smarter, safer, and more connected future awaits. And businesses, lenders, and individuals can thrive in a dynamic, forward-thinking economy.
Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR – a one-stop-shop for smart embedded finance experience – on business transformation
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Business spending used to be a mess. Think mountains of receipts, last-minute expense reports, and a constant guessing game about where the money actually went. For many companies, especially those growing fast or juggling lots of moving parts, keeping tabs on spending felt like trying to plug holes in a sinking ship. Even with spreadsheets and corporate cards, it was hard to get real visibility or control.
But something is changing. Behind the scenes, a quiet shift is taking place. It’s called embedded finance andwhile the name might sound technical, the impact is very real and surprisingly simple: it’s giving businesses more control over how they spend money, without adding complexity.
It’s like turning on the lights in a dark room. Suddenly, business leaders can *see* where the money is going, in real time. They can set rules. They can act faster. And best of all, they don’t need a finance degree to understand what’s happening.
Goodbye Expense Reports with Embedded Finance
This will be music to your ears. One of the most obvious and painful examples of messy spending is employee expenses. Traditionally, employees pay out of pocket, save their receipts, and submit reports at the end of the month. Finance teams then spend days chasing missing documentation and trying to figure out whether each purchase was actually necessary. The entire process is slow, frustrating, and ripe for errors.
With embedded finance, that whole routine gets flipped. Now, companies can issue virtual cards with built-in controls, like daily limits, merchant restrictions, or even time-based rules. Employees use the cards directly from their phones, receipts are uploaded instantly, and managers can see every transaction as it happens. No more end-of-month surprises and best of all, nomore chaos.
Real-Time Visibility, Real-Time Decisions
Having a hard time making quick decisions? When spending is scattered across departments, locations, or tools, it’s hard to have a coherent plan. Business leaders often operate with outdated information, relying on month-end reports to spot issues that have already happened. That lag can be costly, especially in a fast-moving economy.
Embedded Finance changes that by connecting spending directly to data. Whether it’s a construction company managing field purchases or an e-commerce brand scaling its supply chain, having real-time visibility into expenses means leaders can make smarter decisions, faster. If costs spike in one area, they can spot it and adjust instantly. If a new supplier overcharges, they’ll know right away.
It’s not just about seeing the numbers—it’s about being able to act on them in the moment.
Fewer Tools, Less Friction with Embedded Finance
A big source of business friction comes from too many disconnected systems. You might have one platform for payroll, another for invoicing, and yet another for managing employee cards. Every tool means another login, another source of truth, and more opportunities for things to slip through the cracks.
Embedded Finance simplifies the stack. Instead of stitching together a patchwork of tools, companies can use one unified system where spending and financial controls are already built in. For employees, that means fewer steps to get what they need. For finance teams, it means fewer errors to clean up. And for leadership, it means clearer insight into how money is being used to drive the business forward.
Solaris is making waves in the circular economy by teaming up with Grover to allow people to subscribe to tech devices monthly instead of purchasing them. Due to stringent rules, they needed a product they could integrate to enable customers full control and increase loyalty. They succeeded by launching the Grover Card to boost engagement and retention and make payments borderless and hassle-free.
Empowering Teams Without Losing Control
One of the biggest tensions in company spending is the balance between trust and control. You want teams to move fast and make smart decisions, but you also need to avoid waste and fraud. Too much freedom, and things go off the rails. Too much control, and progress stalls.
Embedded finance helps solve that tension. Because financial tools are built into the workflow, companies can set smart rules from the start. Maybe the marketing team can spend up to a certain limit on campaigns, but anything over, needs approval. Maybe contractors can only use their cards during work hours. These aren’t rigid roadblocks—they’re flexible guardrails that keep spending aligned with company goals.
At the same time, employees feel more trusted. They don’t have to front their own money or wait for approvals. They can focus on doing their jobs, knowing they have the tools they need.
Final Thoughts
Embedded Finance isn’t about adding more technology for the sake of it. It’s about making finance work better, smarter, faster, and with less hassle. For businesses that have struggled with messy, unpredictable spending, it’s a breath of fresh air.
The companies embracing these tools aren’t just getting more efficient, they’re unlocking new levels of clarity and confidence. And in today’s unpredictable business environment, that’s not just a nice-to-have – it’s a competitive advantage that will pay back in spades.
Digital DNA – Exploring core infrastructure, platform strategies, and foundational technologies.
Embedded Intelligence – AI, machine learning, data strategies, and real-time analytics.
Beyond Fintech – Partnerships between fintechs and other sectors like retail, health, and climate.
Governance 2.0 – Regulation, digital identity, privacy, and ESG compliance.
Day three featured more impactful sessions across all four pillars, offering attendees more valuable insights and strategies for innovation.
Highlights from Key Sessions at Money20/20 Europe:
How to Create and Leverage FinBank Partnerships
The discussion focused on the evolution and success of FinTech partnerships with banks. Key points included the shift from transactional partnerships to more collaborative, value-driven relationships, emphasizing joint KPIs and product creation.
Alex Johnson, Chief Payments Officer, Nium
“You really have to differentiate. You really have to stand out for a bank to say, ‘Yeah, I like what you offer enough to go through, six months of onboarding.’ Dare I say, maybe more.”
John Power, SVP, Head of JVs & AQaaS, Fiserv
“The legacy system, it’s a fact of life. They’re there. They’re pervasive. They’re going to be here for a long time, and banks historically have made huge investments in those platforms and systems. So I think both the challenge for the for the bank and the opportunity for the FinTech is, how do you at the front end of those legacy systems develop new products that can scale and that you can bring cross border easily and readily.”
“It really is cutting the line to be able to deliver opportunity for customers and to be able to expand propositions for new customers.”
“The economic development supply chains shifting to low to middle income countries are incredibly important right now, and cross border payment rails have not been good in low middle income countries.”
Where Fintech goes Next: Tapping into Platforms and Verticals
The discussion centred on the democratisation of financial services through embedded finance. The panel emphasised the importance of data quality, personalisation, and strategic partnerships in delivering seamless financial experiences – ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and improving business efficiency.
“Embedded finance is going to be defined by region and use cases.”
Amy Loh, Chief Marketing Officer – Pipe
“Small businesses don’t want to manage their business through a bunch of different tools that are stitched together. They’re looking to platforms to do everything for them and keep high end services.”
“Most platforms or merchants out there trying to diversify revenue, and they will get auxiliary revenue, or maybe get primary revenue through FinTech activity.”
The Neobanks Strike Back
In a dynamic exploration of neobanking’s evolution, Ali Niknam revealed bunq’s remarkable journey from a tech-driven startup to a sustainably profitable digital bank. By leveraging AI across every aspect of their operations, bunq has transformed traditional banking, reducing support times to mere seconds and creating a hyper-personalised user experience. Niknam emphasised the power of user-centricity, showing how innovative features like simple stock trading and multi-language support can democratise financial services.
The bank’s strategic approach – focusing on user needs rather than investor expectations – has enabled them to expand thoughtfully, with plans to enter the UK and US markets. By embracing technological change and maintaining a relentless commitment to solving real customer problems, bunq exemplifies the next generation of banking.
Ali Niknam, Founder & CEO, bunq
“Somewhere in the 70s, we let go of the gold standard, and now currencies are basically floating. The only reason why a dollar or a euro is worth what it’s worth is because of trust and perception. Philosophically, it’s very logical that we have found another abstraction layer by introducing stablecoin, which is not much else than a byte number that has a denomination currency as a backing asset that itself doesn’t have anything as a backing asset. A lot of people might ask, ‘Why would you need a stablecoin? We have euros. I go get a coffee, pay with Apple Pay or cash.’ But there are many countries on this planet where the local currency is not stable. If your country has an inflation rate of 30,000% like Zimbabwe, you would really love to use a different currency. The US dollar has been the currency of choice, but as a normal person, you cannot access the US dollar. A US dollar stablecoin that you can access by simply having a mobile phone – that’s going to be transformational for large groups of people.”
Innovating When Regulation Can’t Keep Up: Lessons from NASA
Lisa Valencia covered an array of topics, from her 35 year career at NASA and Guinness World Record to the rise of private entities like SpaceX, which has launched 180 missions this year, and the increasing role of public-private partnerships in space exploration. The speaker also touched on international collaborations, particularly with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, and the potential for space tourism and colonization of the moon.
Lisa Valencia, Programme Manager/Electrical Engineer – Pioneering Space, LC (ex NASA)
“Back in the day, NASA got 4% of the national budget. Now it’s down to just 0.1%, so we’ve had to get creative with private partnerships. SpaceX is the perfect success story. They came to us in 2007 needing money after some rocket mishaps, and look at them now! From my balcony, I see their launches every other day. They’re planning 180 launches this year alone.Talk about a return on investment!”
“We’re planning to colonise the South Pole on the moon. The idea is to extract water and hydrogen from the regolith—both for living there and for fuel.”
Scaling Internationally in 2025: Funding, Innovating, and Breaking into New Markets
The conversation focused on the growth and strategy of fintech companies, particularly those with a strong presence in Europe and the US. The panel featured Ingo Uytdehaage, CEO and co-founder of Adyen, and Alexandre Prot, CEO of Qonto. Both leaders expressed a preference for organic growth over acquisitions, emphasizing the importance of scaling efficiently before pursuing an IPO.
Ingo Uytdehaage, CEO and co-founder of Adyen
“I think an important part of scaling a company is not just thinking about your product, but also considering the markets you want to address, and how you ensure you become local in each country.”
“We realised over time that if we really want to bring the customers, we need to have the best licenses to operate. A banking license gives you a lot of flexibility.”
“Being independent from other companies, other financial institutions, that gives you flexibility to build what your customers really want.”
“I think it’s very important, also in Europe, that we continue to be competitive. If you think about regulations and AI, we shouldn’t try to do things completely differently compared to the US.”
Alexandre Prot, CEO of Qonto
“We need to be very strict about tech integration and avoiding legacy which slows us down.”
“We still need to scale a lot before we have a successful IPO. A few team members are working on it and getting the company ready for it. But, the most important thing is just scaling efficiently in the business, and maybe an IPO would be welcome in a couple of years.”
Putting The F in Fintech
The panel discussion focused on the role of women in FinTech based on personal experiences.
Iana Dimitrova, CEO, OpenPayd
“At times, being underestimated is helpful, because if you’re seen as the competition, driving an agenda is becoming more difficult. So what I found, actually, over a period, is that bringing your emotional intelligence, leaving the ego outside of the outside of the room, and just focusing on execution is is incredibly helpful.”
Megan Cooper, CEO & Founder, Caywood
“The moment we start defining ourselves as like a female leader or a female entrepreneur, you almost kind of put yourself in a bit of a box. And so I think just seeing yourself on an equal playing field and then operating it on an equal playing field and interacting in that way is quite advantageous.”
“We can’t just want diversity and hope it happens. We actually have to be intentional about creating it.”
Valerie Kontor, Founder, Black in Fintech
“Black women make up 1.6% over the FinTech workforce, but when we look at the financial reality of black women by the age of 60, only 53% of black women have enough money in their bank account to retire. We need to start marrying people in FinTech and the people that we need to serve.”
Money20/20 Europe 2025 closed its doors but the next edition of the conference will return to Amsterdam from June 2–4, 2026, promising to continue the tradition of shaping the future of financial services…
Day two of Money20/20 Europe 2025 at RAI Amsterdam continued the momentum with a focus on digital assets, stablecoins, and…
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Day two of Money20/20 Europe 2025 at RAI Amsterdam continued the momentum with a focus on digital assets, stablecoins, and the evolving regulatory landscape. The event attracts over 8,000 attendees, including FinTech leaders, investors, and policymakers, all eager to explore the future of finance.
Money20/20 Conference Themes & Tracks
Money20/20 Europe 2025 is structured around four thematic content tracks:
Digital DNA – Exploring core infrastructure, platform strategies, and foundational technologies.
Embedded Intelligence – AI, machine learning, data strategies, and real-time analytics.
Beyond Fintech – Partnerships between fintechs and other sectors like retail, health, and climate.
Governance 2.0 – Regulation, digital identity, privacy, and ESG compliance.
Day two featured more impactful sessions across all four pillars, offering attendees further valuable insights and strategies for innovation.
Highlights from Key Sessions at Money20/20 Europe:
Digital Wallets and Co-opetition
A standout session featured industry leaders from Fluency, Curve, PayPal, and BLIK discussing the competitive yet collaborative nature of Europe’s digital wallet ecosystem. The panel delved into how traditional financial institutions and FinTech startups are navigating partnerships and competition to enhance user experiences and expand market reach.
Africa’s Fintech Innovation
Another significant discussion spotlighted Africa’s role in global fintech innovation. Representatives from 500 Global, Tech Safari, and Moniepoint highlighted how African startups are leveraging technology to drive financial inclusion and create scalable solutions that could influence global markets.
Digital Assets
A standout session featured Waqar Chaudry, Head of Digital Assets for Financing & Securities Services at Standard Chartered. In a fireside chat titled “The Digital Assets Opportunity: How Banks Can Win at Web3,” Chaudry, alongside Sygnum Bank’s Aliya Das Gupta, delved into the evolving landscape of digital assets.
Chaudry highlighted Standard Chartered’s initiatives in digital asset custody, tokenisation, and the launch of tokenised money market funds. Furthermore, he discussed the development of stablecoin solutions aimed at improving liquidity and settlement times. Chaudry underscored the importance of banks adopting robust digital asset strategies to meet growing client demands and navigate the complex regulatory environment. Drawing from his regulatory background at the Abu Dhabi Global Market, Chaudry provided a unique perspective on balancing innovation with compliance.
WealthTech Evolution
Leaders from Raisin, Upvest, and PensionBee explored the transformation of wealth management through AI and APIs. The panel emphasised the importance of personalised financial services and the integration of technology to meet the evolving needs of consumers.
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
A fireside chat with officials from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England provided insights into the development of the digital euro and pound. The discussion covered technical challenges, regulatory considerations, and the potential impact of CBDCs on the financial ecosystem.
Navigating the Evolving Cyber Threat Landscape
The financial services sector faces an unprecedented convergence of threats with sophisticated cyber attacks and the rise of new technologies… Recorded FutureCEO Christopher Ahlberg assessed the evolving threat landscape and strategies for building secure digital ecosytems. He was joined by In Security CEO Jane Frankland and Mastercard EVP Johan Gerber
Networking, Partnerships, and Brand Activations at Money20/20
Notable Announcements:
Money20/20 and FXC Intelligence Report: A collaborative report titled “How Will Europe’s Money Move in the Future?” was released, offering insights into the future of European cross-border payments and the impact of emerging technologies.
Policy Exchange Roundtables: Money20/20 introduced focused roundtable discussions involving central banks, regulators, and industry leaders to address critical regulatory challenges in the digital financial landscape
Day two of Money20/20 Europe 2025 underscored the dynamic interplay between traditional financial institutions and emerging FinTech innovations. Discussions on digital assets, stablecoins, and regulatory frameworks highlighted the industry’s commitment to embracing change while ensuring stability and compliance. The second day underscored the event’s role as a catalyst for innovation, collaboration, and growth within the fintech industry. As the conference progresses, stakeholders remain focused on shaping a resilient and inclusive financial future.
Money20/20 Europe 2025 opened its doors to a full-capacity audience at the RAI Convention Centre in Amsterdam. Bringing together the…
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Money20/20 Europe 2025 opened its doors to a full-capacity audience at the RAI Convention Centre in Amsterdam. Bringing together the world’s leading innovators, institutions, investors, and influencers from across the fintech and financial services spectrum. With more than 8,000 delegates from over 2,300 companies in attendance, the opening day set a high-energy, insight-rich tone for the rest of the week.
“Money Morning Live”
The day kicked off with “Money Morning Live”. A signature fast-paced keynote session hosted by Tracey Davies (President of Money20/20), Scarlett Sieber, and Zachary Anderson Pettet. The morning show served as a pulse check for the industry. Combining thought leadership with entertainment to engage both newcomers and veterans.
Rahul Patil, CTO of Stripe, delivered a keynote on AI’s role in payments infrastructure. Highlighting how machine learning is now essential for fraud detection, customer service, and onboarding. He emphasised AI should not merely be viewed as an efficiency tool, but as a strategic pillar to create personalised user experiences. And deliver scalable innovation across markets.
David Sandstrom, CMO at Klarna, reflected on the Swedish FinTech giant’s evolution, particularly its use of generative AI for customer engagement and internal operations. Sandstrom noted Klarna’s AI assistant, which now handles two-thirds of its customer queries globally, has dramatically improved both customer satisfaction and cost efficiency.
Money20/20 Conference Themes & Tracks
Money20/20 Europe 2025 is structured around four thematic content tracks:
Digital DNA – Exploring core infrastructure, platform strategies, and foundational technologies.
Embedded Intelligence – AI, machine learning, data strategies, and real-time analytics.
Beyond Fintech – Partnerships between fintechs and other sectors like retail, health, and climate.
Governance 2.0 – Regulation, digital identity, privacy, and ESG compliance.
Day one featured impactful sessions across all four pillars, offering attendees valuable insights and strategic foresight.
Highlights from Key Sessions at Money20/20 Europe:
Open Banking & Payment Rails
“Putting the Bank Back in Open Banking Payments”, saw speakers from Token.io, Santander, and BNP Paribas examine how banks are reclaiming relevance in the open banking conversation. While FinTechs initially led the charge, the panel noted banks now play a crucial role in building trusted, interoperability, and high-volume “pay by bank” solutions. The debate touched on customer adoption hurdles, PSD3’s role in shaping future APIs, and the monetisation challenges still plaguing the open banking model.
Card Issuance at Scale
In a fireside chat led by Thredd’s President Jim McCarthy, representatives from Railsr, Worldpay, Flagship Advisory, and Caxton discussed the complexities of issuing card programs globally. The group addressed fragmentation across regulatory environments. Especially in regions like LATAM and Asia-Pacific. They urged the need for programmatic flexibility, local compliance, and better BIN management. The panel agreed that the future of card issuing lies in seamless orchestration between platforms, banks, and third-party fintechs.
