Hi from Berlin,
Welcome to the third and final themed test edition. After covering lending and payments, this edition is all about Embedded Banking.
Housekeeping notes: I will take a break from sending this newsletter next week. You will read from me again on August 11th when I start a three-week recap series covering Embedded Finance from different (embedder) angles. Normal newsletter coverage should resume on September 1st. Unless, of course, we see a few bigger announcements during August, but I doubt that.
I will be taking the rest of this week off, but I am available all of August. So if you are building something in the space and want to chat, this should be a great time. Just reply to this email or use the link below to get in touch.
Now let's dive in!
Building something in embedded finance? Whether you are a brand comparing providers, an enabler working through your go-to-market strategy, or a team trying to fill a crucial (fintech) role, my office hours are a free call to talk it through. I share my honest read and, where it helps, intros to my network.
News
The biggest stories of the month, smaller news in brief, and updates on stories I covered earlier.
Expensify launches its card in Europe, with Marqeta as both processor and issuer
Expensify has launched its Visa Commercial Card in the UK and a set of European markets including Spain, Ireland, Poland and the Netherlands, a product previously available only in the US. Businesses can issue physical and virtual cards to staff and manage spending inside the Expensify platform, with real-time transactions, automatic receipt matching and controls that block out-of-policy purchases at the point of sale. In the US, Expensify works with Marqeta as the issuer processor and Bancorp Bank as the regulated card issuer, but in Europe it uses Marqeta's full regulated stack, which became possible after Marqeta acquired the e-money-licensed Transact Payments. That setup also explains the product's one limitation: an e-money institution can only grant short-term credit ancillary to a payment, so the balance always settles in full at month-end, and a revolving credit line would need a differently licensed partner. Read the full story.
Samsung launches the Galaxy Card with Barclays, a co-branded card that does not go as far as the Apple Card
Samsung has launched the Samsung Galaxy Card in the US, issued by Barclays on the Visa network and managed entirely inside Samsung Wallet, where cardholders apply, track spending and redeem rewards. The rewards lean heavily towards Samsung's own ecosystem, with 5% cash back on purchases made directly with Samsung and 3% through Samsung Wallet, turning the card into a loyalty engine pointed back at Samsung hardware and services. The comparison with the Apple Card is obvious: Samsung owns the experience layer in its wallet while Barclays issues the card, underwrites the credit and owns the roadmap, a step past the classic co-brand but well short of Apple, which owns its card product completely. Reuters has already reported that Samsung sees ambitions in financial services beyond this card. Read the full story.
DoorDash offers its Dashers a banking product, and Astra now powers instant deposits into it: DoorDash Crimson is the delivery platform's own deposit account and Visa debit card for its couriers, managed inside the Dasher app, with earnings landing within seconds of a completed dash, no monthly fee and no credit check, and Starion Bank holding the deposits. The news is that Astra now enables instant deposits from external accounts into Crimson via Visa Direct and Mastercard Send, turning what began as a payout card into something closer to a primary account. (Astra)
Intuit launches a business credit card that syncs natively with QuickBooks: The Intuit Business Credit Card is a World Elite Business Mastercard for US small businesses, issued by WebBank, with 2% cash back on everyday purchases, 5% on Intuit products and no annual fee. Opening the card creates a dedicated account inside QuickBooks connected to the bank feed; transactions and receipts sync automatically, and approved businesses get a virtual card within minutes. QuickBooks already offers lines of credit, term loans and invoice financing through QuickBooks Capital, so the card completes most of the working capital menu a small business ever touches. (Intuit)
Datavault AI picks Fiserv to embed banking into its planned NIL marketplace: Fiserv will act as the exclusive embedded finance provider for Datavault AI's marketplaces, including a planned NIL Exchange where US high school and college athletes can monetise their name, image and likeness. Athletes would receive no-cost payment wallets and debit cards to collect sponsor payments, while participants on Datavault's data exchange gain access to deposit accounts and cards. This is an announcement rather than a live product, but athletes receiving sponsorship income are yet another user group getting banking embedded where the money is earned rather than at a bank. (Fiserv)
From EFR
Insights, events, and conversations from Embedded Finance Review.
Neobanks are becoming BaaS providers: Three European neobanks have opened their infrastructure to other brands, and I have covered each of them. Qonto launched its embedded banking offering last year, Holvi powers a business account inside the Finnish accounting platform noCFO (which its founder explained on the podcast), and in June bunq became the latest with bunq-as-a-Service. The shape is the same in each case: the customer signs up for the neobank's own account, and the embedding brand gets a deeper, branded integration than plain Open Banking would allow.
When banks ignore a niche, the software provider steps in: In this podcast episode, Enrique Sanchez from Aareon Spain explains how the property management software provider built an embedded banking solution for Spanish homeowner associations, a segment traditional banks largely ignored despite around 15,000 property administrators in the country, 80% of whom use Aareon's software. Account opening happens in two steps inside the ERP instead of repeated branch visits every time an association changes its leadership, and at recording time the solution was adding 400 new bank accounts per month. Listen to the episode
Builder
One person building in this space, and their take on it.
Tino Keller, Accountable: Tino is one of the three co-founders of Accountable, the app that solves taxes for the self-employed in Belgium and Germany: users scan receipts and write invoices, the bookkeeping happens under the hood, and the tax declarations are generated from the data. Accountable originally built on open banking, connecting to whatever bank account a freelancer already had, before launching its own banking product with an account that automatically sets aside money for taxes, shifting its claim from all your taxes done to all your finances done. Regular readers may remember Tino from the podcast, where we spoke about that move into banking and what drove it. I asked him how he thinks about building versus embedding:
"The winning model is not to build every financial service yourself. It is to create a trusted, deeply integrated experience and embed the solutions behind it. Partnerships with Swan for banking and Wundertax for tax filing allow us to offer much more while the user still experiences one coherent Accountable product. And we are still looking to integrate more."
"Self-employed people do not want more financial tools. They want invoicing, banking, bookkeeping and taxes to work together in one place, so they can focus on their work and their clients instead of managing software."
You can find Tino on LinkedIn.
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)
