Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 27. Published 25 June 2025. Guest: Anniina Heinonen, Managing Director of Wolt Payments. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: Some companies have fintech in their DNA, even though they're not from the financial services industry. One of these companies is Wolt. The Finnish restaurant platform enables customers to order food from their favourite restaurant and get it delivered directly to their home. Wolt is clearly not a fintech, yet it offers payment, wallet and lending products to restaurant owners and customers.
In this episode I speak with Anniina Heinonen. Anniina is a managing director at Wolt Payments, where she's responsible for all regulated financial services that Wolt offers. We speak in detail about Wolt's different financial products, how PSD2 was an important catalyst for the embedded finance strategy, and why she's not worried about how much profit the company makes with its embedded lending products.
My name is Lars Markull and this is the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. Every two weeks I interview the builders and shapers of embedded finance. A quick reminder from my side. At Embedded Finance Review I publish weekly newsletters, a biweekly podcast, and host in-person and virtual industry events. You can find out more about all these activities on our website, embeddedfinancereview.com. In addition, we also work with non-financial brands, infrastructure providers, and banks in understanding, designing and launching their embedded finance products. If you are interested in working with us, visit our website and reach out. And now let's dive in.
Welcome
Lars Markull: Hi Anniina. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, and in what part of the world are you actually located right now?
Anniina Heinonen: We're doing great. I'm in Helsinki, and now we literally have the two best months ahead of us in a year, so the sun is shining and summer is coming. Couldn't be happier.
Lars Markull: Yeah, I know that feeling very well. Same over here in Berlin.
We actually met a couple of weeks ago. It was in Helsinki for the Nordic Fintech Summit. My focus of course is embedded finance. I was going through the event app a couple of days before, and I was like, oh, somebody from Wolt is there. That's exactly the kind of person I need to speak with. And I was glad we were able to catch up at the event, and that you also agreed on joining for the podcast to talk a little bit more about Wolt and what the company is doing in the world of embedded finance.
I guess most, or maybe almost everybody of my listeners here in Europe, know what Wolt does as a platform for restaurants, for food delivery. You are the managing director of Wolt Payments. Maybe you can describe a little bit more in detail what that exactly means? What is the setup between Wolt and Wolt Payments, and how is your role exactly defined?
Why Wolt built its own payment institution
Anniina Heinonen: Of course. Thanks. And yeah, it was great to meet you Lars at the event, and thanks for having me here on the podcast.
So, Wolt established an in-house payment institution in 2021, and that was also the time when I joined. So both myself and our payment institution are still celebrating our fourth anniversary. And the reason originally for having this in-house financial entity was PSD2 compliance. So basically how we handle our merchants' funds is considered as merchant acquiring. And back then, after careful consideration, the decision was to build these capabilities in-house, also for the strategic leverage.
Now we are operational in way over 20 markets in Europe and beyond. We are fully owned by Wolt. And really the purpose is to provide regulated financial services to end users, merchants, or a combination. Platform business and fintech capabilities, which I think originally has also been the purpose of PSD2.