Agentic AI: Ready for Prime Time?
A standout session focused on the concept of Agentic AI — autonomous agents capable of completing financial tasks without manual prompts. Industry leaders from NVIDIA, bunq, and Visa debated how ready the financial services sector truly is for deploying such systems. While the technology is progressing rapidly, concerns around regulatory clarity, model interpretability, and risk frameworks remain.
NVIDIA’s Head of Financia Technology, Jochen Papenbrock, stressed the need to democratise access to compute infrastructure. And bunq’s AI evangelist, Ali El Hassouni, showcased how the challenger bank is testing semi-autonomous agents in customer support workflows. Meanwhile, Visa SVP for Products & Solutions, Mathieu Altwegg,emphasised the importance of embedding guardrails in agentic systems to ensure ethical AI practices. Especially in credit scoring and wealth advisory roles.
Scaling AI Across the Enterprise
A collaborative session featuring leaders from Stripe, Starling Bank, AWS, and Swift delved into the challenges of scaling AI initiatives beyond prototypes. The discussion spotlighted the importance of clean, real-time data pipelines, strong governance structures, and cross-functional collaboration between engineering, data science, and compliance teams.
Networking, Partnerships, and Brand Activations at Money20/20
Notable announcements:
Beyond the conference rooms, the exhibition floors buzzed with product demos, startup pitches, and impromptu huddles among VC firms, banks, and emerging FinTechs. Exhibitors such as Plaid, Adyen, Marqeta, and Fireblocks showcased new tools for embedded finance, real-time treasury management, and blockchain settlement.
Wise teased a new enterprise FX tool tailored for SMEs.
Checkout.com introduced an AI-enhanced fraud prevention dashboard.
Avalanche Foundation launched an initiative to bring blockchain-based micro-insurance products to underserved markets in Eastern Europe.
A particularly significant development emerged around stablecoins, with clear signals that regulated, bank-issued digital currencies are entering a new phase of maturity:
U.S. Megabanks Signal Joint Stablecoin Initiative Executives from JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup confirmed that initial groundwork has begun on a joint U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, subject to the passage of the pending GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins). The stablecoin aims to offer faster, cheaper cross-border settlement and programmable liquidity for enterprise clients. Bank leaders emphasized that this would complement, not replace, traditional banking rails.
Ripple Expands in the UAE In a regional announcement, Zand Bank and fintech firm Mamo revealed a partnership with Ripple, using its blockchain infrastructure to enable real-time, low-cost cross-border remittances. This move, anchored in the UAE’s pro-digital asset stance, aligns with broader ambitions to make the country a hub for regulated digital currencies.
Institutional Stablecoin Custody Panels featuring speakers from Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital, and Circle addressed the evolving role of stablecoins in treasury operations and FX management. There was widespread agreement that tokenised cash equivalents, including USDC and EURC, are increasingly being used for short-term settlement and yield farming, particularly in Asia and Europe.
These discussions signalled a broader institutional acceptance of stablecoins, with an emphasis on compliance, transparency, and integration into traditional finance rather than bypassing it.
Day one of Money20/20 Europe 2025 delivered on its promise of convening the brightest minds to create the future of finance. From headline-grabbing keynotes and deep-dive panels to global product launches and off-stage networking, the conference created a rich mix of thought leadership, practical innovation, and human connection.
Whether it was the evolution of AI in banking, the future of programmable money, or the balance between innovation and regulation, the discussions revealed a clear consensus: collaboration will define the next chapter of FinTech. Day two at Money20/20 promises even more, with upcoming sessions on decentralised finance, digital identity, and CBDCs.
Paul O’Sullivan, Global Head of Banking & Lending at Aryza, on how Open Banking is reshaping the financial ecosystem
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As Open Banking continues to gain momentum, it is poised to fundamentally reshape the financial ecosystem. Not only regarding how institutions operate but also in how individuals understand, manage, and trust their money. With secure data sharing at its core, Open Banking represents more than just a technological shift. It signals a transformation in the relationship between people and their finances.
This piece explores five key areas where Open Banking is set to make its mark in the years to come…
Transforming Society’s Relationship with Money
Open Banking has the opportunity to reshape society’s relationship with money by providing greater transparency and enabling a more comprehensive view of personal finances. This heightened visibility is made possible by securely sharing financial data with trusted third-party providers. And empowering individuals to monitor spending habits, track expenses, and compare financial products and services more easily.
Providing greater transparency and access to financial data will improve financial education for all by enabling a deeper analysis of trends across various activities. As a result, consumers can make more informed decisions. This can improve overall financial education and help to foster a healthier, more sustainable relationship with money.
Additionally, Open Banking paves the way for more personalised financial solutions, as institutions compete to offer tailored services that meet the unique needs of customers. This increased choice not only boosts consumer confidence in managing their finances but also catalyses innovation within the financial sector. Ultimately, the shift toward Open Banking is poised to create a more dynamic, customer-centric financial services landscape. Moreover, one that will significantly enhance how individuals and businesses manage their money.
The Convergence of Open Banking and AI
The data provided by Open Banking should work hand in hand with AI to offer consumers advice on managing their finances. Whether that means making changes to their habits or finding more affordable products, in turn transforming financial guidance and creating a more personalised and efficient financial ecosystem.
By enabling the secure sharing of consumer data, Open Banking provides the foundation for AI-driven solutions to analyse real-time information and offer tailored recommendations. This coule be suggesting improvements to spending habits or automating routine processes. Such AI-enabled tools will empower individuals to make more informed, data-driven decisions about their money.
This synergy will go beyond surface-level insights, delivering hyper-personalised services that address each customer’s unique financial needs and preferences. The resulting efficiencies, such as automated account management, transaction processing, and even customer support, free human resources to focus on more complex issues. Ultimately, this combination of Open Banking and AI promises to enhance the overall customer experience. It can provide actionable, real-time support that helps individuals navigate their financial journeys more confidently and effectively.
Evolving the Role of Traditional Banks
While it’s still early to say for certain, traditional banks could indeed evolve into more utility-like services in an Open Banking world. We’re already seeing indications of this shift, with more consumers increasingly switching their banking services and using multiple accounts. Open Banking is a disruptive force that fosters greater competition and choice, enabling consumers to pick and choose the financial solutions that best meet their needs.
To remain relevant, traditional banks are urged to embrace Open Banking rather than resist it. By securely leveraging customer data and collaborating with FinTechs and other third-party providers, they can create more specialised, value-added products and services. In doing so, banks can move beyond mere utility status. They can position themselves at the forefront of innovation while enhancing the overall customer experience in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Redefining Financial Trust and Identity
Open Banking is not only transforming technology infrastructure; it’s also redefining core principles such as trust, identity, and control. It will increase transparency by giving individuals a holistic view of their financial data. In turn, empowering them to track spending patterns, compare financial products, and make more informed decisions. Secondly, it enhances consumer control over personal data, as customers can grant or revoke access to trusted third-party providers. Therefore strengthening accountability and fostering greater confidence in the system.
Furthermore, digital identity solutions replace traditional verification processes, enabling expanded access to financial services. This will ensure more people can participate in the banking system with ease. Underpinning these developments are trust frameworks, which establish standardised measures for data sharing, allowing banks, FinTechs and other providers to collaborate while maintaining consistent protection for users.
A key emerging factor is the use of advanced cryptography and multi-factor authentication so that both individuals and financial institutions can operate confidently in a secure environment. This heightened focus on security and privacy can help mitigate concerns around data breaches and identity theft. Further strengthening consumer trust.
By introducing new layers of transparency, giving consumers control over their data, and leveraging digital identity and robust security measures, Open Banking shifts our collective understanding of financial trust and identity. It moves us toward a future where trust is shared among various stakeholders. Security is paramount and individuals play a more active role in shaping their financial journeys.
Harnessing Open Banking Data for Monetary Policy
While often discussed through the lens of consumer empowerment, Open Banking may also prove to be instrumental in supporting smarter economic decision-making at a national level. Financial data through open banking could play a significant role in creating new tools for monetary policy. Particularly as the global financial system becomes increasingly interconnected. By providing governments and regulators with real-time insights into consumer spending patterns and business creditworthiness, Open Banking allows for more precise and targeted policy interventions. This data-driven approach can enable policymakers to respond swiftly to economic shifts. They could tailor interest rates, liquidity measures, and other monetary policy tools to specific sectors or demographics.
Having access to comprehensive, standardised data can enhance the accuracy of economic forecasts and models. This leads to more informed decisions that can foster stability and growth in the economy. However, implementing these advanced tools requires robust data protection measures and regulatory frameworks to ensure the privacy and security of financial information. When managed responsibly, the fusion of Open Banking data and monetary policymaking promises to bolster both economic resilience and consumer trust.
Charting the Path Ahead for Financial Innovation
Open Banking is not just a new chapter in financial services, it’s a complete rewrite of how we engage with money, institutions, and technology. From personalised advice and AI integration to regulatory impact and redefined trust, the changes ahead are both profound and far-reaching. The next decade will be shaped by how institutions adapt, how consumers respond, and how effectively we harness data to deliver meaningful, secure, and transparent financial experiences.
Join 2,500+ attendees at Excel, London June 18-19 for the Financial Transformation Summit
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Financial Transformation Summit is the industry’s most influential event, connecting banking, insurance, wealth and lending professionals with the companies transforming the industry. Book your place here.
Financial Transformation Summit
Join over 2,500 attendees to gain insights from 300 inspiring expert speakers from the likes of Lloyds Banking Group, Deutsche Bank, Santander, Aviva, Monzo, Accenture and more. Connect with an unparalleled programme of interactive sessions and share perspectives on the topics defining the future of financial services.
At the heart of the summit are 400 roundtables, ensuring every attendee has a voice in shaping the industry’s future. This is the Financial Services industry’s biggest roundtable event, designed to facilitate real conversations, meaningful connections and actionable insights.
Engage with industry peers in dynamic discussions that spark innovation and drive change. Dive deep into critical topics, share insights, and debate strategies that shape the future of banking, insurance, wealth management and lending.
One Ticket, Four Summits
MoneyNext Summit brings together the brightest minds in financial services to explore the future of banking, wealth management, lending, and insurance.
Benefit from the combined power and synergies of four transformative events… The Financial Transformation Summit comprises four summits across Banking, Insurance, Wealth and Lending.
Explore the topics transforming financial services across an interactive agenda with 14 key themes. Gain practical knowledge: Benefit from interactive demos, case studies, and best practices. Expand your horizons: Experience an inspiring and thought-provoking learning journey.
Melinda Roylett, Managing Director of Merchant Services at Lloyds Banking Group, on how the UK’s small and medium sized businesses can navigate the payments maze
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Cashflow is the lifeblood of any business, yet it remains one of the most unpredictable aspects for SMBs. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, half of UK businesses have experienced cashflow problems. Many cite late payments as a major issue. Thankfully, banking and payment providers are stepping up with innovative and integrated services that make every transaction count.
At the recent ‘Payments Disrupted’ event, co-hosted by Lloyds and Visa at the Shard in London, they revealed exclusive business sector trends and consumer spending data. It highlighted areas of opportunity for SMBs – provided they have the tech and expert support to guide them.
The most recent Lloyds Business Barometer shows that business confidence has rebounded to the highest level since August 2024. Nevertheless, firms still cited rising costs and economic uncertainty as major obstacles to growth and investment. These challenges are not new. However, many SMBs could be overlooking an effective way to deal with them through unified payment solutions.
With the right strategies and tools, businesses can navigate complexities and unpredictability with confidence. Furthermore, they can unlock data-driven insights, cost savings, and the increased operational resilience and adaptability to cope with whatever the future throws at them.
Cashflow challenges
Sectors like retail and hospitality, where many businesses are operating on razor-thin margins, are particularly affected. Supply chain disruptions, the need to invest in growth, and seasonal fluctuations, like summer holidays, or peak sales events like Black Friday, can strain available funds.
For instance, businesses may experience cash-rich periods during peak seasons but struggle to meet operational expenses during quieter times. And with inflation still relatively high, the rising costs of materials, transportation, and labour further exacerbate cashflow challenges.
Cashflow problems inevitably have a way of seeping into other areas of the business. When cashflow is constrained, it prevents investment in the tools and tech businesses need to function properly. And they could miss out on new services that could streamline operations and lower costs.
Payment method and integration complexities
In a world of e-commerce, customer loyalty is not just about offering the best products or services. It’s about delivering a seamless and personalised experience at every touchpoint. According to UK Finance, 85% of UK consumers now use contactless payments – mobile wallet transactions are expected to account for 39% of all POS transactions by 2025. However, only 60% of small businesses have fully integrated digital payment solutions, leaving many at risk of falling behind.
Businesses can feel bewildered when confronted with the array of payment services that have emerged. Today’s customers expect seamless, secure, and diverse payment options, whether they’re shopping online or in-store. From contactless payments and mobile wallets to QR codes and pay-by-bank solutions, businesses must keep pace with these trends to remain competitive.
A smooth checkout experience, for instance, can be a significant competitive advantage. According to Visa, 59% of consumers consider a good checkout experience as important as having the best products. And 57% say a poor payment experience is enough to make them switch to a competitor.
However, integrating the payment methods that customers want can be complex, especially for SMBs with limited resources and expertise. Lloyds’ own research found that 49% of businesses say they find the choice of payment gateways in today’s market overwhelming. Considering the many data security and compliance obligations they’re facing, it’s no wonder that SMBs are asking for more help from their payment providers.
SMBs can navigate payment complexities with the right partner
To overcome these complexities, SMBs can partner with payment providers like Lloyds Merchant Services that offer integrated payment solutions, spanning point-of-sale (POS) and omnichannel acceptance. Such solutions not only simplify the payment process but also provide valuable insights into customer behaviour, enabling businesses to tailor their offerings and enhance the customer experience.
There are other benefits of working with integrated payment solutions. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are increasingly powering a lot of the business decisions that SMBs make. For example, to foster loyalty, businesses must go beyond basic payment processing and offer value-added services such as loyalty programmes, personalised discounts, and data-driven insights.
By analysing spending behaviours, businesses can identify trends and tailor their offerings to meet customer needs. For instance, a restaurant might use payment data to identify its most loyal customers and offer them discounts to encourage repeat visits. So, being connected to these ISVs is increasingly important to ensure consistent payment performance.
Lloyds Merchant Services has fostered partnerships with leading ISVs and tech vendors to offer the most comprehensive service range in the market. From our partnerships with PayPoint and extending our services to its 60,000-strong merchant network, to our POS device and infrastructure relationships with Fiserv, FreedomPay and Epos Now, we cover almost every business need, with scalability built-in. With Epos Now’s advanced POS, offering a powerful end-to-end solution, SMBs have access to payment acceptance technology that is robust yet flexible and can adapt changing customer needs.
That includes our flexible Merchant Cash Advance offering which provides quick access to capital based on future card sales. Differing to traditional loans, MCA allows businesses to pay the advance as a percentage of their card transactions, ensuring that payments are in sync with their cashflow. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for businesses with seasonal revenue streams, as it removes the stress of fixed monthly payments during low-income periods.
Prepare for the future now
The future of payments is increasingly digital, and businesses that provide customers with the best payment experiences will thrive. Businesses must invest in scalable payment solutions that can adapt to evolving technologies and consumer preferences. By adopting integrated payment solutions, SMBs can navigate the complexities of cash flows, rising operational costs, and evolving customer expectations. Moreover, by leveraging value-added services and staying ahead of technological trends, businesses can foster customer loyalty and drive sustainable growth.
Partnering with a knowledgeable payments provider that offers service and support that meet different business needs, dedicated relationship management, and industry insights can be a game-changer. It can give SMBs the agility and access to innovation they need to be profitable now and into the future. With expert support at every step, businesses can not only survive today but also seize the opportunities of tomorrow.
Sprout, the creator of a smarter mortgage payment platform to drive financial freedom, has been named the winner of of…
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Sprout, the creator of a smarter mortgage payment platform to drive financial freedom, has been named the winner of of Pitch360 at Level39 during UK FinTech Week.
Sprout’s Co-Founder, Asis Tewari, thanked the judges and organisers for running an inspiring session and offered praise for fellow finalists. “It was a privilege to pitch alongside such passionate and innovative founders. We learned a lot… Thank you also to London Business School and Jeff Skinner for helping validate our journey, and to Sir Andrew Likierman for giving us the confidence to kick off. And for introducing us to Professor Joao F. Cocco and his white paper on Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Housing.”
Sprout
Sprout empowers homeowners to build lasting wealth by making smarter mortgage decisions. With AI-driven insights, smart automation, and a user-friendly interface, it can simplify homeownership – aligning your mortgage with long-term financial goals and future flexibility.
Tewari was inspired to launch Sprout after a dinner with Anil Agarwal, billionaire industrialist and Chairman of Vedanta… “He told me: The only way to build real wealth is through investing in markets — and every generation needs to start as early as possible.”
Why Use Sprout?
Do you know the true return of your property? Sprout tracks the real costs and value of your property to give an accurate return.
Are your mortgage repayments really building wealth? Sprout makes it simple to allocate your payment wisely, giving you the ability to pay down your mortgage smarter.
Is your money working hard for you? Sprout gives you exclusive access to best-in-class funds.
Pitch360
Innovate Finance’s flagship pitching competition, Pitch360, is taking place across the UK in 2025. There are six regional pitch events across a 12-month campaign, featuring live events in the North, South West, Midlands, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Pitch360 shines a spotlight on the best FinTech talent and emerging technologies the UK has to offer. It’s aim is to showcase how FinTech innovation can help drive the growth agenda and transform financial services.
Find out about future events, and apply to pitch, here.
