What happened: The German fintech XP Card has announced that it partnered with Advanzia for its newly launched gaming credit card (FinanceFWD, German only). In case you have not heard about Advanzia before, the German bank is a popular partner for co-branded consumer credit cards. Thanks to the partnership with various brands, Advanzia offers co-branded credit cards in the travel, hotel and beer industries. And yes, you read that correctly; you can get a credit card from a beer brewery.
My comment: XP Card and also the other brands using Advanzia are technically not pure embedded finance cases. They either do not embed the financial product seamlessly (co-branded credit cards) or they are fintech companies (XP Card) that advertise financial products as their core feature. That being said, XP Card is a great example of targeting a niche customer segment and combining financial products with something non-financial (gaming in this case).
Consumer interchange is very low in Germany and the rest of EU and the target group is likely not willing to spend much on annual card fees. Therefore, XP Card will likely look for other revenue streams shortly (or maybe is already working on it) and the most logical one is to partner with companies that want to sell to the gaming community. But XP Card and their customer base will need to have a relevant size to achieve that.
