By Roy Urrico
Finopotamus aims to highlight white papers, research, surveys and reports that provide a glimpse as to what is taking place and/or impacting credit unions and other organizations in the financial services industry.
Most U.S. B2B (business-to-business) firms are not only familiar with the term “embedded finance;” they are already offering embedded finance solutions to solve three top critical business pain points: customer retention, cash flow management and revenue growth. That is among the findings according to new research conducted by Hampshire, U.K.-based Juniper Research in collaboration with Salt Lake City-based Galileo Financial Technologies, a fintech firm owned and operated independently by the San Francisco-based SoFi Technologies, Inc.
Embedded finance allows non-financial brands to integrate banking and payment services into their apps and ecosystems using application programming interfaces (APIs). The research, published as the Galileo Embedded Finance Report, highlights the inherent need for U.S. businesses to offer embedded finance solutions to better enable banking, payments, payroll, credit lending, insurance, and other financial services.
“The dramatic rise in the adoption of digital payments among both consumers and businesses, has enabled people and businesses to do more with technology than ever before — paving the way for enormous growth for embedded financial services,” said Seth McGuire, chief revenue officer of Galileo Financial Technologies. “The market has evolved at lighting speed and this new research confirms that forward-thinking B2B executives are embracing embedded finance solutions as a key part of their growth strategies.”
Survey Takeaways
The survey of 450 C-level executives in B2B businesses across the U.S. asked business leaders about their attitudes towards embedded finance, what types of financial services they currently or want to offer, how many providers they use, who they prefer as their embedded finance partner and what value embedded finance solutions provide to their clients.
Key findings include:
· Eighty-five percent of B2B businesses are familiar with the concept of embedded finance.
· Sixty-five percent of those not currently offering an embedded finance solution are now considering offering one.
· Sixty-eight percent would prefer to offer embedded finance services from a non-bank provider.
· Among the 63% of businesses that use embedded finance, the majority (78%) work with two or more providers to enable their solution, with fintechs the preferred provider.
· Payments, employee/employer services and credit and lending solutions are the top three use cases in the market today.
“Customer retention, a major pain point for businesses, can be significantly enhanced through embedded finance tools. This is a critical differentiator that businesses must leverage, or they will be left behind,” said Nick Maynard, study author and head of research at Juniper Research. “As the demand for digital services continues to grow rapidly, there is significant market opportunity for businesses who go to market in an efficient, scalable manner.”
The Galileo report also explores why businesses are gravitating toward embedded finance, the newest use cases for U.S. B2B embedded finance and how the B2B embedded finance market is catching up with B2C offerings. Use cases include offering third-party payment options such as fixed-rate installment loans or buy now, pay later (BNPL) options.
What is Embedded Finance?
The use of APIs in finance began more than a decade ago, and is becoming the de facto method to deliver financial services. The first wave focused on unbundling the consumer banking offerings, providing tech to financial institutions, and allowing the neobanks to compete against incumbents.
The next wave in the fintech revolution, embedded finance, is allowing brands to offer financial services as a part of their existing products, or build entirely new ones, using developer-friendly integrations. Service providers lease access to individual parts of the banking and payments 'stack' — including licenses.
To meet the increasing customer demand for universal banking options, many financial institutions are increasingly offering banking-as-a-service (BaaS); and embedded finance (aka embedded banking), such as payment processing, with other services such as a ride-share app; and open finance, the extension of open banking data-sharing principles.
The possibilities presented by embedded finance encourage existing tech players to offer banking and payments services to their customers (or their customers’ customers) as it allows them to provide a more immersive experience. The addition of open banking to the mix provides an extra layer of support, particularly in areas such as account aggregation and payment initiation.