About Innovate Finance
Innovate Finance is the independent industry body for UK FinTech. It’s mission is to accelerate the UK’s leading role in the financial services sector. It does this by directly supporting the next generation of technology-led innovators to create a more inclusive, more democratic and more effective financial services sector that works better for everyone.
The Embedded Finance Market is estimated at $115.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $251.5 billion by 2029, at a…
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The Embedded Finance Market is estimated at $115.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $251.5 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 16.8% from 2024 to 2029, according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets.
Embedded Finance disruption
The embedded finance market is experiencing a massive disruption because of the development of technologies such as API, AI, and Blockchain. This capability allows companies to incorporate financial services into their platforms, delivering consistent and unique solutions. Furthermore, demand for complex, value-added, readily available services that can be offered in real-time has prompted firms in almost all industries to embrace Embedded Finance.
This shift helps non-financial firms to provide banking, lending, insurance, and payment services, which fortifies customer relations and generates more revenues. This market is divided into segments based on different aspects, such as the type, business model, and industry. These segments collectively offer a comprehensive overview of the evolving Embedded Finance landscape and its potential business implications.
By 2029, the Embedded Finance market is expected to have a robust growth trajectory
Substantial growth in the embedded finance market is driven by the rising digitalisation of financial services and the emergence of customised solutions across diverse industries. The seamless integration of financial services into non-financial platforms is being facilitated by technologies such as APIs and artificial intelligence, which are playing a crucial role in this transformation. Sectors such as healthcare, eCommerce, and transportation are increasingly adopting embedded payments, lending, and insurance to improve customer experiences and streamline operations. This expansion is driven by both B2B and B2C models, as businesses collaborate with FinTech providers to integrate financial services into their ecosystems. Customer relationships are being strengthened and new revenue opportunities are being unlocked.
Based on industry, the healthcare sector is expected to have the highest growth rate
The growing need for hassle-free, patient-focused payment solutions has led to the incorporation of embedded finance solutions into healthcare platforms. Digital health technologies, such as telemedicine and wearable devices, are driving the integration of payment, lending, and insurance options in the healthcare sector. Regulatory support for innovation in FinTech and healthcare, along with the demand for affordable and precise billing systems, is speeding up adoption for Embedded Finance solutions. Moreover, collaborations between FinTech companies and healthcare providers are making way for tailored financial products, enhancing patient access to care while simplifying provider revenue cycles. These factors are driving the widespread adoption of Embedded Finance in the healthcare industry, supporting the growth rate of the market and underscoring its transformative potential in the healthcare sector.
FinTech innovation is thriving
FinTech innovation is giving way to a thriving market in North America. Companies are now directly incorporating financial services, such as payments, lending, and insurance, directly into their core offerings. Companies such as Stripe, PayPal, and Plaid, which provide comprehensive solutions to enable other businesses to integrate financial capabilities efficiently, are leading the Embedded Finance sector in the United States. Canada is witnessing growth in the market, with companies like Shopify integrating payment and financing options into their eCommerce platform, thus improving the customer experience. The US Embedded Finance market is more mature, whereas Canada is catching up and the market growth would be facilitated by its robust technology ecosystem and supportive regulation.
MoneyLIVE Summit 2025: A stellar combination of thought leadership, cutting-edge technology showcases and unparalleled networking opportunities
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The MoneyLIVE Summit 2025, held on March 10th-11th at London’s Business Design Centre, once again positioned itself as one of the most significant events in the banking and financial services industry. With over 1,500 attendees, 200+ speakers, and an agenda packed with insights on digital transformation, AI-driven innovation, and payment advancements, the event delivered a comprehensive overview of the future of financial services.
As one of Europe’s most influential FinTech and banking conferences, MoneyLIVE Summit attracted executives from leading institutions, including HSBC, Revolut, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Google, and Mastercard, providing attendees with unparalleled networking opportunities and deep dives into the latest industry developments.
The 2025 edition of MoneyLIVE Summit focused on several key themes within the financial sector, including:
AI and Automation in Banking
The Future of Payments and Open Banking
Sustainability and ESG in Finance
The Evolution of Embedded Finance
Cybersecurity and Fraud Prevention
Modernising Legacy Systems
AI and Automation: The Next Frontier
One of the most anticipated discussions centredd on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation in Financial Services. Keynote speakers such as Taylan Turan (CEO, Retail Banking, HSBC) and Francesca Carlesi (CEO, Revolut UK) highlighted how AI is revolutionising customer interactions, risk assessments, and fraud detection.
A standout panel featured representatives from Google Cloud, Lloyds Banking Group, and Monzo, discussing the ethical implications of AI-driven banking and how institutions can balance efficiency with regulatory compliance. The consensus? AI is no longer a futuristic concept but an operational necessity.
On the opening day we spoke with Tim Mason, Managing Director for Artificial Intelligence at Deutsche Bank, and Publicis Sapient VP Jan-Willem Weggemans, about the rise of Agentic AI. Look out for this feature in the May edition of FinTech Strategy Magazine. Publicis Sapient also hosted an AI Champions Meet Up.
The Future of Payments and Open Banking
With open banking continuing to disrupt traditional financial models, this year’s summit included multiple sessions on its evolution. Speakers from Visa, Mastercard and Stripe explored how real-time payments and digital wallets are reshaping the customer experience.
One of the most engaging sessions was on CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and the impact of digital currencies on global trade. Representatives from the Bank of England and the European Central Bank provided valuable insights into regulatory developments and the long-term feasibility of CBDCs in mainstream banking.
Sustainability and ESG in Finance
The financial industry’s role in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives was another critical theme. With growing investor interest in sustainable finance, executives from Barclays, NatWest, and BlackRock discussed how banks can integrate ESG principles into lending and investment strategies.
A major highlight was a fireside chat with Ana Botín, Executive Chairman of Santander Group, who emphasised the need for banks to take the lead in financing climate action while maintaining profitability. She stressed that FinTech innovation must align with sustainability goals to drive real change.
Notable Speakers & Thought Leadership
MoneyLIVE Summit 2025 featured an impressive lineup of speakers, including CEOs, policymakers, and FinTech pioneers. Notable names included:
Francesca Carlesi (CEO, Revolut UK) – Discussed the role of challenger banks in redefining customer expectations.
Taylan Turan (CEO, Retail Banking, HSBC) – Spoke about how traditional banks must adapt to stay competitive in an increasingly digital world.
Saif Malik (CEO, UK, Standard Chartered Bank) – Shared insights on the rise of embedded finance and its impact on global banking.
Anne Boden (Founder, Starling Bank) – Highlighted the impact of neobanks on legacy banking institutions.
Google Cloud & AWS Representatives – Covered AI’s growing role in fraud prevention and customer engagement.
Lee McNabb (Head of Payment Strategy, NatWest) – Shared views on modernising core payment architecture for the long term.
The diversity of perspectives provided attendees with a well-rounded understanding of the industry’s challenges and opportunities in the coming years.
MoneyLIVE Networking & Attendee Experience
Networking has always been a key highlight of MoneyLIVE Summit, and the 2025 edition did not disappoint. The event provided ample opportunities for professionals to connect, with dedicated networking zones, private meeting areas, and an exclusive VIP lounge for C-level executives.
The FinTech Startup Village was a must-visit area, showcasing some of the most innovative fintech startups in Europe. Several emerging companies, specializing in AI-driven financial advisory, blockchain-based payments, and RegTech solutions, presented their groundbreaking products.
A standout initiative was the Women in Finance Roundtable, which focused on fostering greater gender diversity in leadership roles within the financial industry. Featuring influential female leaders from Citi, JPMorgan, and Monzo, the discussion encouraged actionable steps towards inclusivity and representation. Publicis Sapient also hosted a networking session on Celebrating Women in Finance.
Exhibition & Innovation Showcase
The exhibition hall was bustling with activity, featuring booths from major players like IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Salesforce, as well as FinTech disruptors showcasing cutting-edge solutions. Attendees had the opportunity to experience hands-on product demos, including AI-powered chatbots, biometric authentication for secure banking, and blockchain-based smart contract platforms.
One of the most talked-about innovations was Quantum Computing in Financial Services, presented by IBM. Experts explored how quantum computing could enhance complex financial modelling, risk analysis, and fraud detection, potentially transforming the industry in the next decade.
Key Takeaways & Industry Impact
MoneyLIVE Summit reaffirmed its reputation as a forward-thinking, insightful event that brings together the brightest minds in finance and technology. Some of the key takeaways included:
AI is mainstream – Banks and fintech firms must embrace AI-driven solutions to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
Payments are evolving rapidly – With open banking, digital wallets, and real-time payments on the rise, banks need to innovate or risk being left behind.
Cybersecurity remains a top priority – With increased digital transactions, fraud prevention and regulatory compliance are more critical than ever.
Sustainability cannot be ignored – ESG-focused financial strategies are no longer optional but a necessity for long-term growth and investor confidence.
Embedded Finance is the future – Traditional banks and fintechs must collaborate to integrate financial services seamlessly into everyday life.
MoneyLIVE: The Verdict
MoneyLIVE Summit 2025 lived up to expectations, delivering a stellar combination of thought leadership, cutting-edge technology showcases and unparalleled networking opportunities. For professionals in banking, payments, fintech, or regulatory compliance, this event provided invaluable insights into the industry’s trajectory.
The only potential downside? With so many high-quality sessions running simultaneously, attendees had to make tough choices about which discussions to prioritise. However, the availability of on-demand session recordings meant that all the key insights attendees need were available.
With an impressive lineup of speakers, a strong focus on industry trends, and excellent networking opportunities, MoneyLIVE Summit remains a must-attend event for financial professionals looking to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.
Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR, looks at the changing face of Embedded Finance and the rise of the API economy
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The business world is changing. If you are paying attention, you will notice one of the most exciting transformations happening right now is Embedded Finance. We hear a lot about APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and how they power our digital lives. However, what’s really grabbing attention is the rise of the API economy. Specifically, people are excited about how embedded finance is reshaping how businesses interact with their customers.
So, what’s all the fuss about, and why should you care? Let’s dive in.
What is Embedded Finance Anyway?
At its core, Embedded Finance means integrating financial services into non-financial platforms. It allows companies to offer banking-like services – think payments, lending, and insurance – directly within their apps or websites, without needing to be a bank themselves.
It’s like how Uber lets you pay for your ride without ever leaving the app. Uber isn’t a bank, but through embedded finance, it can offer seamless payment options, providing an effortless user experience. The user doesn’t need to think about the financial side of things; it just happens in the background. And that’s the magic of embedded finance – it’s smooth, simple, and frictionless.
APIs: The Backbone of Seamless Integration
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the unsung heroes enabling the smooth interaction between different software systems. They allow platforms to communicate and share data effortlessly, acting as bridges between various services. For instance, when companies like Airbnb incorporate payment processing, they rely on APIs to connect with third-party providers like Stripe or PayPal. Without these connections, seamless financial interactions would not be impossible.
In the past, businesses that wanted to offer financial services had to build out much of the infrastructure themselves. However, with the rise of the API economy, this complexity has been drastically reduced. Companies can now integrate ready-made financial services quickly and focus on their core offerings.
However, while APIs handle much of the heavy lifting, they aren’t the whole solution. They still need to be connected to the devices or systems using them. This involves stitching them together through a middle layer that coordinates the various API functions, along with coding a front-end interface that users interact with.
In essence, APIs provide the building blocks, but there’s still a need for a tailored architecture to ensure everything operates smoothly – from the back-end infrastructure to the user-friendly front end. This layered approach ensures businesses can offer a seamless experience without getting bogged down by technical complexities.
Why the API Economy is Booming
The API economy is booming because it allows businesses to be more agile, innovative, and customer-centric. APIs give companies the flexibility to offer services they wouldn’t have been able to in the past. A clothing retailer can offer point-of-sale (POS) financing without becoming a bank, or a fitness app can offer health insurance with the click of a button.
Think about Klarna, a company that’s become a household name by offering “buy now, pay later” services. Klarna partners with thousands of retailers, allowing them to provide flexible payment options directly within their checkout process. The retailer doesn’t have to worry about the complexities of lending—it’s all handled by Klarna’s Embedded Finance platform through APIs.
This creates a win-win situation: customers get more flexible payment options, and retailers can drive conversions without any of the financial headaches.
How Embedded Finance is Connecting Customers to the World
Embedded Finance is all about breaking down barriers between industries and creating better, more holistic experiences for customers. And it’s not just about payments—it extends to lending, insurance, and even investments.
Take Revolut, the digital bank that started as a foreign exchange app but now offers everything from insurance to cryptocurrency trading. By using APIs to embed these financial services into their platform, Revolut has transformed into an all-in-one financial hub. Customers don’t need to visit different apps or websites for banking, insurance, or investments – they can do it all within Revolut.
The world of e-commerce has certainly embraced the world of embedded finance, Shopify, the e-commerce platform, has built it directly into its ecosystem. Through its Shopify Capital programme, the company offers its merchants quick access to business loans. This seamless integration is made possible by APIs, allowing Shopify to assess a merchant’s financial data and offer lending without the need for the merchant to seek out external financing. It’s fast, convenient, and keeps businesses within the Shopify ecosystem, further strengthening customer loyalty.
A New Level of Personalisation
This is more than just making payments easier – it’s about giving customers a more personalised, seamless experience. By tapping into financial data, businesses can offer products and services that really hit the mark for each individual.
Take travel apps like Skyscanner, for example. They’ve made things super convenient by embedding travel insurance right into the booking process, so, when you’re booking a flight, you can easily add travel insurance without even leaving the app. It’s all about creating a one-stop shop that gives you exactly what you need, right when you need it.
The Future
The API economy, particularly in the realm of Embedded Finance, is just getting started. Over the next few years, we can expect to see more industries leveraging this technology to enhance their offerings and create richer customer experiences. Everything from health tech to real estate is ripe for disruption.
However, it’s not just about jumping on the bandwagon. Companies need to be strategic about how they implement embedded finance. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it’s crucial to understand how these services align with your business goals and customer needs.
The rise of the API economy and embedded finance is opening up new doors for businesses and customers alike. By embedding financial services into non-financial platforms, companies are not only streamlining operations but also creating more value for their customers.
Embedded Finance is already making waves across industries, from retail to tech, and the businesses that are brave enough to embrace it are positioning themselves at the cutting edge of this transformation. For customers, it’s opening the door to a world that’s more connected, convenient, and tailored to their needs. It’s not about whether embedded finance will change the way we do business – it’s about how quickly it’s happening, and which companies are ready to step up and lead the charge.
So, whether you’re running an e-commerce business, developing a tech platform, or simply thinking about how to better serve your customers, it’s time to consider how embedded finance can connect your customers to the world in ways you never thought possible.
James Butland, VP – Payment Network at Mangopay, on meeting the needs of the gig economy with Embedded Finance payment solutions
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Specialised payment solutions supported by Embedded Finance have become essential for supporting the gig economy. They offer speed, accessibility, and security in financial transactions.
The global gig economy is forecast to reach a value of $1847 billion by 2032, reflecting its rapid expansion and impact on the workforce. This growth has unlocked flexibility and autonomy for workers. Furthermore, it has also introduced unique financial challenges, particularly in payment systems. With so many platforms available for freelancers, each one strives to offer the best experience. To succeed in the competitive world of the gig economy and handle changes in demand and pricing, platforms need to adapt fast.
Embedded Finance is a Transformative Force
Embedded Finance is emerging as a transformative force for gig workers. It simplifies payment processes and enhances financial management. Its impact is already evident in the streamlining of payments. Instead of waiting for traditional payroll cycles, gig workers can now access their earnings instantly. Empowering them with greater control over their finances. This approach not only alleviates cash flow challenges but also facilitates more effective ways of working for freelancers.
Moreover, Embedded Finance enables seamless partnerships with gig economy platforms. By integrating directly into these platforms, Embedded Finance solutions allow gig workers to manage all financial processes, from receiving payments to tracking earnings, without leaving the platform. For example, partnerships with wallet-based infrastructure providers enable secure, efficient fund dissemination. Meanwhile, laying the groundwork for additional revenue opportunities through wallet-facilitated transactions. This integration enhances both worker experience and platform capabilities, fostering a more cohesive gig economy ecosystem.
Flexible, Fast Payouts
The gig economy is global by nature, requiring financial solutions that can support businesses and workers across borders. Flexible FX infrastructure plays a crucial role in streamlining contractor management by ensuring seamless multi-currency payments, compliance, and administrative efficiency. This type of infrastructure empowers platforms to reduce operational costs and improve the overall user experience for both businesses and gig workers.
By leveraging modular and flexible FX solutions, employment and HR platforms can cater to specific use cases, such as managing international contractor payments. These solutions not only enable compliant and efficient transactions but also simplify processes. This allows businesses to focus on core operations while offering a seamless experience to their users. Such advancements highlight the potential of integrated financial technology to address complex cross-border payment needs effectively.
For gig workers, income can often be irregular, leading to cash flow uncertainties and financial stress. Specialised payment solutions, powered by Embedded Finance, address this by enabling instant payouts. By integrating low-fee processing and real-time transaction capabilities, these platforms bypass the delays of traditional payroll systems. This provides workers with immediate access to their earnings.
The ability to access income in real time is more than a convenience; it is a critical lifeline for workers managing daily expenses, emergencies, or reinvestment in their work. This advancement significantly enhances financial stability, helping to sustain the gig economy as a viable career path.
Digital Wallets
A substantial number of gig workers operate outside conventional banking systems, lacking access to savings accounts, credit, or other essential financial services. Digital wallets and cross-border payment capabilities, key elements of Embedded Finance, are integral to addressing this gap. These tools allow gig workers to securely store and manage their funds, receive payments in multiple currencies, and make transactions with ease.
Additionally, digital wallets serve as more than just repositories for funds. They can include features such as budgeting tools, savings trackers, and credit-building capabilities. These tools enable gig workers to manage their finances more effectively while opening up new opportunities for growth and security. For instance, workers can build credit profiles through wallet-based transaction histories, unlocking access to financial services that were previously out of reach.
