Hi Embedded Finance Friend
On Thursday, exactly 2 days from now, we are hosting our 10th Embedded Finance Review Event in Frankfurt. Ten events of this format - not something I imagined when I hosted the first one in May 2023. And as I told myself many times before, perhaps it's time to drop the # number for my future events ;-)
If you are in Frankfurt on Thursday and haven't registered yet, you should do so now. We are going deep into cross-border payments and fintech compliance. Additionally, we will have two companies from this year's TechQuartier Digital Finance Accelerator pitch.
Thanks to our sponsors: Copla and Thunes!
And now let’s dive in 👇
Briqs wants PSPs and platforms to own their lending, not rent it
Briqs, a Dutch infrastructure startup that recently rebranded from Dime, has emerged with embedded lending infrastructure aimed at PSPs and platforms. The company was founded by Pascal van Hattem, who was later joined by Laurens de Gilde as technical co-founder. Both were working at Adyen prior to Briqs, during which they helped build Adyen Capital. Briqs sits in a market under structural pressure: payment volume is shifting toward lower-margin rails, core processing has been commoditised, and merchant distribution has fragmented across vertical SaaS players that increasingly own the merchant relationship. The argument is that the next chapter of PSP growth lies in embedded lending rather than payments, and Worldline's recent launch with YouLend, plus Adyen's Embedded Financial Products (capital, issuing, accounts) growing 71% year-on-year in H1 2025, suggest the rest of the market agrees on the direction, if not yet on how to get there. Most PSPs that have added lending so far have done so through a partnership model in which the lender owns capital, underwriting, pricing, and economics, and the PSP receives a referral fee. Briqs takes that bundle apart: it sells only the technology layer for embedded lending, while customers bring their own funding source or sign with a capital provider through a marketplace Briqs is building. The website puts it directly: lending infrastructure "without becoming a lending organisation."
Briqs is best suited for PSPs and platforms that already have a funding partner and some credit risk capability. For that customer, Briqs becomes the operating layer that turns an existing referral arrangement into a fully owned lending product. How large that segment is, and whether Briqs eventually expands further into capital or risk to broaden it, is the question we will be tracking over the next 18 months.
Bright adds payments to its back-office stack with Unipaas
Bright, the UK and Ireland software group behind BrightPay, BrightBooks, and a suite of tax and compliance tools, has partnered with Unipaas to embed payments into BrightBooks, its cloud accounting product. The integration adds a pay button to invoices issued from BrightBooks, letting end customers pay by card, wallet, open banking, or direct debit, with payments automatically reconciling back into the accounting workflow. Bright is distinct from Xero or QuickBooks in that it primarily distributes through accountants rather than directly to SMBs, which means the payments product reaches SMBs through their accountant. For Unipaas, Bright joins Capium, IRIS Pay, and Nomi Pay in a clear pattern of choosing UK accounting platforms as a vertical wedge.
The UK and Ireland accounting market has quietly become one of Europe's most active embedded finance battlegrounds. Dext launched payments with Airwallex earlier this year; HSBC embedded Sage in its business banking app; Tide built accounting natively on Sage infrastructure; and Xero works with multiple payments partners. Bright and Unipaas are the latest entries in a market where every meaningful player is trying to become the financial operating system for SMBs. The natural next layer after payments is lending, and Unipaas already has a Capital product.
A failed UK neobank reinvents itself as a profitable BaaS provider
Keel, a Manchester-based Banking-as-a-Service platform, has emerged from stealth after rebuilding itself out of a failed consumer neobank. The company was originally founded in 2019 as Frost, a digital banking app combined with energy-switching tools, and closed all retail accounts in 2024 after the UK energy price cap wiped out the revenue model. Over the past two years, the team has rebuilt the underlying infrastructure as a B2B platform, secured regulatory approval, and started signing fintech clients across remittance, treasury, property, and neobanking, with stablecoin and crypto-adjacent fintechs as a clear segment. Keel is an FCA-authorised EMI with Visa Principal Membership, claims profitability, and reports quarter-on-quarter growth.
Keel's emergence comes at a moment when UK BaaS has been visibly re-rated. Railsr collapsed and was acquired out of administration; Modulr operated under FCA restrictions on onboarding for an extended period; Weavr has gone quiet on major partnerships; NatWest Boxed sits inside a larger institution focused on enterprise deals; and Griffin took a different route entirely by securing its own UK banking licence. While Keel claims profitability, it has not disclosed revenue, client counts, or processing volumes. The more interesting part of the story is the practitioner background: the team built and ran a live EMI before becoming an infrastructure provider, which is a credibility argument worth taking seriously in a category now being judged on operational reality rather than growth.
In other Embedded Finance news
- Embedded finance delayed by fraud fears: A new PYMNTS Intelligence and WEX report finds that 35% of organisations have delayed embedded finance and BaaS initiatives because of fraud concerns, while fraud attempts in embedded finance are growing two to three times faster than in traditional banking channels (PYMNTS).
- Charge Forward publishes embedded finance brief for software executives: Jane Podbelskaya, founder of Toronto-based advisory Charge Forward and a recent EFR podcast guest, has released a strategic brief on embedded finance aimed at software company executives (Charge Forward).
- Amazon and US Bank launch co-branded business cards: Amazon has expanded its co-brand card portfolio into the business segment with two new Mastercard credit cards, offering up to 5% cashback on Amazon spend, optional 0% APR instalments, and built-in spend management tools, including unlimited virtual card issuance (The Paypers).
That's it for this edition. If you enjoy my newsletter, podcast, or events, the best way to support me is to share them with others in your network. Feedback is always welcome, too.
Need help with an embedded finance project? Visit my website and let's talk.
Best wishes from Berlin,
Lars Markull (LinkedIn)
