Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 39. Published 15 January 2026. Guest: Jens Roehrborn, co-founder of Banxware. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: What happens when embedded lending evolves from a nice to have experiment to a must have competitive advantage? Today I'm speaking with Jens Roehrborn, co-founder of Banxware, a German embedded lending provider. Over the past six years Jens has witnessed platforms transform their approach to financing SME customers. E-commerce sites, neobanks and accounting software, they have all embraced embedded lending.
In our conversation we dive deep into Banxware's strategic change. They have shifted from direct lender to what Jens calls a lending enabler. It's essentially an orchestration layer connecting platforms with multiple funding sources, including traditional banks like UniCredit's German subsidiary. In this episode we explore how this model serves over 2 million SMEs across more than 40 platform integrations, why banks are eager to participate, and Jens's prediction that embedded finance will become as essential as online payments for platform competitiveness.
My name is Lars Markull, and this is the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. Every two weeks I interview the builders and shapers of embedded finance. A quick note from my side. Usually I interview non-financial brands to learn about their journey of building and launching financial products, but moving forward I will be featuring more infrastructure providers, something I've done occasionally in the past. However, I now want to explore this more regularly, as they are equally important for the success of embedded finance. As usual, I will select the stories that I believe are most relevant to my listeners. So if you know a provider with an interesting story, please reach out to me. And now let's dive in.
Welcome
Lars Markull: Hi Jens, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, and in what part of the world are you located right now?
Jens Roehrborn: Hi Lars. Thank you for having me. I'm located in beautiful Berlin and I'm doing very well. I'm looking forward to our podcast.
The state of embedded lending in Europe
Lars Markull: Same here. It's going to be a deep dive into the world of embedded lending, and specifically looking at your company Banxware and describing a little bit the shift that you're doing right now.
But before we dive into that, maybe from your perspective, you've been in the industry for quite some time by now, how would you personally describe the current state of embedded lending in Europe? And what I'm particularly interested in is what industries have you seen over the last years adopting embedded lending the most, and where do you still see some room for more adoption?
Jens Roehrborn: Yeah, that's a great question. We at Banxware were in this field of embedded finance from the very beginning, so almost six years ago we started, and we saw embedded finance evolve from an experiment that was mainly looked at by early adopter platforms, to a must have for platforms at the moment.
So major platforms in the industry that aggregate a multitude of SMEs, whether it's in e-commerce, whether it's a neobank, whether it's an accounting platform or what have you, realise that in order to be competitive an embedded finance offer has to be on their platform. So it evolved from an experiment to a must have, and that's a really good thing to have been part of, that journey. And we believe we have also become the go-to player, at least in Germany, for this kind of offering.