Security and Growth
As the gig economy increasingly relies on digital platforms, the importance of secure and adaptable financial solutions cannot be overstated. AI insights and data-driven credit assessments are creating robust ecosystems tailored to the needs of gig workers.
AI powered advanced analytics are transforming the way gig workers manage their finances. These tools can identify financial trends and provide actionable insights tailored to the individual. For instance, they can recommend optimal saving strategies or suggest the best times to withdraw funds, enabling workers to make smarter financial decisions and reduce uncertainty in their income flow.
While data-driven credit assessments are breaking down traditional barriers to credit access for gig workers. With irregular income patterns, many gig workers struggle to secure loans or build credit through conventional means. Platforms are addressing this by using alternative data points—such as earnings history and payment behaviours—to create fair and accurate credit profiles. This innovation opens doors to financial opportunities that empower gig workers to achieve greater financial stability and growth.
By streamlining payments, integrating accessible financial tools, and leveraging cutting-edge innovations for security, these solutions address both immediate and long-term needs. Through continued innovation, the gig economy is poised to thrive as a flexible, inclusive, and dynamic component of the global financial system.
Simon Ellis, Head of Operations, EMEA at the global payment platform Airwallex, with his key FinTech predictions for 2025
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This past year has truly solidified FinTech’s role as an indispensable part of the financial landscape. From the sleek banking apps that have become a daily staple for millions to the invisible financial infrastructure powering seamless payments… FinTech is no longer just a buzzword – it’s the new norm. It’s not just about innovative startups anymore. It’s about how traditional financial institutions are embracing and integrating these technologies to stay relevant and meet the evolving needs of their customers. In essence, FinTech has become synonymous with modern banking, driving continuous innovation and transformation across the entire industry.
But what’s next? 2025 promises to be transformational in many ways. Businesses are accepting AI as the reality of our future. Consumers are becoming more accustomed to flexibility and choice. And now more than ever, both seek agile and seamless solutions for their financial needs.
Here are the trends we at Airwallex expect to see play out over the next twelve months:
Coopetition with traditional banks and FinTechs
Coopetition will become a firm reality in 2025. Many of the conventional fears associated with FinTechs will no longer be a salient presence. Increased collaboration between FinTechs and banks will facilitate further innovation on a mass scale. These giants will insert themselves into new industries and access a new generation of customers. The prerequisite for this is the correct compliance and controls but firms are committed to getting this right to ensure they maintain the right to operate.
A path to Hyper-Personalisation
Over the past year, we’ve witnessed the emergence of an increasingly educated payments buyer, mindful of what they need today and into the future as they scale. In 2025, we’ll see payment providers take more direction from their customers. Payment providers will need to be more flexible as merchant customer preferences shift.
For ambitious and progressive businesses, particularly those looking to operationalise in new markets at pace, convenience remains king. Navigating multiple vendors can quickly create friction. However, this is where FinTechs bundling their solutions comes into play. Having a single point of contact that provides a range of services – whether that’s foreign exchange (FX), multi-currency digital accounts, expense management or payouts – isn’t just about convenience. Moreover, it saves on crucial costs that can be reinvested back into the business to spur growth.
The days of taking a one-size-fits-all product approach will no longer suffice. Hyper-Personalisation will reign supreme as businesses fight for customer attention and brand loyalty.
The continued rise of Embedded Finance
In seeking to accommodate the growing need for flexibility, the year ahead will see Embedded Finance become more commonplace across a range of industries. Consumers have most likely all experienced the seamless process of making an embedded payment, whether it’s ordering through a food delivery app or paying for a ride. Usually, it’s through digital-first services, but 2025 will be the year that we see more traditional industries embrace embedded payments to keep pace with the broader innovation taking place in their sectors. This will also help businesses stand out in an ever-changing and overcrowded market. Embedded Finance will help end users maintain their dominance while also driving product stickiness.
AI is here to stay
To accelerate this transformation, 2025 will see FinTechs and banks persist in the use of AI to improve decision-making and customer engagement. AI is already being used to automate and expedite previously long and complex processes. For example, Generative AI (GenAI) will continue to help financial institutions enhance the speed and efficacy of know-your-customer (KYC) and customer onboarding processes. Furthermore, at the same time, it will detect unusual activity and fraud. We’ll also continue to see a focus on AI’s use to improve the ongoing customer experience with personalised insights and advice.
As a result, modern financial services will become more accessible to businesses of all sizes and across sectors. Allowing for easier and more cost-effective management of global operations.
Alex Mifsud, CEO of Embedded Finance platform Weavr, on the outlook for Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS)
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If any FinTech trend is painfully making its way through the archetypical Gartner hype cycle, it is Banking-as-a-Service or BaaS. At its core, BaaS is an API-driven platform enabling third-parties to develop financial products that make use of the banking and payments capabilities, and the regulatory permissions, of financial institutions that offer it.
This means non-regulated businesses can, in effect, make financial services available to customers without having a banking or financial licence themselves. The bank gets to monetise their licence efficiently, while FinTechs bring ingenuity, market insight and usually, superior digital experiences to customers. It sounds wonderful in concept, but the reality is far more complex. The recent collapse of Synapse, a prominent BaaS provider, as well as the sheer number of regulator interventions across many developed world economies, has highlighted critical vulnerabilities in the BaaS model.
The BaaS Model
While no one, including regulators, seems to be denying the opportunity to create customer value, it is increasingly evident that the BaaS model as it has developed over the past five years will not survive in its present form. There are several evolutionary directions that are being talked about for BaaS, even if not yet established. Here, I would like to present a specific variant. The European regulatory model not only makes this possible, but also presents a strong win-win opportunity for banks to collaborate with non-bank financial institutions like e-money institutions and payment institutions (I’ll use the acronym “EMI” to mean either of these). In this model, banks get access to the benefits of BaaS with minimal exposure to the now-better-understood risks. Moreover, EMIs get access to the powerful capabilities and economics that are the sole preserve of banks as deposit-taking institutions.
These collaborations – in effect, a multi-tier approach to BaaS – should offer safer exposure to Embedded Finance for banks. And richer capabilities available to embedders, and ultimately, end-customers.
Antipattern Matching
Recent announcements that Clearbank, a digitally-savvy clearing bank now promoting itself as an embedded finance platform, has hit profitability is a welcome tonic to investors despairing of the stream of bad news hitting BaaS players in the US and Europe. Even JP Morgan, one of the most respected global banks, has shown that size is no obstacle to ambitious, or even radical, innovation, as it also offers Embedded Finance. And at the other end of the size scale, Griffin announced earlier this year that, having secured a banking licence specifically to offer BaaS and embedded finance, it is now ready to start operating.
In the face of the mentioned challenges that EMI BaaS players have faced with regulators in Europe, some in the investment community have been proclaiming that, to do BaaS effectively, a financial institution needs to have a banking licence. An e-money or payment institution licence simply won’t cut it.
While such pattern matching and extrapolation is understandable, it is not necessarily correct, so let’s look at an alternative view: both EMIs and banks are viable financial institutions to support Embedded Finance, but each have strengths and weaknesses. Better still, by working together in a multi-tiered configuration, each type of financial institution can play to its strengths enabling the combination to deliver high capability, highly adaptive delivery models of Embedded Finance.
Banks doing Embedded Finance
While a banking licence does confer specific advantages – mainly, that deposit-taking provides one of the most attractive financing models for financial institutions to raise funds for lending – there are also disadvantages to being a bank compared to being an EMI. In the UK, for instance, banks need to hold more capital than EMIs, and perhaps more importantly, banks are supervised by both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), the latter of which does not supervise EMIs.
Navigating innovative operating models like Embedded Finance with two regulators can create greater risk aversion and therefore slow down or even discourage the experimentation that is required to find the right risk-value formula that works. We know from recent experience that getting the balance right between great customer value and sustainable compliant operations can be a delicate balance.
The Benefits
One way to square the circle is for banks to provide wholesale financial services to EMIs which then serve end customers on their own licences in turn. While this doesn’t completely insulate the bank from censure in the event that the rules are broken – for instance, if money laundering occurs – it does place the biggest share of the burden of the customer on-boarding and monitoring compliance on the EMI. Given that EMIs were created initially to support money-related activities for a digital world, it may be easier for them by working with a single regulator to achieve the right balance. It also allows large banks with cumbersome on-boarding processes designed for large corporations to get access, via the EMI, to a community of small and medium sized business customers that, in aggregate, represent meaningful business volumes for the bank.
There is a strong win-win in this kind of bank-EMI collaboration, especially for banks which are used to dealing with other financial institutions as customers. EMIs, in turn, can source a range of wholesale financial services from multiple banks: foreign exchange from one, and lending capacity from one or more others.
A New Pattern: Multi-Tiered Banking with BaaS
The future of BaaS lies in collaboration. A multi-tiered banking model allows institutions to combine their strengths strategically. Such a model not only optimises the use of resources but also enhances the value proposition of BaaS by incorporating the strengths of various financial entities. EMIs, with their ability to offer commercial cards, credit lines, and foreign exchange services, reduce the risk for larger institutions and open doors for broader innovation.
Benjamin Avraham, CEO and Founder at Okoora – the creators of Automated Business Currency Management, on Embedded Finance in global trade and the challenges of FX risk in global expansion
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Embedded Finance is rapidly emerging as a transformative force in cross-border payments, reshaping how businesses handle transactions across borders. By making payments more efficient and accessible, it is becoming a key tool for companies navigating the complexities of global trade. While the concept isn’t entirely new, its adoption has accelerated, with the sector projected to generate an estimated $230 billion in revenue by 2025.
Trends in Embedded Finance for Cross-Border Payments in 2025 and beyond
Embedded Finance is poised to reshape cross-border payments. It offers innovative solutions to address inefficiencies and create experiences with reduced friction for businesses and consumers alike.
A key trend is the integration of multi-currency wallets. These enable real-time currency conversion and support localised payment methods tailored to specific regions. This not only reduces transaction delays but also enhances accessibility for global users. At the same time, embedded risk management tools are gaining traction. These provide businesses with automated FX hedging options and predictive analytics to better manage currency volatility.
Super apps with embedded cross-border capabilities are becoming more prevalent. These offer all-in-one solutions for payments, investments, and FX management. These apps are especially impactful in promoting financial inclusion, allowing underserved markets to access cross-border payment systems with ease.
The Challenge of FX Risk in Global Expansion
For businesses aiming to expand globally and remain competitive, understanding and managing foreign exchange (FX) risk is paramount. Currency volatility, intricate markets, and hidden costs remain significant hurdles for companies operating internationally. Moreover, the solution lies in leveraging embedded currency risk management, which integrates FX tools directly into business workflows to streamline and mitigate these challenges.
Historically, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have relied on traditional banks for cross-border payment services. However, slow, opaque, and cumbersome banking processes often fail to meet the modern demands for a frictionless experience. SMBs today require more than just service providers—they need trusted partners who truly understand their unique needs and can deliver tailored solutions. Embedded Finance levels the playing field by giving SMBs access to financial tools previously reserved for larger corporations, empowering them to compete effectively in global trade.
On a parallel track, larger players such as payment institutions, corporates, and banks are increasingly recognizing the potential of embedded finance to unlock new market opportunities and enhance the financial ecosystem. According to a recent report by Publicis Salient, embedded finance revenues are expected to grow by 40% annually in the coming years, underlining its critical role in the evolution of global financial services. This is encouraging organizations without in-house capabilities to actively seek partnerships with fintech providers to deliver integrated, relevant, and accessible financial services, while also creating new revenue streams.
Key features of Embedded Finance for Cross-Border Transactions
As businesses continue to navigate the complexities of cross-border transactions, Embedded Finance offers an array of powerful features that streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and mitigate risks. By integrating financial tools directly into business systems, companies can improve operations, reduce costs, and gain greater control over their international payments and currency management.
Below are the key features that make Embedded Finance a game-changer for businesses engaged in global trade:
Streamlining Payments
Frictionless Transactions: Embedded finance integrates payment processing directly into business systems, enabling businesses to send and receive funds across borders without needing separate third-party platforms.
Localised Payment Methods: It supports local payment systems, ensuring businesses can transact with customers and partners in their preferred currencies and payment formats.
FX Risk Management
Automated Hedging: Embedded tools can automatically hedge against currency fluctuations, reducing financial exposure and safeguarding profit margins.
Predictive Analytics: Advanced analytics help businesses anticipate and respond to currency market threats and opportunities.
Reducing Costs & Delays
Lower Fees: By bypassing traditional banking intermediaries, embedded finance platforms often reduce transaction costs.
Faster Settlements: Transactions are processed more quickly, enabling businesses to manage cash flow and working capital more efficiently.
Enhancing Transparency
Clearer Pricing: Embedded finance platforms provide real-time insights into exchange rates and transaction costs, ensuring businesses have full visibility into cross-border payment processes.
Regulatory Compliance: Built-in compliance tools streamline adherence to local regulations, reducing administrative burdens and risks of non-compliance.
Access to Financing
Embedded Credit & Loans: Businesses can access trade financing or working capital loans directly within platforms, supporting growth and smoothing cash flow challenges during cross-border trade.
Supply Chain Support: Financing solutions embedded in procurement platforms help businesses manage large international purchases with ease.
Simplifying Tax & Regulatory Compliance
Automated Tax Calculations: Embedded tools help businesses calculate duties, taxes, and other levies for cross-border transactions.
Built-in Compliance Checks: Solutions automatically ensure compliance with local and international regulations, saving time and reducing risks.
The road ahead for Embedded Finance
The evolution of embedded finance holds the potential to unlock new market opportunities and enhance the global financial ecosystem. Through strong collaboration among fintech companies, regulators, and technology providers, the industry can pave the way for embedded finance to deliver highly relevant financial services in an accessible manner to meet the needs of businesses globally.
About Okoora
Okoora is a leading fintech provider, offering businesses worldwide the financial infrastructure needed to scale their international operations. Recognized by CNBC and Statista as one of the world’s top 250 fintechs, the company’s automated platform, API, and embedded finance solutions empower businesses to collect and send payments, manage multi-currency accounts, and hedge FX risks. Okoora enables seamless operations in over 100 currencies and 180 countries.
Adyen’s UK banking licence and international footprint will strengthen Spendesk’s offer in core markets and support global growth
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Adyen, the FinTech business platform, has announced a long-term strategic partnership with Spendesk, the spend management platform for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Innovation with Embedded Finance services characterises the partnership.
Embedded Finance Services
The partnership will support innovation in Embedded Finance services, as Spendesk continues to accelerate bringing products to market in 2025. Adyen continues to build its suite of embedded financial products, including business bank accounts and card issuing.
Spendesk offers a comprehensive spend management solution. It enables finance teams to automate workflows and gain full visibility and control over company spending. Moreover it provides essential tools like virtual and physical cards, expense management, and a new procurement solution. Also, Spendesk allows businesses to work with their existing accounting and financial software via its APIs and native integrations.
Scaling rapidly, Spendesk chose Adyen for its full stack Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) coverage across multiple key markets. This eliminates complex multi-provider set-ups. Furthermore, with Adyen’s UK banking licence, the partnership empowers Spendesk to maintain full control over the payment experience. Also, it can provide UK customers with the card customisation they need, and embed financial products beyond payments going forward.
Enhanced Payment Solutions
Spendesk is focused on providing finance teams with greater control, visibility, and automation. It sees a significant opportunity to enhance payment solutions by refining spend management workflows for SMB users. Embedded Finance enhancements include:
Leveraging data to increase visibility and control on the end-to-end payment process.
Adding digital wallets (Apple Pay and Google Pay) to enhance XPays. A feature that provides companies with flexible payment options – improving the customer experience
Maximising operational efficiency and reducing friction for customers through a streamlined onboarding process and an optimised payment success rate and processing time
Spendesk needed a partner that could safeguard against financial crimes. With Adyen’s banking licences in the UK, US and EU, the company is highly regulated. Moreover, it can ensure Spendesk is continuously compliant within the countries it operates in and plans to expand to.
New Embedded Finance Opportunities
“Trust and accountability are critical in our industry, and to achieve our global ambitions we need a partner who supports our growth with shared values,” said Stéphane Dehaies, CEO of Spendesk Financial Services. “Adyen’s technology, geographical footprint, and commitment to innovation are helping us reach our goals as we navigate regulatory requirements and shifting customer needs. Furthernore, we chose Adyen because their approach aligns perfectly with our forward-thinking mentality and commitment to delivering best-in-class payment solutions and customer experiences. We share the same cultural DNA and together our fast-paced, transparent, and passionate approach to improving customer experience makes this partnership an incredible fit.”
“Helping grow businesses like Spendesk is at the core of what we do. Our customers’ needs drive our product development and it is great to see Spendesk capitalising on our market coverage and single card issuing solution,” said Hemmo Bosscher, SVP Platforms and Financial Services at Adyen. “Looking ahead, we are excited to help Spendesk fully seize the embedded finance opportunity as they scale their operations globally. As market leaders in BaaS and spend management respectively, this partnership drives real innovation for SMBs, a market category whose financial needs are often left unmet by traditional providers.”
Zachary Scott, Managing Director at Publicis Sapient on Buy Now Pay Later demand in the UK and the changing nature of CX in 2025 and beyond…
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In the dynamic world of consumer Embedded Finance, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services have become a game-changer. They offer shoppers greater flexibility and convenience. BNPL allows consumers to make immediate purchases while spreading payments over time, often without interest. Its popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic. Fuelled by the e-commerce surge, it continues to play a pivotal role in shopping habits. Recent surveys reveal that 39% of U.S. consumers plan to use BNPL within the next six months.
This growth isn’t confined to the U.S. It’s a global phenomenon. U.S. fintech giant Affirm recently launched its BNPL services in the UK, marking its first international expansion. Affirm selected the UK due to strong demand from merchants eager to incorporate flexible payment options into their offerings.
