Hi from Berlin,
Last week, more than twenty lending experts and other interested folks joined us for our "Is Embedded Lending Hype or Reality?" virtual event. We had some great discussions and came away with relevant takeaways, which we will likely put in writing and share with everyone. I am not sure yet whether we will host another virtual event before the summer break, but if you have any topics or questions you would like to discuss in one, please ping me.
Also, I am planning to make some substantial changes to this newsletter in the coming months. While I enjoy writing it, I am always trying to improve it for my target audience. I have a few ideas and am currently working through them. If you have any ideas or suggestions to make this newsletter better, now might be a good time to ping me ;-)
Dutch neobank bunq launches banking-as-a-service on its own bank licence
bunq opened its banking-as-a-service platform, bunq-as-a-Service, to businesses across the EU. bunq is one of Europe's largest neobanks, headquartered in Amsterdam and operating on a full Dutch banking licence. The platform launched in April 2026 with anchor partner Blockrise, a Dutch Bitcoin platform, and has now been extended to mid-size and enterprise companies. Through an open API, partners can issue virtual cards, process instant SEPA transactions, manage funds, and run fiat on- and off-ramps, with deposits protected up to €100,000 under bunq's banking licence and the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme. Blockrise remains the one partner live so far, with its users getting an embedded euro IBAN account: Blockrise owns the interface, and bunq supplies the licensed banking layer underneath.
bunq is not the first, nor even the second, European neobank to do this. Qonto launched an embedded banking offering last year, and the Finnish accounting platform noCFO runs a Holvi-powered business account inside its bookkeeping software. The shape is the same in each case: the customer signs up for the neobank's own account, can still manage it in the neobank's app, and the embedding brand gets a deeper integration than plain Open Banking would allow. So what sets bunq apart? The licence: Qonto and Holvi operate under e-money licences, where customer funds are safeguarded rather than deposit-guaranteed, whereas bunq's banking licence makes the embedded account a real bank account with protection up to €100,000. Lending is the part worth watching, because an e-money institution cannot lend, whereas a banking licence permits it. bunq has not said whether lending will form part of bunq-as-a-Service, but the licence keeps that door open.
eyworks embeds nursery payments with Unipaas, built around Tax-Free Childcare
eyworks and Unipaas have launched eypay, an embedded payments product built into the eyworks early years platform. eyworks is the UK software used by nearly 2,000 childcare settings to run the daily business of a nursery, from registers and ratios to invoicing and parent communication. eypay sits inside that platform and takes a nursery from invoice to collection to reconciliation in one place, with support for cards, wallets, direct debit, digital bank transfer, and Tax-Free Childcare. Unipaas is the FCA-authorised embedded payments provider behind it, running it on a white-label basis so the experience stays within eyworks. The mechanics are familiar from other vertical SaaS payments deals: Unipaas provides the licensed rails and the reconciliation logic, eyworks keeps the customer relationship and the interface, and the separate payment tools a nursery used to juggle start to disappear.
So is this just generic SaaS payments with a childcare logo on top, or does the vertical have something horizontal processors cannot easily copy? The answer lies in Tax-Free Childcare, a government top-up scheme where parents pay into a dedicated account, the government adds two pounds for every eight pounds, and the balance is sent on to the nursery. The money arrives from a government source, at one point referenced only as "National Savings" with no parent name attached, and matching each payment to the right child and invoice is manual and slow. A generic card processor cannot solve this, but a payments layer built for childcare, where TFC sits in the same ledger as the card and direct debit payments and reconciles automatically, takes that work off the desk. From what I understand, that is the real product. It is the same playbook Unipaas applied in the UK accounting software sector, a sector-specific reconciliation problem annoying enough that a platform would rather buy the fix than build it.
In other Embedded Finance news
Shopify opens Shop Pay to merchants on any platform: As part of its Spring 2026 Editions, Shopify is making Shop Pay available to merchants beyond its own storefronts, pitching its one-click wallet and 250m-strong buyer network as a standalone checkout for the wider e-commerce market. Shop Pay began as the payment layer built into Shopify's platform, so taking it off-platform turns an in-house embedded product into payment infrastructure that others can plug into. The way I read it, this puts Shopify's wallet into more direct competition with PayPal and the card networks' express checkouts. (The Paypers)
Meta invests $900m in India's Cred and hands its founder WhatsApp: Meta has taken a minority stake in Cred at a $4.5bn valuation, with no access to customer data, and is moving founder Kunal Shah across to run WhatsApp, replacing Will Cathcart. Cred is the Indian fintech Shah built from 2018 into payments, lending, insurance and wealth, with 17 million monthly members and more than 40% of India's credit card bill payments. Putting a payments founder in charge of WhatsApp reads either as a bet on how central India is to Meta, or as a sign that payments is becoming a sharper focus for the messaging app. (PYMNTS)
Global Payments puts numbers on embedded payments in UK wellness booking: New Global Payments research finds 71% of UK consumers would abandon a booking over a poor payment process, against a market where Britons now spend an estimated £15bn a year booking personal services through SaaS platforms, with fitness the biggest single driver. (Technology Magazine)
Fintech Engineering Handbook: Something I came across this week, a free, living reference on the patterns behind systems that move money: double-entry ledgers, idempotency, reconciliation, webhooks you should never trust, and the controls auditors look for - all written for engineers. (Pitula)
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)
