Hi from Berlin,
Welcome to this week's Embedded Banking edition. Sometimes there is so little news that I struggle to fill a newsletter, and sometimes it's the other way round. This edition is one of the full ones.
The Polish accounting provider inFakt added business banking through a partnership with UniCredit, made possible by a rather familiar name.
The second story has a personal angle for me: back in the day, when I worked at an embedded banking provider, I tried to sell cards to the HR software provider Personio. I wasn't successful then, but now Personio has bought its way into the market with its biggest acquisition yet.
Also in this edition: ADAC's savings account with Solaris, American Airlines' UK debit cards with Currensea, QuickBooks with Revolut Business and ServiceTitan with Ramp. Plus Apideck's Embedded Finance Index and a look back at my episode with Enrique Sánchez of IESA (Aareon Spain).
PS: You might have noticed the new sender names. Each edition now shows in your inbox as EFR Banking, EFR Payments or EFR Lending. If you only want some of them, you can choose in your account settings.
Now let's dive in! 👇
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Embedded Banking News
inFakt puts a UniCredit business account inside its accounting app: The Kraków-based online accounting firm (majority-owned by Visma since 2020) now lets sole traders and small companies open a business bank account. inFakt offers a digital accounting solution combined with a dedicated accountant for its customers in Poland. Poland shapes much of the product: one-click payment of e-invoices arriving through the national KSeF system and a VAT account that pays 2% interest. VAT accounts are required for Polish businesses and lock the VAT funds in them, but inFakt seems to be the first to pay interest on the balance. That might also be why inFakt chose a bank over an e-money institution. UniCredit's choice is special, though, as the Italian bank bought Polish banking-as-a-service provider Vodeno in 2025. inFakt seems to be the first brand to go live since the acquisition. (Read the full story)
Personio buys Circula and brings corporate cards into HR software: The Munich HR and payroll platform, with 16,000 customers, has acquired the Berlin spend management company, reportedly its largest acquisition to date. Circula covers expenses, corporate cards and tax-optimised benefits for 250,000 users and continues as Circula by Personio, also as a standalone product. Pliant issues the Visa corporate credit card, and according to Pliant, around 25% of Circula's customers use it. After payroll, Personio now covers the other side of employee money: what people spend on behalf of the company. If the card also carries benefits and per diems, I think Personio could become a role model for embedded banking in Europe, and Pliant would get a far bigger stage than the deal it originally won. (Read the full story)
ADAC adds a savings account to its credit card, with Solaris behind it: Holders of the German automobile club's credit card can now open an instant-access savings account in the ADAC credit card app, paying 3.50% for the first three months and then a variable 1.50% on balances up to €100,000. Solaris took the card over from Landesbank Berlin in 2024, with around 1.3 million contracts according to ADAC, and is the contracting bank for both products. This is therefore a co-brand rather than embedded finance, since the app is published by Solaris and sits outside any existing ADAC journey. The AA in the UK has done something similar with NatWest Boxed, and for automobile clubs, the co-brand might simply be the best model. (Read the full story)
American Airlines brings AAdvantage debit cards to the UK with Currensea: The US airline has launched two debit cards for UK customers, run by Currensea, an FCA-authorised payment firm and Principal Member of Mastercard. Instead of opening a new account, customers link the card to an existing current account at one of more than 22 UK banks, from Barclays and HSBC to Monzo and Revolut, and settle spending by direct debit without a credit check. Black costs £195 a year and Platinum £75, and you earn miles on every purchase. Currensea has become a popular provider for what I call modern co-brands, and I would file this one as a co-brand too: American Airlines brings its name and its miles, while Currensea runs the product. (Currensea)
QuickBooks and Revolut Business connect banking and accounting in the UK and Ireland: Intuit's accounting software and the neobank's business account have partnered on connected banking and accounting, with real-time auto-reconciliation as the stated benefit. Revolut Business brings banking, payments, FX and treasury, while QuickBooks brings accounting, payroll and Making Tax Digital. That goes beyond the typical Open Banking integration, but QuickBooks does not own a financial product here, so it sits outside embedded finance. I am curious who it is for: companies that already use both, or each side trying to win new customers through the other's brand. (LinkedIn)
ServiceTitan plugs Ramp's cards into its trades software: The US vertical SaaS provider for field services has integrated Ramp's Bill Pay and Expense Cards, with card spend tied to specific jobs. Ramp is a major expense management provider, and the product keeps running under the Ramp brand, so this is a partnership rather than embedded finance. ServiceTitan already offers payments and consumer financing in-house, so it chose a partner for spend management instead of building it. (ServiceTitan)