The BNPL boom reflects a broader trend in Embedded Finance, which integrates financial services seamlessly into non-financial interactions. BNPL, for instance, embeds financing directly into the retail experience. This allows consumers to access payment plans as part of their shopping journey. This integration simplifies the traditionally separate processes of purchasing and financing, creating a smoother, more user-friendly experience.
Optimising customer experience for Embedded Finance
The value case for Embedded Finance is based on this seamless customer experience and the opportunities it offers to enhance the services offered. Partner companies are able to provide financial services without having to maintain extensive and complex financial infrastructure, leveraging technology to facilitate these offerings instead.
Already, several opportunities are emerging that are poised to propel the growth of embedded finance into new sectors and applications. Banks and retailers should be prepared to seize opportunities from embedded insurance products, embedded wallets in non-financial apps, and new forms of embedded lending that go beyond the existing BNPL instalment model.
Consolidating Services
However, to succeed in this next phase, financial service providers and their partners will have to keep pace with and be ready to adapt to changing consumer preferences and requirements. Staying ahead of the curve takes more than just improving individual interactions. It involves curating a comprehensive journey that aligns with consumers’ expectations for simplicity, transparency, and flexibility. People are increasingly seeking a mobile-first platform that caters to both their financial and non-financial needs in a single, unified space. Driving further consolidation of customer journeys through Embedded Finance is likely to be a critical strategy for industry leaders in the next wave of adoption.
Advancements in open banking protocols and the rise of new FinTech ventures are setting the stage for more integrated financial and non-financial services, further blurring the boundaries between these two traditionally distinct customer journeys. Emerging trends in Generative AI and conversational banking will also contribute to the enhanced customer experience. These technologies are set to shape consumer expectations, with more and more people looking to access support and services through conversational experiences. Embedded Finance is no exception.
New Opportunities
For financial service providers, embracing these trends opens myriad possibilities. Leading the charge in Embedded Finance can contribute to customer acquisition, generate direct revenue from the new services offered, and enable cross-selling of other financial products.
For partners within the Embedded Finance ecosystem, the opportunities are equally substantial. As well as driving Net Promoter Score (NPS), they can unlock new referral or commission-based revenue streams.
It’s clear that the future of consumer finance is deeply linked to the progress of Embedded Finance. As more offerings beyond BNPL emerge, the boundary between financial services and non-financial experiences can become increasingly blurred. For providers and partners ready to embrace this change and leverage it to meet evolving customer needs, this represents a substantial opportunity.
Marqeta Flex is being developed with payments platform Branch and payment providers Klarna and Affirm, enabling real time and customised BNPL options for consumers.
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Marqueta, the global modern card issuing platform that enables embedded finance solutions for the world’s innovators has launched Marqeta Flex. Launched at Money20/20 the innovative new solution revolutionises the way Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment options can be delivered inside payment apps and wallets. It surfaces them at the moment of need within an existing payment flow.
Marqueta Flex BNPL Solution
Marqeta Flex is being developed with leading payment providers Klarna and Affirm and payments platform Branch. Branch, a key innovation partner, plans to integrate the solution into its payments app for W-2 and 1099 workers. It enables end users to easily access BNPL loan options catered to their individual needs.
“Marqeta Flex is about building upon the transformational impact that BNPL has had over the last decade. It can help consumers access these options intuitively from inside an even greater range of payment experiences,” said Simon Khalaf, Marqeta’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are excited to partner with industry-leading BNPL players Klarna and Affirm in the space. We can give consumers more choice in how they pay for every transaction they want to make.”
Marqeta has already partnered to support the exponential growth of BNPL solutions, bringing pay over time options to millions of consumers globally. Furthermore, Marqeta Flex is poised to bring even further syndication to the BNPL space. The solution expands the distribution of BNPL while personalising the experience for shoppers. It is providing them with access to BNPL options when they need them. It supports some of the largest BNPL solutions and card issuers today. Marqeta is uniquely positioned to recognise the opportunity for expanded BNPL distribution and how it allows for enhanced payment capabilities and greater consumer choice.
BNPL Benefits
The intended benefits of Marqeta Flex for consumers, payment providers and issuers include:
Consumers: With Marqeta Flex, consumers will be guided to the BNPL options that can meet their needs. They get access to personalised BNPL options inside of the payment apps they use most often.
Payment Providers: Marqeta Flex expands BNPL distribution. Allowing payment providers that offer pay over time options to benefit from even greater access to consumers and higher transaction volumes.
Card issuers and digital wallets: Marqeta Flex is a powerful solution for digital wallets and card issuers. Allowing them to drive payment volume by incorporating multiple BNPL offerings into the transaction experience that can be customized to user preferences. With a single integration with Marqeta Flex, they’ll have access to a variety of global BNPL providers, increasing the speed at which they can build and launch card solutions that offer flexible payment methods, including custom and user-friendly BNPL loan options.
“We’re thrilled to be building this with Marqeta and innovating how BNPL can be applied,” said Ahmed Siddiqui, Chief Payments Officer at Branch. “We look forward to giving the workers we serve even greater payment access and choice.”
Marqeta Flex is intended to be fast and simple for consumers. Moreover, when launched, the user will choose the Pay Later option within their payment app and be provided with personalised BNPL payment plan options.
About Marqeta
Marqeta makes it possible for companies to build and embed financial services into their branded experience. Furthermore, it helps unlock new ways to grow businesses and delight their users. The Marqeta platform puts businesses in control of building financial solutions. It enables them to turn real-time data into personalised, optimised solutions for everything from consumer loyalty to capital efficiency. With compliance and security built-in, Marqeta’s platform has been proven at scale, processing more than $200 billion in annual payments volume in 2023. Marqeta is certified to operate in more than 40 countries worldwide and counting.
About Branch
Branch is the leading workforce payments platform that helps businesses deliver fast, flexible options for workers to get paid. Whether it’s sending earnings to employees or contractors, companies choose Branch. They know that faster payments can help them strengthen worker loyalty, save time and money, and drive business growth. Moreover, earners that sign up with Branch can receive quick access to earnings, rewards, and personal finance tools to help them manage their cash flow between pay cycles. Additionally, Branch partners with the nation’s leading companies in hospitality, healthcare, gig platforms & marketplaces, and staffing services. Branch has been honoured with a Webby Award. Best Financial Services, FinTech Breakthrough Award, Gartner Eye on Innovation: Financial Services, and Great Place to Work Certification. To learn more about Branch, visit https://www.branchapp.com
Lucian Daia, CTO at Zitec, on the rise of embedded finance driving customer loyalty across financial services
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The frenzy of Christmas and Halloween marketing is already in full swing, with date reveals of Christmas market returns to pumpkin patch locations. Retailers are gearing up to execute their strategies as the Golden Quarter approaches. This year, however, retailers have another string to their bow, another key message to snag a customer: ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL).
Business is booming in the BNPL game, with the market quadrupling in size since 2020. It is expected to hit a record level of £30bn in 2024. The payment option is fast becoming a staple in the digital wallets of millions for the major retail milestones of the year.
Halloween is the first major retail moment in the run-up to the festive season as Britain settles back into its winter routine. However, the rise of BNPL points to consumer behaviour that’s fast evolving and anything but predictable.
Retailers sink or swim based on the customer experience they deliver. From the rise of omnichannel strategies to speedy same-day deliveries, click and collect options, and attention-grabbing immersive experiences… There’s no shortage of initiatives to drum up customer loyalty. Now, payment solutions are part of the equation. Embedded Finance is front and centre of this change, integrating financial services (like loans, insurance, debit cards etc.) into businesses that don’t usually handle finance.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) offer a “Plug and Play” type functionality. Retailers can offer seamless payment solutions like BNPL or digital wallets directly on their systems. This integration keeps shoppers on the site and reduces the tiresome friction of third-party pop-up systems. Moreover, it offers features like zero-interest point-of-sale loans or app-based rewards. Of course, it allows them to check-out as easily and as quickly as possible too.
Bye-bye Velcro
Bye-bye Velcro, hello snazzy digital wallet that holds payment cards and bank account details all in one place. Digital wallets have become essential components of modern payments and offer a convenient and less risky way for shoppers to buy their items.
Gone are the days of searching for physical cards under stashes of files or keying in repetitive digits on a keyboard. Digital wallets also offer a reduced risk of fraud because of advanced encryption and tokenisation technologies. Beyond security, digital wallets provide retailers with valuable consumer insights.
For instance, if a customer buys a Halloween costume and decorations, retailers can use this data to target them with personalised offers. Such as a discount on themed candy bowls or matching spooky accessories. This level of personalisation is make or break for retailers today. Customers are setting a higher bar than ever for personalised content, offers and experiences that meet their needs and interests.
Speeding up cash flow with BNPL
Another innovation retailers need to have on their radar is instant payments. Unlike traditional systems that mean transactions can take hours or even days to complete, instant payments ensure funds are transferred within seconds.
For retailers, especially those operating on thin margins or managing high transaction volumes, the speed at which funds are made available can be make or break. The quick availability of cash means retailers can better manage their finances, buy new stock and address operational costs at pace.
Contrary to common belief, Brits don’t love queuing; in fact, they hate it. Faster payment options in-store have been pivotal in giving customers the speedy experience they demand so they can get on with their day. Quick transactions not only improve cash flow and reduce delays but enhance the customer experience. Making it ideal for those who’ve left their shopping too late, or forgotten an item on their list. As a result, customers walk away with the right impression.
Ditch the lines and pay with a tap
Retailers should be equipped with mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) systems that allow customers to make payments through their smartphones or other mobile devices, cutting down on wait times and speeding up the checkout process.
Retailers also stand to benefit from digital receipts, detailed sales reports, and real-time inventory management from having this system in place. This efficient processing not only improves cash flow but also provides valuable data for managing stock levels and customer preferences.
Beyond the Golden-Quarter
As retailers prepare for the Golden Quarter and beyond, understanding and leveraging FinTech payment innovations can seriously pay dividends. By adopting technologies such as embedded finance, digital wallets, instant payments, and mobile payments, retailers can improve their operational efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and position themselves for future growth in a digital-first world. Indeed, in recent years marked by economic shocks, huge tech advancements – especially with AI – and increasingly unpredictable consumer behaviour, it is crucial for retailers to stay ahead of payment options.
Providing consumers with flexibility, choices, and ultimately, ways to manage their outgoings and spread the cost will be key. Retailers will need to take a view on which innovations align best with the changing expectations of their customers and who they partner with to help them remain competitive.
SemFi by HSBC will deliver innovative embedded finance solutions for businesses
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HSBC has launched its new jointly owned venture, SemFi by HSBC. It aims to deliver Seamless Embedded Finance solutions to business clients.
The new technology company is a joint venture between HSBC and B2B global trade network Tradeshift. Furthermore, SemFi will embed HSBC payment, trade and financing solutions across a range of e-commerce and marketplace venues, including Tradeshift’s own B2B network.
SemFi will deliver its solutions in the UK to begin with. Furthermore, it will enable SME suppliers on e-commerce venues to access digital invoice financing from HSBC. Via a seamless experience it also aims to offer SMEs greater flexibility and security in their spend management through the bank’s virtual card solutions.
SemFi by HSBC
“Businesses are increasingly looking for seamless financial solutions that are embedded within their e-commerce journeys. So they can access these when and where they need them.
“SemFi by HSBC aims to deliver such embedded capabilities to help businesses grow. It will seek to bring the best of both worlds to our business customers and e-commerce partners. A startup technology mindset coupled with the global scale and expertise, of an international bank.”
Vinay Mendonca, Chief Executive Officer
The new venture is led by senior leadership drawn from HSBC. This includes Vinay Mendonca as CEO and Shehan Silva as Chief Operating Officer (COO). Additionally, Jo Miyake, Interim CEO of Global Commercial Banking, joins the SemFi board.
HSBC has been steadily building its capabilities and presence in embedded finance. It is driven by business customers seeking connected financial journeys to e-commerce venues.
HSBC supports around 1.3 million businesses worldwide. Moreover, it is the world’s largest trade bank, facilitating over $800 billion of trade flows annually.
Tradeshift supports over $260 billion of annual gross merchandise value for a million business users on its platform.
SemFi is intended to be a technology company and will not operate as a banking entity. Clients will be onboarded by the bank and the bank’s balance sheet will be leveraged for financing.
FinTech Strategy spoke with Ryan O’Holleran, Head of Sales, Enterprise, EMEA at Airwallex, to learn about the global payments and financial infrastructure provider
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Airwallex, a financial infrastructure provider, offers a range of services. Including multicurrency accounts, payment acceptance card issuing, foreign exchange (FX) payouts, treasury and expense management. In addition to supporting small and medium-sized businesses, the company also provides APIs and a software layer for direct access to enterprise businesses. As well as an enterprise platform product called Scale. Airwallex has found success working across various industries. It works with the likes of Bird (formerly MessageBird) to handle global accounts and backend treasury, and partners with Qantas to offer financial tools for their business partners.
The company also enables faster and more efficient payments through its patchwork network of financial partnerships and licenses. Airwallex has experienced significant growth even during economic downturns. As of August this year, Airwallex globally processed transactions worth more than $100 billion annually and saw a 73 percent year-on-year increase. It is now focused on embedded finance solutions and global expansion.
At Money20/20 Europe, FinTech Strategy spoke with Airwallex’s Head of Sales, Enterprise, EMEA, Ryan O’Holleran, to find out more…
Tell us about the genesis of Airwallex?
“Our co-founder, Jack Zhang, started a coffee company in Melbourne, Australia, which is still around today, with a few friends from university. And while they were building out this coffee shop, they were buying beans from abroad, along with supplies and packaging. They found how hard it was to actually pay for services, send funds abroad and deal with multiple currencies. So, they saw an opportunity to help streamline the financial infrastructure for small businesses. That’s when Jack and his co-founders put Airwallex together and built out an initial SME’s use case to allow multicurrency accounts and FX payouts. Since then, the business has really expanded…
Today, Airwallex provides a set of APIs – we’re really providing financial infrastructure to move money globally. On those APIs, we also have a layer of software that we can offer direct access to enterprise businesses. The third part of this, which is kind of the new product over the last three years, is our enterprise platform product called Scale. Scale allows you to embed those financial services into a product as well as a platform or marketplace. So, you kind of think about it as a direct treasury product, APIs and a platform product.”
Tell us about your role at Airwallex?
“I’m originally from San Francisco, grew up in the Bay area, started in tech, did a couple of startups, and I actually got into payments via Stripe. I joined Stripe back when there were about 200 employees in San Francisco. Spent some time in Chicago and then moved to the UK initially with Stripe. I was there for about five and a half years, as we went from 200 staff to 6,000. At that point, I wanted to get back to something a little bit different. To help more cross-functioning with product and help scale businesses. The opportunity with Airwallex came along where I saw the company addressing many things my customers at Stripe were asking for.
So, the FX piece, mass payouts, treasury, all complimented what Stripe is doing with acquiring. Since I joined the team three years ago, we’ve been scaling across EMEA. We now have offices in London, Amsterdam, Vilnius and just last year launched our office in Tel Aviv to cover Israel. And we have teams in the Americas and APAC where Airwallex was founded.”
What are some of the key challenges financial institutions are facing that you can help them with? What problems are companies asking you to solve? In doing so, what are the challenges for Airwallex?
“We work in different areas. This is where I think we have differentiated the business and also where I see the industry moving. If you look back over the last five, 10 years, there was this approach where you had Stripe and all the major players coming in and saying, we can do things and we can do it really well and you only need to use us, you don’t need to use a patchwork of providers. I think that is starting to shift. You see this with orchestration layers like Primer or Gravy, allowing people to be agnostic on PSPs. And then you’re seeing people think about redundancy. So, the heads of payments we’re talking to this week are looking at two or three providers because they need redundancy or want to use the best provider in each region. They don’t want to be siloed.
Airwallex can be used in a segmented approach. So, if you just need us for payouts, you can do that. If you just need us for FX, you can do that. If you just need us for acquiring, you can do that. Or we could do that globally and you can adjust as you see fit. So, the flexibility of Airwallex I think is one of our superpowers.”
Tell us about some of the successful partnerships Airwallex has been involved in…
“The interesting thing about Airwallex is that since we’re providing financial infrastructure, there’s a huge variety of customers we work with. One of the local ones is Bird (a cloud communications platform that connects enterprises to their global customers). Using our software product they are creating global accounts, handling backend treasury, payroll, suppliers and more. We’ve also worked with Qantas to build out an SMB solution embedding all of the Airwallex financial services and they call it Qantas Business Money.
Elsewhere, Brex in the US were looking for a provider to help with their payout rails. One of the things Airwallex has done is rebuilt the Swift network via local rails. So, we have a patchwork network of financial partnerships and licences where if you are located, let’s say in the US, but you want to pay somebody out in the UK, you get access to faster payment rails having never set foot in the UK or separate rails via Europe having never set foot in the EU. So, you get this mass payoff solution of local rails, which is faster, cheaper, and more efficient than using something like Swift.”
What trends are you seeing across the FinTech landscape? What opportunities do you see for Airwallex?
“I think where we’re seeing a lot of opportunities, in EMEA specifically, in B2B, vertical, SaaS, travel and marketplaces, is this embedded finance solution. It was kind of a buzzword a few years ago and now we’re actually starting to see it develop. I view it as actually embedding all of these financial services – whether it be a wallet, issued cards, or local multi-currency accounts – and being able to monetize that. So, we’re seeing this with a lot of our customers actually wanting to white label our products, embed that and bring payments on platform.”
And what’s next for Airwallex? What future launches and initiatives are you particularly excited about?
“The growth of Airwallex, specifically on a global scale, over the last few years is one thing I’m very proud of because it’s happened during one of the worst economic downturns we’ve experienced. FinTech was almost retracting in terms of budgets and investments. You’re starting to see the tide turn, but we were able to grow over 100 percent year on year, through some of the toughest times for business. And now we’re really starting to see that pick up because the businesses, who actually decided this is going to be a building year for us now, they’re going live, they’re accelerating, they’re growing.
