Hi from Berlin,
In a previous email, I hinted that the newsletter cadence could be disrupted slightly. And that's exactly what happened last week, as this edition below went out a week later than planned. The reason? 53cm long and a bit over 3,5kg heavy ❤️
We are slowly settling into the new routine of a family of 4. I have done some preparations for this newsletter, so I expect the cadence to be normal from now on.
Also, I am testing a new feature where subscribers can get each long story immediately, directly into their inbox. For those Embedded Finance experts among you who don't want to wait for the next newsletter, change your settings here (and in any newsletter footer). But be advised, you will get a lot of emails from me :-)
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.
Embedded Payments News
Mews, the Dutch unicorn building critical software for hotels, receives its own e-money licence: The company runs the operating system behind 15,000 hotels in 85 countries and processed $19.7bn in hotel transactions last year, at a $2.5bn valuation. It built its own payment product on Stripe Connect, later adding Adyen, and by the time lending launched with YouLend in 2025, fintech revenue was already larger than SaaS revenue. The licence sits with a new entity, Mews Financial Services B.V., with the rollout starting in the Netherlands later this year before expanding across the EEA. Owning the regulated layer opens up payment products Mews cannot build on someone else's licence, gives it control over how those products work, and should improve the margin on what already runs through the platform. Read the full story on EFR
ZBD launches accounts, payouts and cards for game studios: The payments provider for the games industry now lets publishers run real-money player accounts inside the game, so players can deposit, trade with each other and cash out without leaving the title. ZBD has paid players real money since 2019 through a rewards SDK on Bitcoin Lightning rails, and with the Dutch EMI licence obtained in July 2025, it is taking it beyond rewards into accounts and card issuing. Surprisingly, the accounts product launches on PC and console rather than mobile, where almost all of ZBD's existing studios sit, but the existing app store ecosystem may explain this. (Read the full story)
Seker embeds payments into its funeral software with Unipaas: eFD is the cloud platform UK funeral directors use to run day-to-day operations, from arranging a funeral through to the paperwork and back-office admin behind it. Since July, it also takes in payments: SekerPay handles acceptance from families paying for a funeral, plus reporting and reconciliation, all within the same workflow. Seker is working with Unipaas, which runs onboarding, compliance, risk, and support. Seker's product manager, Amy Pullinger, says the point was to launch payments quickly without building or managing the infrastructure themselves. (Unipaas)
Modulr becomes the only non-bank PSP with direct access to all three major UK payment schemes: Since 19 August, Modulr settles CHAPS payments directly at the Bank of England, alongside the Faster Payments and Bacs access it already had. CHAPS is the high-value scheme, £93.9tn across 53.3 million payments last year, and until now every non-bank reached it through a sponsor. Modulr moves £180bn a year for more than 6,000 businesses as an FCA-regulated e-money institution, and founder Myles Stephenson says that position is unique among non-banks. (Modulr)
Simpler now earns half its revenue from payments through BlueSnap: The UK company sells checkout software to mid-market ecommerce merchants, and adding white-labelled processing across 20 UK and EU markets turned a software fee into a second, larger revenue line. Co-founder Alex Kyriakopoulos says it lets Simpler host other merchants and earn from their transactions. A checkout platform isn't a pure non-financial brand, so I wouldn't file this as a clean embedder case. The number is the useful part, though, because plenty of providers promise this revenue shift and very few of their customers publish what it actually came to. (BlueSnap)
Toast adds Adyen to its US payments stack: The two have worked together since 2021 in Ireland, the UK, Canada and Australia, and now Adyen processes in Toast's home market as well. Toast ran $215bn in gross payment volume across roughly 180,000 restaurant locations through June, with issuing, capital, and business accounts sitting alongside payments. If you want one example of how far a vertical software company can take embedded finance, Toast is still the one I point people to. (Adyen)
Xero launches US payroll with Gusto: The bookkeeping platform added payments first, on Melio, and has now closed the gap with payroll. That completes what Xero calls its 3x3 strategy, the three jobs it sees as critical for a small business: accounting, payments and payroll. US pay runs now happen inside the accounting product rather than in a separate system, with Gusto handling federal, state, and local tax calculations and filings, direct deposit, W-2s, and contractor payments. The payroll data lands straight in the general ledger, so the reconciliation that usually follows a pay run disappears. (Xero)