PSPs spent a decade growing on payment volume, and that model is now under pressure from three sides at once. Firstly, the transaction mix is shifting toward rails like A2A, SEPA Instant, and stablecoins, which means volume is still there, but margins per transaction are reducing. Secondly, core processing has been commoditised, so Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, and Mollie compete much more on price for offerings that look increasingly similar. Lastly, merchant distribution has continued to fragment across (vertical) SaaS players. These companies already own the merchant relationship, which puts the PSP further away from the merchant than before.
Briqs is selling a thesis built directly on that diagnosis. The Dutch infrastructure startup, which recently rebranded from Dime, argues that the next chapter of PSP growth lies in embedded lending rather than payments. That part of the argument is not new. Most recently, Worldline launched merchant financing with YouLend earlier this year. Also, Adyen Capital's revenue is growing 63% year-on-year, and almost every major European PSP has either launched lending or is in conversations to do so. The interesting question is, how do PSPs and platforms get there?
The technology layer, separated from the balance sheet
Most PSPs that have added lending so far have done it through a partnership model. The PSP refers its merchants to a third-party lender; the lender provides capital, underwrites, sets pricing, and retains the economics of lending. The PSP receives a referral fee and very little control over the actual product.
Briqs takes that bundle apart. It sells only the technology layer for embedded lending: cohort segmentation, programmable underwriting rules, offer management, disbursement rails, automated collections, and servicing. The customer signs directly with one of the leading capital providers on the capital marketplace that the company is building or via direct relationship with a bank or funding partner. The Briqs website states it directly: lending infrastructure “without becoming a lending organisation.” That positioning is also what Adyen built internally for Adyen Capital, and it’s no coincidence.
The Adyen Capital pedigree
Briqs was founded in 2025 by Pascal van Hattem, a former Adyen Capital operator, and Laurens de Gilde joined in March 2026 as technical co-founder, also from Adyen. The team spent years inside the Adyen Capital group that powered embedded lending for Toast, Lightspeed, and Fresha. They are now taking that operating model and selling it to every PSP and platform that lacks Adyen's engineering capabilities. For PSPs and platforms watching Adyen Capital pull ahead while their own lending sits behind a partner, the pitch is direct: the same playbook, without the eight-year build.
My Take
The interesting question is which PSPs and platforms Briqs ends up serving. The model works most cleanly for those who already have a funding partner and some credit risk capability, where Briqs becomes the operating layer that turns those relationships into a fully owned lending product with better economics, more control, and a tighter merchant experience.
For customers without those pieces in place, the capital marketplace is the more interesting question. It is a different model from the traditional referral approach, but it still relies on third-party lenders to provide capital and bear the risk. Building a genuinely multi-lender marketplace is also harder than it looks: lenders have different risk appetites, pricing models, and geographic coverage, and most European attempts at this have ended up with a thin panel rather than a deep marketplace. How Briqs handles this, and how much of the lending economics and underwriting control the PSP actually retains, will determine how much of the broader market the marketplace path can reach.
The clearest wedge for Briqs is the customer that wants to graduate from referring lending out to owning the product, without becoming a lender. 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.