And so we’re seeing the ROI of that investment. It’s a testament to the global financial infrastructure we’ve built. Meanwhile, Airwallex became cash flow positive in 2023. It now processes more than $100 billion in annualised transaction volume. The company now employs over 1,500 people worldwide working across 23 international offices.”
Why Money20/20? What is it about this particular event that makes it the perfect place to showcase what you do? How has the response been to Airwallex?
“The great thing about Money20/20, here in Europe, and in Asia and the US, is the good division between buyers and sellers. So, you have all these service providers like Airwallex, Amex, etc… And then you have the Heads of Payments from companies like Booking.com, Vinted and SumUp who are coming here with their teams to meet with providers. If you think about that from a sales perspective, those meetings are very hard to get outside of this environment. But over a week you get 15 different meetings each day that would normally take months to arrange. So, the ROI from this week is really powerful just from being able to have these conversations. Three years ago, we first came to suss out the event and as we’ve grown the response has grown. People are being proactive and keen to engage with us which is exciting to see.”
Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR on how the customer becomes the investor with Embedded Finance at the heart of the wealth management revolution
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Wealth management has traditionally been a game for the well-off. It often requires large sums of money just to get started. For decades, the idea of “investing” conjured up images of Wall Street brokers managing hefty portfolios for a small group of elite individuals. But, thanks to Embedded Finance, times are changing and the barriers to investing are coming down. The technology is reshaping how people handle their money. Here’s what it can do for you.
Tackling the investment problem
Historically, investing hasn’t been easy. Most brokers require a significant minimum deposit to open an account, often in the thousands. Fees and commissions on trades can add up quickly, and if you don’t have a large amount of capital, these costs can erode your profits. For many, these hurdles were enough to keep them from even thinking about investing. It simply didn’t feel like something for “ordinary” people with average incomes.
Even with the rise of online brokers, the stock market has remained intimidating to a lot of people, many of whom felt like they lacked the knowledge or resources to get involved.
On top of the classical challenges we must also discuss the upcoming wealth transfer. The next generation of users have no interest in sitting with wealth managers; at the same time they don’t have the knowhow to trade or invest.
Imagine being able to not only excite your customers but empower them as well. That’s what embedded finance solutions promise. As companies strive towards more inclusive messaging, adopting embedded finance tools has never been more valuable. One of the great perks is that it doesn’t require a complete overhaul of IT infrastructure, instead, it involves a seamless experience that even junior employees can understand and implement.
Embracing the solution with Embedded Finance
I’ve said it’s easy – but how easy? Embedded finance works by bridging the gap between traditional financial systems and the average consumer. By integrating financial services directly into everyday apps and platforms, it makes it possible for people to start investing without even realising they’re doing it. Monzo is an example of it in action. They used embedded finance solutions to enable customers to invest directly in the bank during its fundraising rounds. They raised millions by allowing users of the app to seamlessly invest and become shareholders, a great example of how “the customer becomes the investor”.
Think about how your business manages its money. You most likely use an app to track accounts and make payments. This is no different to customer budgeting, and it’s a window of opportunity for you to tap into. That app can offer you the ability to automatically invest any leftover money at the end of the month into a diversified portfolio. Customers don’t need to download a separate app or set up an account with a brokerage firm. Everything is integrated into the website they’re shopping on. This is the beauty of embedded finance – it makes financial services a natural part of your daily life.
For younger people just starting out on lower salaries and learning how to invest sensibly, there has never been a greater time to be innovative and branch out into financial services.
The second vector for investment is to centre it around a new social frame. Investment’s can be around supporting your ideals, for the environment, or for technologies sake. This means that there are apps/club/activities that can become another home for investment. The same way country clubs aren’t just for food, golf and banter. Embedded finance opens the door for classically aligned companies and charities to think about expanding their business model. I could imagine Greenpeace offering embedded investing. So, could the country club co-invest in art that is displayed (but also invested) in.
Equalising opportunity with Embedded Finance
Embedded finance allows financial services to be delivered in a more personalised, user-friendly way. Apps can now provide personalised investment recommendations based on a user’s spending habits, savings goals, and risk tolerance. And thanks to automation, these services are becoming more affordable and scalable. Instead of paying for an expensive financial advisor, users can rely on AI-driven tools to offer similar advice for a fraction of the cost, or even for free. Wealthfront does this by offering automated financial planning and investment management with AI-driven recommendations and tax optimisation strategies.
GoHenry is another example of a company taking the initiative and embracing its solutions. They allow customers to invest in the company using the Crowdcube platform. People can invest in as little as they want and become shareholders with ease. As a result, loyalty is enhanced and capital surges.
Another example is fractional investing. In the past, buying a single share of a company like Amazon or Tesla might have been out of reach for someone with limited funds. However, this no longer has to be the case as companies like Robinhood allow customers to invest in big stocks like Tesla for as little as £1, making it possible for anyone to grow their wealth without having to stretch themselves and get into debt.
What does the future hold?
As embedded finance continues to evolve, we can anticipate even more innovations in the world of micro-investing and wealth management. The lines between financial services and everyday life will continue to blur, making it easier than ever for people to manage their money, invest, and build wealth – all without needing a financial background or a large amount of capital.
Philipp Buschmann is co-Founder and CEO at AAZZUR, a one-stop-shop for smart embedded finance experience. Recognised as a rising star in the FinTech space, AAZZUR’s mission is to build profitable banking whilst at the same time empowering consumers to have access to better informed financial choices.
Philipp is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience of working in Challenger Banking, Financial Services, IT and Energy across the world. He took one of his business’s public – Ignis Petroleum was publicly listed in the US and Germany.
Having started as a developer in Financial Services, Philipp has first-hand experience of the banking revolution from both a technology and financial perspective. His interest in behavioural economics helped inspire AAZZUR’s revolutionary work on customer centricity in banking.
Philipp holds an MBA from the London Business School. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and loves exchanging ideas, insights and discussing FinTech’s future. He has spoken at major Fintech events including Money 20/20, MoneyLive, Finovate, Fintech Matters, and the Future of Retail Banking.
Adam Edwards, Product and Growth Director at Satago on how embedded finance is helping drive digitisation for the B2B financial space
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Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are at the heart of the UK economy. They contribute significantly to local employment and revenue across a wide array of sectors. However, the current economic landscape and consistently high inflation are inhibiting them from reaching their full potential.
Three key challenges which prevent SMEs from investing in growth are tight cash flow, poor access to capital and the late payments crisis. With over £32 billion in late payments plaguing them, SMEs need longer-term, meaningful policy action from the government, alongside better Working Capital solutions.
Investing in Embedded Finance
With a growing SME market needing better support than ever from lenders, banks are rapidly investing in IT adoption. Particularly, Embedded Finance tools, to better serve this sector. Indeed, analysts have forecast a staggering 148% growth in the Embedded Finance market. It is predicted to reach a revenue of $228 billion by 2028.
Banks have been quick to offer flexibility to consumers in the business-to-consumer (B2C) Embedded Finance space. Offering lots of options for flexible finance in response to high demand. However, the business-to-business (B2B) market has in many ways been slower.
There are certainly challenges here – but the opportunities are huge for the lenders that get this right to go on and serve the SME space. So, what can the B2B space learn from how Embedded Finance has succeeded in the B2C sector? And what are some of the benefits and new challenges that this investment could pose?
The role of Embedded Finance in supporting SMEs and founders
Embedded Finance emerges as an innovative approach to bolster SME support. It integrates financial services directly into non-financial platforms. This integration empowers SMEs to seamlessly access critical financial services. These include instant credit, streamlined payments processing, and optimised cash flow management. This enhances operational efficiency and financial resilience.
When we look at B2C financial services, we can see traditional banks working hard to catch up with challenger banks. These competitors have presented consumers with entirely new means to access digital banking, improve their visibility on financial information, and manage their funds and savings with secure API access.
This has forced traditional banks to digitise quickly in the B2C space to remain competitive and keep up with customer expectations. Embedded tools have become a key part of this. While the B2B financial services industry hasn’t traditionally faced the same level of market pressure to innovate – this is now starting to change. We will start to see the impact in a couple of ways.
I predict we will begin to see rapid growth in the number of partnerships between FinTech companies and B2B lenders. Where banks such as Barclays have already been partnering with the likes of Amazon on the consumer side for a long time to offer flexible payment capabilities, we will see a lot more similar partnerships starting to take place in the B2B space, to support the growing SME market. As a result, I anticipate a rise in the number of online marketplaces dedicated to the B2B lending space. We will also see increasingly niche market areas – such as agriculture and dedicated equipment manufacturers, for example.
The opportunities and challenges with Embedded Finance
There are several opportunities to be capitalised on via Embedded Finance in the B2B space. Lenders that have been held back by legacy systems in the past will now be able to offer a more flexible suite of digital finance options to customers, especially SMEs. SMEs, which may be run by a single founder or a small group of stakeholders, are likely to be used to an agile structure. They can take big decisions quickly and will be keen to be able to flexibly access financial tools. Through integration with expert providers, lenders can also benefit from new origination channels and access new pools of customers for bank accounts, financial consultancy and more.
For the fintech partners and integrators, including those providing white-labelled products to banks, there’s a chance to take advantage of the trust customers have in their banking providers. And the lenders’ brand reputations can increase their own revenue and future opportunities for sale.
Meanwhile, SMEs are set to reap the benefits of being able to offer better user and payment experiences to their own customers further up chain. They too, will benefit from better cash flow management, improved financial visibility and increased flexibility via different working capital tools. Just like consumers are able to – all of which will be facilitated by better digital tools.
However, it is worth acknowledging that as the B2B space grows, heightened concerns around fraud risk associated with financial transactions are also likely to emerge. Going forwards, we’ll see more analytics and artificial intelligence built into Embedded Finance. This will feed into underwriting models and support fraud checks. With more complex transactions and shared financial data via Embedded Finance partnerships, the risks of non-compliance could become more perilous. Therefore, there are certainly challenges ahead.
A competition for innovation in the B2B space
For SMEs to thrive, sustained and reliable access to cash flow is essential. Collaborative efforts between the government and the financial services industry are critical. Establishing robust regulatory frameworks and fostering innovation in Working Capital solutions will be vital.
The Embedded Finance market in over the next year and beyond can expect to see significant emphasis on B2B players, such as banks and corporate lenders. They are looking to catch up with the consumer market and serve SME customers with the most secure – and flexible – lending options.
Consumers have realised the benefits of seamless, digital financial services for themselves. We’ll now see demand growing as SMEs expect the same innovation and experience when it comes to their B2B financing. Lenders and banks that want to satisfy this growing pool of customers hungry for flexibility and sustainable lending support, will need to be willing to evolve and digitise, or risk missing out on the competition.
Satago is a leading fintech that enables lenders and corporates to streamline operations, boost revenue, and enhance their business customer experiences. This is achieved through cloud-native Working Capital and Cash Flow solutions, powered by real-time data, Open Banking, and API technology.
Nada Ali Redha, Founder of PLIM Finance, on flexibility, consolidation, and the evolution of digital payments
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Embedded finance, the integration of financial services into non-financial platforms, is no longer a niche trend. It has become a defining characteristic of modern commerce. Consumers are increasingly drawn to the convenience and flexibility it offers, leading businesses across industries to adopt embedded finance solutions. The rise of these platforms, combined with shifting consumer expectations, presents both opportunities and challenges for traditional banks and fintech players.
Customer-centricity with Embedded Finance
At the heart of this transformation is a desire for simplicity. Consumers are opting for solutions that allow them to bypass the inconvenient processes associated with traditional banking. They are avoiding excessive paperwork, account opening delays, or hidden charges. Instead, they are drawn to platforms that offer seamless integration of services. Enabling them to make purchases, manage their finances, and access credit without ever leaving the ecosystem of their preferred brands.
E-commerce giants like Amazon have been quick to recognise this trend, embedding financial services directly into their platforms. This allows them to offer a one-stop solution that caters to all their customers’ needs, from browsing products to making payments or accessing credit options. The appeal is clear: customers stay within the same digital environment, enjoying a frictionless experience that saves them time and effort. This development, however, raises the stakes for standalone payment providers like PayPal and Klarna, as they are increasingly excluded from these in-house ecosystems.
Shifting financial services
For legacy banking providers, this shift presents a major challenge. Traditionally, these institutions have relied on their extensive networks, trusted brands, and regulatory backing to maintain a dominant position in the financial landscape. But as businesses integrate financial services directly into their offerings, banks are no longer the first point of contact for many consumers. A growing number of businesses are bypassing traditional banks altogether, embedding payment and lending options at the point of purchase or within their own apps. This trend highlights a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with financial services, often without even realising it.
In response, payment providers and fintechs must find innovative ways to remain competitive. One potential strategy is for these companies to develop their own marketplaces. By creating an ecosystem of services that includes not only payments, providers can capture more customer loyalty and engagement. This would enable fintechs and payment solution companies to offer a holistic, embedded finance solution. Rather than relying on external platforms or partnerships.
PLIM Finance
A case study for this would be PLIM Finance’s marketplace, which offers a highly customised experience. PLIM connects consumers with their desired services in a way that prioritises personalisation and convenience. As a platform built with user-centric design at its core, it allows consumers to search for treatments based on location, type, and specific clinics, giving them the ability to make informed decisions effortlessly. This is achieved through a search engine that filters results to suit each individual’s exact needs. Enhancing the user experience by eliminating irrelevant options for a streamlined experience. PLIM’s marketplace also encourages partners to create detailed profiles, showcasing their services, reviews, and credentials, which enhances visibility and attracts new clients. By fostering a direct connection between consumers and clinics, PLIM’s marketplace stands out in the embedded finance space. Ensuring a seamless, personalised customer experience that is simple and easy-to-use.
Strategic partnerships
Another potential strategy is deeper collaboration with external partners. By integrating their services into a wide range of businesses, payment providers can continue to capture market share. Without needing to create their own consumer-facing platforms. Strategic partnerships can expand the reach of these payment solutions, allowing them to tap into user bases they might otherwise miss. For example, smaller or mid-sized businesses may benefit from embedding a well-established payment solution into their website or app rather than developing their own in-house system.
However, not every provider will be able to meet the demands of this rapidly changing landscape on their own. As the embedded finance space continues to mature, industry consolidation becomes a very real possibility. Larger players may acquire smaller fintech companies. Integrating their innovative solutions into existing platforms can offer a more comprehensive suite of services. This would mirror the broader trend in the tech sector, where big players often absorb disruptive startups to maintain their competitive edge. Consolidation offers both challenges and opportunities. While smaller companies risk losing their independence, they also gain access to the resources and customer base of their new parent companies.
Evolving financial landscape
This evolving landscape is also occurring at a time of significant economic uncertainty. Financial stress often pushes consumers to reevaluate their spending and financial habits, with many looking for greater control over their cash flows. This is where embedded finance stands out. The flexibility it offers allows consumers to manage their money more efficiently, whether through payment deferrals, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options, or quick access to credit. These features are particularly valuable when budgets are tight or income is uncertain.
Moreover, embedded finance solutions empower consumers by giving them more control over how they manage their transactions. For example, BNPL options give individuals the freedom to split payments over time, making larger purchases easier to manage without the immediate financial burden. This level of control resonates with modern consumers, who increasingly seek transparent, flexible financial solutions that can be tailored to their personal circumstances.
For businesses, this presents an opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty by offering embedded finance services that align with consumer needs. By removing barriers to purchasing, businesses can enhance the customer experience, which, in turn, can drive increased sales and long-term engagement. As a result, companies that adopt embedded finance solutions can gain a competitive edge, particularly in sectors like e-commerce, where convenience is king.
Conclusion
In conclusion, embedded finance represents a fundamental shift in how consumers interact with financial services. As more businesses adopt these solutions, traditional banking institutions and standalone payment providers will need to adapt or risk being left behind. Whether through developing their own marketplaces, forging deeper collaborations, or pursuing mergers and acquisitions, the financial services landscape is poised for continued transformation. Embedded finance, with its focus on flexibility and convenience, is likely to become an integral part of the future of commerce—benefiting both consumers and businesses alike.
The automotive industry is transforming vehicles into mobile banking centres with the introduction of embedded finance. This allows drivers to…
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The automotive industry is transforming vehicles into mobile banking centres with the introduction of embedded finance. This allows drivers to seamlessly pay for fuel, tolls, parking, and electric car charges without leaving their cars.
Embedded banking or embedded finance is a technology that is used on many websites for easy transactions. It integrates financial services like payments, accounts, or lending into non-financial products or services. That technology can also be brought into your car.
It turns banking into a part of driving, creating an efficient experience for drivers. With this new system, drivers can easily manage all of these payments automatically making for seamless transactions.
Benefits of Using Embedded Banking
Built-in banking does more than just make payments easier. It can also help drivers choose the right car based on how they drive. For example, if someone often drives long distances, the system might suggest a fuel-efficient car. If another driver drives mostly around town, a smaller car might be recommended. This intelligent system can make buying a new car easier and more personal.
Insurance companies can also benefit from this technology. They can see how people drive and adjust their premiums accordingly. For example, a cheaper insurance premium may be given to a driver with a clean driving record. On the other hand, a driver who has a history of speeding or traffic accidents may get a more expensive premium. This makes insurance fairer and more personalised to each driver.
Car companies that are the first to add built-in banking will have a big advantage. Buyers will want to buy cars with this new and convenient feature, giving these companies an edge. In addition, this technology allows car companies and banks to increase revenue. They could offer special deals or services to drivers who make frequent use of the in-car payment system.
Enhanced Financing Options
Embedded finance simplifies vehicle financing by integrating financial services into the car-buying process. Furthermore, customers can apply for and manage loans directly through their vehicle’s interface, with loan options personalised to their financial profile and driving habits. This innovation improves user experience by making payments, financing, and insurance easier and more secure.
Embedded banking turns cars into mobile banking hubs, leveraging data from modern vehicles to customise financial products. Moreover, insurance premiums can adjust based on driving behaviour, financing can match vehicle usage, and payments for charging or tolls can be automated, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Seamless Transactions
Embedded finance simplifies transactions by allowing drivers to pay for services like fuel, tolls, and parking directly through their vehicle’s system. This integration eliminates the need for physical payment methods, making the driving experience smoother and more convenient.
In the automotive industry, embedded finance also transforms how customers handle car purchases and financing. By integrating banking, lending, and insurance services into the vehicle’s interface, automotive companies can offer a more seamless and convenient experience. Using APIs from specialised providers, this approach opens new revenue streams and enhances overall customer satisfaction.
Increased Sales
Automotive companies that adopt embedded finance technologies can experience a significant boost in sales and revenue. By offering integrated financial services, car manufacturers can attract customers looking for modern, convenient solutions.
According to McKinsey, embedded finance can boost sales by increasing conversions, average purchase amounts, and customer loyalty. Research by RBC Capital Markets shows that buy now, pay later (BNPL) options can raise checkout conversion rates by 20-30 percent and lead to higher spending per transaction.
A major global retailer has found that customers using their embedded lending services spend 20 percent more. However, the solution must be easy to use; otherwise, abandonment rates can be high.
The Collaboration of Industries for Embedded Banking
This new technology also encourages teamwork between different industries. For it to work well, car companies, technology companies, and banks need to work closely together. They need to create strong security measures to protect users from potential online threats. This collaboration is important to ensure that the system is secure and reliable.
By connecting cars and financial services, embedded banking will accelerate innovation. It will help create a future where driving and banking are connected. This will lead to a more efficient and customer-friendly world.
New Technology Leaders
Mercedes-Benz is already leading the way with this technology through its partnership with Mastercard. In Germany, Mercedes-Benz customers can start the fueling process from their car and pay with their fingerprints. This is the first time in-car payments have been used at gas stations.
When a driver arrives at a connected service station, the Mercedes Me Fuel & Pay service starts automatically. The driver selects the gas pump, and the system calculates the cost. Payment is made with a fingerprint. After refuelling, the invoice appears on the screen and is emailed to the driver, allowing them to leave without visiting the checkout.
Future Prospects
This new technology will help both the automotive and banking industries. It makes life easier for drivers and promises to change the way we drive by enabling easy payments on the go.
Once all car companies start using built-in banking, the current system of driving will change forever. This technology will turn cars into more than just vehicles to get from one place to another; they will become smart, connected hubs that make life easier for drivers. The future of driving begins with the implementation of embedded finance.
Alloy, the identity risk management company trusted by over 600 leading banks, credit unions and fintech companies, has released its…
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Alloy, the identity risk management company trusted by over 600 leading banks, credit unions and fintech companies, has released its 2024 State of Embedded Finance Report.
The Report examines the year’s top trends in embedded finance risk management and compliance. Alloy surveyed more than 50 professionals at financial institutions operating bank sponsorship programs in the United States to learn how their businesses are responding to compliance challenges.
The Report is being published at a time when sponsor banks in the US are facing increased regulatory scrutiny. A reported 25.6% of the FDIC’s formal enforcement actions have been directed at sponsor banks since the beginning of 2024.
Alloy’s report found that while embedded finance programs drive significant revenue (over 50%) for sponsor banks, a majority (80%) of respondents reported that meeting embedded finance compliance requirements as a sponsor bank is challenging in the current environment.
“Running a sponsor bank program is inherently complex because you have banks who are highly regulated working with companies that are often new, fast-growing, and creating entirely new ways for consumers to interact with money,” said Tommy Nicholas, CEO and co-founder of Alloy.
“Despite the challenge, we’re already seeing sponsor banks respond to regulatory developments by investing in better controls, training, and adding to their compliance tech stack.”
State of Embedded Finance Report 2024
Here are five of the key findings from Alloy’s State of Embedded Finance Report:
1. Over half of sponsor banks’ deposits and revenue come from embedded finance partnerships.
Partnerships between banks and fintechs are a cost-efficient approach to catalyze growth through increased deposits, seamless UI, and accelerated innovation.
2. As regulatory scrutiny grows, embedded finance partnerships are becoming harder to maintain.
The embedded finance boom resulted in many banks testing the waters of bank sponsorship programs. As the complexity of managing these programs grows, we may see sponsor banks with less sophisticated embedded finance programs and tech stacks leave the space entirely.
3. Respondents cite reputational damage as the top consequence of compliance violations.
Reputational damage often results in increased regulatory scrutiny, including more frequent examinations and document requests. This heightened oversight can strain resources and pose ongoing operational challenges.
4. 90% of financial institutions face challenges when meeting compliance requirements as a sponsor bank.
Lack of control and audibility over fintech partners’ policy controls were cited as top challenges to meeting compliance requirements. Managing compliance across multiple jurisdictions and adapting to evolving regulatory changes were also top concerns.
5. 94% of respondents say they plan to invest in new compliance technology to help them manage their embedded finance partnerships.
As attention surrounding compliance missteps has grown over the past few years, there are new tech solutions available to help bridge the gap between sponsor banks and fintechs.
Download the Report
Respondents included 51 decision-makers from financial institutions operating bank sponsorship programs in the United States.
Surveys were conducted by The Harris Poll, a leading survey platform for over 60 years.
For further insights you can download the full report here
Embedded finance is transforming e-commerce for the better. It enables online businesses to offer payment processing, lending, insurance, and other…
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Embedded finance is transforming e-commerce for the better. It enables online businesses to offer payment processing, lending, insurance, and other financial services within their own platforms as a non-finance platform. The convenience and efficient shopping experience offered is changing the way people shop and how e-commerce businesses operate.
The companies that implemented embedded finance have seen significant growth in conversion rates of up to 12 percent, the average order value of up to 30 percent, and as much as a 7 percent incremental revenue. Brain & Company’s 2022 report also projected the embedded finance market value to grow to $7 trillion by 2030, indicating an increasing demand for this service.
Embedded Finance benefits
Embedded finance offers integrated payment solutions for e-commerce businesses. Customers can access financing options at the point of sale without switching to other platforms. This seamless experience makes it easier for buyers to complete their purchases, ensuring revenues for the businesses.
This integration provides better access for financial products, especially digital banking. Commonly, digital bank accounts are easier to set up than their traditional counterparts. It allows non-banking populations can easily make their purchase in e-commerce platforms.
Embedded finance opens new sales and revenue stream opportunities for e-commerce businesses. They provide sellers with working capital loans based on sales data, enabling them to earn additional revenue through interest and fees. The integration also increases customer retention as they are less likely to switch to competitors. This leverage offers long-term success in a competitive market.
Personalisation is another embedded finance’s strong suit. E-commerce businesses can use the customer’s data from their platforms to offer financial products tailored to their needs, creating a better customer experience.
Accenture found that 63 percent of consumers are more likely to buy a financial product from non-financial platforms that they trust. This report emphasises the importance of personalised embedded finance in generating more financial product sales.
Case Study: Amazon
One of the e-commerce platforms that successfully uses embedded finance isAmazon. In 2007, it launched Amazon Pay, allowing users to make purchases on external sites using their Amazon account details. This move not only expanded Amazon’s revenue opportunities but also strengthened customer loyalty.
Over the years, Amazon has continued evolving its embedded finance offerings, including one-click payments, buy now pay later, and lending services. Their latest venture involves a cash advance program in partnership with fintech company Parafin, which provides select sellers easy access to capital without interest or collaterals.
Case Study: Shopify
Shopify also creates a good embedded finance ecosystem with its various financial products. The Canadian e-commerce platform launched Shopify Payments in 2013 to simplify payment. This was followed by Shopify Capital in 2016, a lending product now available in four countries. The latest addition is Shopify Balance, a financial product offering a bank account and a debit card for managing financial activities.
Shopify earns most of its revenue from “merchant solutions” rather than just e-commerce software. This segment, which includes financial and fulfilment services, is growing much faster than its SaaS offerings — 29 percent compared to 8 percent as of Q4 2022, according to the company’s financial report.
Future Outlook for Embedded Finance
The future of embedded finance seems promising, with experts projecting an increase in demand and market share. As customers expect better integrated financial solutions, many companies will continue to adopt this system.
Embedded finance will also continue evolving with new technological advancements like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Both AI and ML are projected to play a significant role in increasing efficiency, security, and sales for embedded finance in the future.
To maximise the benefits of embedded finance, financial institutions and e-commerce businesses should collaborate to anticipate possible hurdles. Regulatory and compliance challenges are one of the complex issues that may hamper its development.
E-commerce platforms should also ensure their new sophisticated solutions are scalable. As new financial technology is adopted, the platforms should be capable of managing increasing transaction volumes without sacrificing performance or security.
Drawn by increased flexibility and convenience, retailers are embracing embedded finance solutions in the hope of opening up new revenue streams.
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Embedded finance is gaining significant traction among retailers. The term refers to the integration of financial services into non-financial applications and platforms. For example, an app that offers cashback on large purchases, or pay later features with zero interest. This new crop of digital tools is enabling retailers to strengthen customer relationships.
Retailers can create a more convenient shopping experience by providing features like flexible payment options and personalised financial advice directly within their platforms. This approach not only builds customer loyalty but also opens doors to new revenue streams from integrated financial services.
Enhancing Customer Shopping Experience
Embedded finance can keep customers engaged in the retail environment and enhance the customer shopping experience. By embedding payment options directly into their platforms, retailers can offer a faster and more convenient payment process. Customers do not need to leave the retail environment to complete a transaction.
One of the most significant benefits of embedded finance is the ability to offer point-of-sale financing. Customers can apply for funding at the time of purchase, rather than having to apply for credit separately.
Referred to as BNPL (buy now and pay later), this feature makes purchasing decisions easier and more flexible. This flexibility is driving customer loyalty. A study by Vodeno found that 40% of respondents would only choose brands offering BNPL and similar financial technology features like cashback. This number jumps to 50% for young adults.
Increasing Sales
Research by Natwest and BCG shows promising results for businesses that adopt embedded finance. Retailers saw conversion rates jump by 12%, average order value increase by 30%, and revenue rise by 7%.
Embedded finance can be a strategic tool for maximising revenue. Instead of just processing transactions, retailers can offer additional financial services for a fee. For example, a procurement platform could charge for automated reconciliation. This will save businesses time and generate new income.
Successful Implementation and Future Innovations
Several retail companies have successfully implemented embedded finance. These include Amazon with its Amazon Pay. The feature allows customers to use their payment information stored on various platforms. Another example is Walmart‘s mobile app. This platform provides customers with a variety of financial services, from paying for their groceries to managing their Walmart MoneyCard.
John Lewis has also integrated its financial services, offering customers credit cards, insurance, and personal loans directly through their retail platform. There’s also Tesco Bank, which provides a range of financial products, including savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and insurance products.
According to KBV research, the global embedded finance market is expected to reach $384.8 billion by 2029, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%. Parallel to the growth, retailers will continue to innovate, offering more integrated financial services. These can include more sophisticated loyalty programmes, personalised financial advice, new payment options, and enhanced data analytics to better understand and serve customers.
Retailers must embrace these innovations to remain competitive and meet the ever-increasing expectations of modern shoppers. By integrating financial services into non-financial products or services, retailers not only create added value for customers but also increase customer loyalty. In addition, embedded finance also presents opportunities for retailers to increase profits.
Small businesses are the backbone of the global economy. The World Trade Organisation reports that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)…
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Small businesses are the backbone of the global economy. The World Trade Organisation reports that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up over 90 percent of all businesses, employ 60 to 70 percent of the workforce, and contribute 55 percent of GDP in developed economies. Despite their significance, they may face barriers to accessing financial services. Embedded finance services offer small businesses innovative solutions to traditional financial hurdles.
Embedded finance combines financial services with non-financial experiences. Technology companies partner with banking institutions to offer these services directly within their platforms. This means customers can access financial tools, like making payments or managing accounts, without leaving the platform.
Analysts atGlobal Market Insights predict the embedded finance market will reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 29 percent between 2023 and 2032. A key driver of this growth is the increasing demand for faster and easier transactions.
Embedded finance allows businesses to offer sophisticated payment and banking services directly to their customers and suppliers. This removes many of the frictions associated with business-to-business (B2B) payments, especially as these transactions are typically made in real-time.
By embedding financial services into their offerings, businesses can increase customer loyalty, increase revenue opportunities, and become more competitive in the market. This integration allows customers to access various financial services without hassle, creating a seamless customer experience.
It also offers small businesses innovative solutions to traditional financial hurdles, such as cross-border commerce and evolving security and privacy requirements. Embedded finance also helps businesses provide services such as loans, insurance, debit cards, and investments through their platforms.
Access to credit
Getting credit remains a major challenge for many small and medium-sized businesses. A Goldman Sachs report found that 70% of small businesses struggle to access funding for daily operations, inventory management, and growth. According to the same report, this lack of financing hinders 76% of SMBs.
Embedded finance offers a potential solution. Businesses can integrate financing options, like credit cards, directly into their services. This provides much-needed financial flexibility for their small business customers. Improved cash flow for small businesses strengthens the partnership between both parties. The larger company becomes a key player in the small business’s growth journey.
Improved cash flow with Embedded Finance
Cash flow is a significant challenge for small businesses as many operate on thin margins. Embedded finance can help small businesses overcome that by integrating payment processes and real-time financial data into business operations.
For example, point-of-sale (POS) systems with embedded payment options allow businesses to receive funds instantly. Meanwhile, automated invoicing and payment reminders can reduce the time and effort required to chase down payment payments.
Enhanced Customer Experience
By integrating payment solutions directly into their platforms, businesses can offer features like one-click payments, installments, and digital wallets. This streamlines the checkout process and boosts customer satisfaction.
Loyalty programmes also become more attractive with embedded finance. Businesses can reward returning customers with discounts, cashback, or exclusive offers, strengthening brand loyalty and driving repeat business.
For example, Deliveroo’s ‘Deliver Money’ feature streamlines food delivery by enabling real-time payments. This eliminates the need for cash and waiting for change, speeding up transactions and creating a smooth checkout experience. Faster access to earnings empowers small businesses to fulfil orders quicker and potentially offer special promotions.
As digital convenience continues to shape consumer expectations, embedded finance is a key factor in transforming how consumers manage their finances.
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Embedded finance is the integration of financial services into non-financial platforms. It allows businesses to offer financial products and services within their existing apps and websites. Integrating well improves customer experience and opens up new business opportunities.
Embedded finance evolves incredibly fast as a segment within Fintech – a sector guiding how our digital future will work. Financial services are rarely so exposed to the real-time digital user experience of consumers as they are with things like embedded banking.
The emerging embedded finance trends for 2024 are driven by changes in consumer needs, a maturing sector, and advances in tech and regulation.
Understanding these trends as they unfold is critical for analysts, executives, and any industry actor.
1. Integration with E-commerce Platforms
Possibly the most notable embedded finance trend for 2024 is its increasing integration with e-commerce platforms.
Consumers now expect more than just a variety of payment methods at checkout. They want features like one-click buy buttons, pre-approved financing options, and loyalty programs with instant rewards. By embedding these financial services directly into their platforms, e-commerce businesses can provide a smoother, more personalised shopping experience. This can also drive higher sales and customer retention.
Complacency here is a risk. What was cutting-edge for the past few years will quickly look dated as e-commerce integrations improve. That presents a real danger at the point of transactions because digital consumers do not hang around long if the experience is better elsewhere.
2. Rise of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) Services
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services revolutionised the experience of financial services for younger consumers when they developed a few years ago. In 2024 this embedded finance trend will keep growing.
We have seen the rise of brands like Clearpay and Klarna to household-name status. Their progression to embedded banking options on checkout pages across a slew of major websites and apps was a watershed moment.
BNPL providers allow customers to make purchases and pay for them in instalments, often with little to no interest. It has seen rapid growth, especially with younger consumers.
This embedded finance trend is commonplace and established. There is room to bring even more flexibility to transaction payments. As BNPL’s success is driven by the most tech-savvy age cohorts, expanding its reach in new and innovative ways is both a necessary and profitable enterprise.
Integrating BNPL options directly into the checkout process made it easier for customers to make purchases. This year, more BNPL options will emerge. Providers will partner with a wider range of businesses as they keep adapting to consumer spending habits.
3. Expansion into new sectors
Embedded finance is no longer limited to e-commerce and retail, where it first made its name by making the inaccessible accessible (through BNPL), improving customer experience with embedded banking, and cultivating loyalty programs by packaging financial services into consumers’ purchasing journeys.
Those opportunities in online and offline retail were relatively low-hanging fruit, but major sectors are ripe for harvesting in 2024. Embedded finance trends are appearing in enormous sectors where the opportunities are enormous.These include:
Healthcare: Patients can access financing options for medical procedures or subscriptions to wellness programs directly at point of care.
Automotive: Car dealerships and ride-hailing platforms can offer car loans, insurance products, and instant financing for rentals and maintenance services within their apps.
Travel and Hospitality: Travel booking platforms and airlines can provide travellers with instant financing for flights and hotels, travel insurance, and currency exchange within their booking processes.
4. FinTech partnerships flourish
The success of the embedded finance ecosystem depends on collaboration. Unsurprisingly, this means Fintech partnerships are an embedded finance trend, but 2024 predictive indicators suggest that the sector is now mature enough for these partnerships to become more complex. This is opens up new fields of opportunity,
Traditional financial institutions are recognising that maturity and are responding by increasingly partnering with Fintech companies.
Fintechs bring agility and tech, while banks offer regulatory compliance, a broad customer base, and the benefits of trust and reputation.
These partnerships are the indicator of a maturing sector that is now able to integrate with the traditional industry it originally spun off from. These Fintechs bring in the innovations and practices that matured outside traditional financial services, and a primary benefit of that will be giving access to embedded finance trends, embedded banking solutions, and a customer experience suited to the modern digital consumer.
5. Cybersecurity centre stage
Cyber threats have been a major issue for years and mass fraud campaigns that attempted to hijack checkouts were a big feature of the spike in fraud that hit at the start of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Cybersecurity will always be necessary, but the 2024 predictions for embedded finance will have been noted by criminal groups, too.
These major embedded finance trends also mean the attack surface for cyber threats is expanded in this transitory phase. Criminals will inevitably target traditional institutions now partnering with fintechs and embracing embedded banking – the opportunity to find a vulnerability to exploit during the period of transition is too good for them to pass up. The same is true across industries, all of which present opportunities for fraud, theft, and ransomware attacks.
Protecting sensitive data from hacking will be as crucial as protecting the embedded financial services themselves. This is the case for finance providers, Fintechs, and the big firms in industries like insurance or healthcare that have sensitive patient and consumer data to protect.
Advanced security measures like strong authentication protocols, data encryption, and continuous monitoring for suspicious activities will be necessary. Collaborating with cybersecurity experts and conducting regular security audits will be crucial for building and maintaining trust with consumers and businesses.
The cost for implementing increased measure may be high but the risks come with consequences – monetary, reputational, or regulatory – will be severe,
6. Evolving regulatory landscape
The regulatory environment for embedded finance changes all the time. Predicting what will happen is as important as adapting to the new reality when it actually happens.
As the industry grows, regulators are coming to grips with a fast-changing environment, but 2024 predictions suggest a slew of new guidelines to ensure consumer protection, data privacy, and fair competition is coming the industry’s way.
Embedded finance providers need to stay informed about these changes and adapt \ to remain compliant. Collaboration between industry players and regulators will be key to creating a sustainable and healthy embedded finance ecosystem. So will planning for where legislation and regulation is likely to come and ensuring strategies manage the risk appropriately – maximising opportunities without compromising long-term prospects.
7. Open Banking fuels data-driven solutions
Open banking regulations are paving the way for a data-driven approach to financial services.
Embedded finance providers can use open banking APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to access consumer financial data with their consent. Open banking APIs have been on the market for a while, but their analysis and use look like they are becoming more sophisticated.
This will lead to the creation of more personalised financial products and services, such as tailored insurance quotes, automated savings plans, and pre-approved credit options. It also means more financial services will reach more consumers and businesses that occupy the vast market gaps in financing that traditional services have failed to adequately serve.
As open banking adoption increases, embedded finance solutions leveraging the analyses they provide will also become more sophisticated: the better the data they get from open banking APIs, the more data-driven and far-reaching they can become.
The risk of misreading data has kept open banking from surging ahead, but ultimately the consequences of what it enables will be huge and transformative for economies and populations. Any progression brings huge opportunity.
2024 predictions make a febrile atmosphere
Among these 2024 predictions is a common theme – once-transformative embedded finance solutions could transform into vulnerabilities through the year, but only because of the massive opportunities that are opening up as embedded banking proliferates and financial services adapt.
The sector’s future is filled with possibilities, but dangers still lurk and they are very real. And so are the threats of missing out. 2024 will reward those who focus on continually improving the reach of financial services through things like embedded banking – it will also punish those slow off the mark. This is a dynamic sector poised for significant growth and innovation.
Despite the convenience it offers, adoption still faces challenges. This article discusses the main opportunities it brings and the challenges it faces.
Opportunities
The advent of embedded finance has brought about new opportunities; they are, among others, as follows:
Supporting growth of financial technology
Embedded finance is a significant booster for the growth of the financial technology sector. Traditional finance has struggled to reach traditionally unbanked communities. By making finances integrated into non-financial apps, these communities can now access financial services.
Promoting peer-to-peer transactions
While the integration of financial services into non-financial apps is important, one of embedded finance’s most important functions is facilitating seamless peer-to-peer transactions.
Increasing payment channels
Embedded finance allows companies and services to accept payment from more channels, allowing them to expand their reach.
Focus on customer experience
Embedded finance has an emphasised focus on customer experience. By integrating multiple financial services into one platform, customers can now access them with ease.
Challenges
As embedded financial services are still in their early stages of development, they face several challenges.
Complexity in integrating multiple services
Integrating multiple services entails some technical complexity.
Regulatory challenges
A platform integrating multiple financial services into one platform might have to navigate diverse regulatory challenges that bind to each service, not to mention the challenges that come from the partnerships with the service providers.
Risk management
By integrating multiple services into one platform users are at an increased risk of having their accounts and data compromised.
Notable Embedded Finance Platforms
Multiple successful embedded finance platforms have emerged in various countries. For example, there is Alipay in China, GoJek in Indonesia, Plaid in the U.S., and Adyen in the Netherlands.
These platforms all owe their success to the same factors. These are user trust, widespread adoption, security, innovation, and an extensive network of partners.
User trust stems from data security. Embedded finance platforms employ tools such as encryption and secure API designs and ensure security compliance to secure user data. Then, they also have extensive networks of partners, ensuring the comprehensiveness of their service offerings.
Due to the convenience they offer, embedded finance enjoys public support. It provides opportunities for companies and services to reach more users. That said, embedded financial services also face challenges such as cybersecurity.
Throughout history, finance and banking have seamlessly adapted to integrate with evolving consumer lifestyles. Embedded Finance exemplifies this ongoing integration,…
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Throughout history, finance and banking have seamlessly adapted to integrate with evolving consumer lifestyles. Embedded Finance exemplifies this ongoing integration, strategically placing financial services directly within customer interactions at the moments they’re needed.
Industry experts have pinpointed embedded finance trends as a major development area, not only for financial institutions but also for non-financial companies seeking to participate in this burgeoning market. The embedded finance market is projected to experience explosive growth, surging from $63.2 billion in 2023 to a staggering $291.3 billion by 2033.
To capitalise on this opportunity and gain a competitive edge, businesses need to stay informed about the latest 2024 predictions and emerging trends within embedded banking. This is a space that evolves rapidly; and so must they.
Embedded Finance primer
Embedded finance refers to integrating financial services, such as checking accounts, loans, insurance, and investment tools, directly into the platforms of non-financial companies. This integration often occurs through partnerships between technology providers, traditional financial institutions, and the non-financial company itself.
While the concept of integrating financial products into non-financial transactions isn’t entirely new, embedded finance has gained significant momentum in recent years.
The term itself rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 2010s, coinciding with a confluence of trends in the fintech and retail app space. Additionally, the widespread adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models has facilitated the integration of financial services into non-financial platforms.
Trend 1: Integration with E-commerce Platforms
One of the key embedded finance trends in 2024 centres around its integration with e-commerce platforms. As online marketplaces become the future of retail, embedded banking offers a strategic weapon to fuel growth in this space.
Embedded finance lets marketplaces offer personalised financing at checkout, such as flexible payments or credit options. This can boost sales and customer satisfaction by giving them more buying power.
But the real game-changer might be loyalty programs. While traditional stores use loyalty programs, online marketplaces haven’t fully tapped this potential. By seamlessly combining finance and rewards, marketplaces can create a powerful tool to keep customers coming back for more.
Trend 2: Rise of Buy Now, Pay Later services
Another prominent embedded finance trend is the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services. These services have become a familiar sight for online shoppers, appearing at checkout precisely when consumers are considering their budget.
BNPL solutions offer an alternative to traditional upfront payments by splitting the purchase amount into smaller instalments, typically spread over weeks or months, often with no interest charges.
Trend 3: Expansion into new sectors
The expansion of embedded finance beyond traditional sectors presents exciting possibilities. In the automotive industry, for example, connected and autonomous vehicles hold immense potential for integrating financial services.
This innovation has the potential to significantly enhance the user experience by offering on-the-go payments, streamlined vehicle financing, and convenient insurance options directly within the car itself.
Moreover, embedded banking can transform cars into mobile banking hubs, blurring the lines between financial services and automotive operations. This convergence creates opportunities for entirely new business models and revenue streams for both automotive manufacturers and financial institutions.
Trend 4: Partnerships with FinTech firms
The rise of embedded finance necessitates a strategic shift towards collaboration. This trend is particularly evident in partnerships between traditional financial institutions and fintech firms.
This strategic teamwork allows each party to leverage its strengths. Fintech companies bring innovative solutions and a focus on user experience, while established institutions provide robust financial infrastructure and regulatory expertise.
Trend 5: Prioritising Cybersecurity for Embedded Finance
As embedded banking continues to gain traction, ensuring the security of these transactions becomes paramount. This trend reflects the growing recognition that data security is not just a technical hurdle, but a strategic imperative. Financial institutions, fintech companies, and non-financial participants will all need to prioritise collaboration and information sharing to address emerging threats and vulnerabilities within the complex embedded banking ecosystem.
Trend 6: Regulatory Changes
Financial models like BNPL underscores the ongoing debate surrounding regulatory frameworks. While BNPL offers convenience, it has sparked discussions on the need for enhanced safeguards to protect consumer interests and promote responsible lending practices. Some call for stricter rules to prevent debt spirals and clear terms. However, fintechs find existing regulations hard to adapt to their evolving products.
Trend 7: Improved Analytics for Embedded Finance
Data is the lifeblood of informed decision-making, and B2B marketplaces, portals, and apps are no exception. By integrating financial services within the user experience, these platforms gain access to a rich data stream related to transactions, users, and the sales cycle.
Embedded finance solutions can further improve user experience by streamlining the consumer feedback process. This facilitates a deeper understanding of user pain points, paving the way for experience improvements. Ultimately, these data-driven insights inform future development efforts, ensuring a platform that caters effectively to user needs.
Outlook on embedded finance
Embedding financial services can create new revenue streams for businesses. For non-financial institutions, integrating financial services unlocks new revenue streams through partnerships with financial providers. This collaboration fosters the creation of additional services and strengthens relationships with both businesses and consumers.
It is not just new revenue streams that are at stake. Embedded finance trends are reaching a point where 2024 predictions suggest an environment ready to reward businesses with greater customer loyalty, growing existing revenue, and a sustainable flow of data to compound the business benefits of consumer behaviour with a better understanding of it.
Finance is going through a period of sustained growth while it digitalises and starts to offer more convenience to consumers.
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Embedded Finance, integrates financial and banking services into apps and services outside finance. It is at the forefront of this change.
Embedded Finance is a term that might sound foreign to many people but every digitally connected consumer would have experienced some aspect of it. It is designed to be practical and accessible. You “embed finance” to take or experience some financial action somewhere you would actually want to. Paying for an item or service through the vendor’s app, is a classic example.
User experiences on apps and websites are crucial to business growth. Overcoming issues that interrupt, for instance, a buying experience, can have a direct and major effect on business growth. So can the insertion and creation of business opportunities for financial services.
Increased revenue streams
Bringing embedded banking or other embedded finance benefits into non-financial contexts reduces the points where a consumer might abandon a transaction. It also creates new opportunities for additional transactions and the use or purchase of additional (embedded) financial services.
If they don’t have to leave the app or website, they are more likely to make a purchase; and if you can offer and convert the sale of a financial service tied to a purchase that they made, at the point where they made it – you have both increased and added new revenue from embedded finance solutions.
This creates new opportunities and brings financial services to a wider audience that are not especially familiar with them or with banking technology as a whole.
The more customers can use a service by finding it conveniently embedded outside that finance app, the more touchpoints there are to build both revenue and that customer relationship.
Enhance customer loyalty
Bank or financial services can cultivate greater customer loyalty by embedding finance options in the non-financial contexts that they would most likely want them.
Customers positively associate that convenience with the financial or banking service provider, and with the non-financial context itself. It is easy to incentivise the use of embedded finance options and the purchase of embedded financial services with discounts that latch onto the customer journey the consumer is already on.
A classic example of this (and the above) is buying a plane ticket, and having the option to add insurance, a hotel, or car rental, at a discounted rate, while completing a single transaction in a single, non-financial setting.
Tying those purchases together into loyalty rewards programmes is a simple and effective way to grow customer loyalty. This is also well evidenced by airlines rewarding air miles for packaging flight purchases with hotel, rental, insurance, and other partners.
Improved Customer Experience
The positive associations that go towards growing customer loyalty start with their experience of the non-finance app or site. Customer experience (CX) cultivates those positive associations and emotional ties that will keep them customers for a long time.
Embedded financial services that solve problems for customers and make their lives easier will always improve their experience. Packaging that in an experience that is enjoyable, through design elements, haptic feedback, sounds, or just customisation is all part of it.
Most of all, you can improve CX by offering a wide variety of embedded finance options. If customers feel an app or platform can be used for every transaction, and they like it there and trust it – they will stay there when faced with the option to move elsewhere.
Personalised offerings, built-in protections to assure their security, and expanding their access to financial tools will all help.
Access to Valuable Data via Embedded Finance
Through analysis of financial data, businesses can monitor actual performance precisely and adapt how to handle different situations.
Successful embedded finance benefits help the bottom line, but they also always deliver valuable data on how to serve the customer better and what firms can do next to support business growth.
Embedded finance allows for the capture of valuable data on customer behaviour and on behaviour towards embedded financial services in the non-financial contexts they get embedded in. This data capture gives unprecedented insights that will in turn lead to improved financial services and new opportunities for revenue generation.
Competitive Advantage
Embedded Finance presents clear opportunities for businesses to find and establish competitive advantages. The nature of embedded financial services also means that they can find advantages through initial deployments and long into the future.
Embedded finance benefits are so significant for business growth that they will become part of cross-industry business strategy for years to come. It offers quick wins for early adopters, and those who just deploy the best tech. It also brings growth to firms deploying embedded banking for the first time, as their customer base reacts to the deployment.
From that point forward, businesses can press that advantage home. They can use that advantage in consumer preferences to find better ways of serving them with the embedded applications they deploy.
Agile businesses can maintain those competitive advantages over sustained periods of time because of the availability of data to interpret.
How embedded finance transforms business growth
Embedded finance enables businesses to innovate quickly, adapting to market trends and customer demands more effectively.
The sooner platforms with embedded finance options are deployed, the sooner businesses can refine them. Familiarising consumers with their brand’s growing forays into consumer convenience supports growth.
Embedded Finance is one of the most beneficial inventions in banking that combines technology and finance fields. As people rely more on technology, they need a more practical and efficient platform to help them. They are part of the fabric of the digital future.
Embedded finance is revolutionising the financial landscape by seamlessly integrating financial services into non-financial contexts.
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What that means is empowering a moment in time with the ability to financially optimise how you handle it. Imagine buying a coffee and having the option to split the payment into instalments within the cafe’s app. Or booking a flight and receiving personalised travel insurance recommendations. All of this, based on your spending habits, preferences, and the flight you just booked.
In both scenarios, you never leave the one place you planned to visit – the cafe and the airline.
This is the power of embedded finance – it helps consumers by making financial services more accessible, convenient, and personalised. It brings financial options to the point of consumer decision making.
Seamless Transactions
Embedded finance means bringing the behaviour tied to transactions directly into platforms consumers already use.
Whether it’s paying for groceries, booking a ride, or splitting a restaurant bill with friends, embedded finance allows for instant and secure transactions within the familiar environment of the non-financial app. This also works the other way around – some financial apps allow for those decisions to all take place in their own app.
This saves time and effort – it just creates a more streamlined user experience and empowers consumers in the moment of their purchasing decision.
Enhanced Access to Credit
Embedded finance is opening doors for consumers who previously struggled with access to traditional credit options.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services are the most prominent example of embedded finance. These offer buyers the flexibility to break purchases up into instalments tied to their personal circumstances. This helps with budgeting and allows young consumers to build a credit history, as traditional methods of doing so are less accessible. The rise of self-employment and the gig economy has meant consistent monthly payments are hard to predict for many consumers.
Embedded finance can facilitate real-time credit assessments based on a consumer’s spending behaviour within a given platform, enabling them to access microloans or other financial products they might not have otherwise qualified for.
Personalised Financial Services
The use of data analytics within embedded finance to personalise financial products and services for each consumer is having an impact beyond transactions.
By analysing a user’s spending habits, income streams, and financial goals within a platform, embedded finance providers can offer targeted recommendations. These can focus on saving accounts, investment opportunities, or even insurance products.
This level of personalisation empowers consumers to make informed financial decisions based on their unique circumstances.
Embedded Finance Case Studies
The impact of embedded finance is already being felt across various sectors:
Sector
Use Case
Benefit for Consumers
Retail
A retail app that allows customers to pay for their purchases and simultaneously apply for a store credit card with a pre-approved limit based on their past purchases.
Streamlines the checkout process and provides access to personalised credit options.
Travel
Travel booking platforms can leverage embedded finance to offer travellers real-time currency exchange. Travel insurance can be tailored to their itinerary with instant microloans for unexpected expenses.
Creates a more holistic and convenient travel experience.
Healthcare
Embedded finance can be integrated into healthcare platforms to facilitate co-pay payments. Offer personalised health insurance plans based on a user’s medical history. Provide financing options for medical procedures.
Empowers patients to manage their healthcare finances more effectively.
Future Trends
The future of embedded finance is full of possibility and it marks an era that is just beginning. We can expect to see:
Deeper integration: Financial services will become even more seamlessly integrated into everyday platforms, creating a truly frictionless financial experience.
AI-powered personalisation: Artificial intelligence will play a more prominent role in personalising financial products and services, offering hyper-targeted recommendations based on real-time data analysis.
Open banking: Open banking APis will further empower embedded finance by allowing secure access to a consumer’s financial data across different institutions, leading to a more holistic view of their financial health
Embedded finance is a game-changer for consumers. Seamless transactions, enhanced access to credit, and personalised financial services, are giving consumers the ability to take real-time control of their finances and make informed decisions.
As this technology continues to evolve, we can expect an even more convenient, personalised, and inclusive financial landscape. This consumer empowerment means more, new opportunities for financial services.
