Hi friend,

Welcome to your 5-minute dose of embedded finance. Before diving into this edition, there are two announcements from my side:

1. Embedded Finance Review events are back, and I invite you to join us on April 24th for our third embedded finance event in Berlin. I will share the agenda soon (the sponsors on the registration website will give you a hint), but make sure to register for your ticket asap. The event is an official side event of the Fintech Berlin Conference (FIBE), and you can find more details and a discount code below.
2. If you are a startup in the areas of embedded or open finance, I highly recommend checking out TechQuartier Digital Finance Accelerator. Some of you might know TechQuartier as the Frankfurt-based fintech co-working place, but the team is doing so much more. Together with their partners, they push important fintech topics. If you are looking for growth opportunities in embedded or open finance, this is the program for you. I am part of the program advisory board, so please reach out if you have any questions and make sure to apply until April 7th.

That’s all from my side. Let’s dive into today’s edition.

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Join Berlin’s fintech festival FIBE, and immerse yourself in the world of fintech. Meet industry experts, engage in vibrant discussions, workshops, and events, and be part of the upcoming signature festival for the fintech ecosystem. Want to be part of it? Save the date: 24th and 25th April! Use the code FIBE_Special and get your ticket now!

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Non-Financial Brands 🏢

Photo credit: Razer

Gaming company Razer rebrands its fintech unit

Razer is a gaming lifestyle company headquartered in the US. Some of you might know their hardware products that often come with unique colourful lightening effects (i.e., keyboard or mouse for the gaming desktop PC).

If you are less of a gamer, you might have heard about Razer’s prepaid card that they launched in 2020 in Singapore. The card offered various benefits for its users but was mostly known for it’s feature to light up during a successful payment, bringing Razer’s unique colourful lightening effects to the POS. The card was, however, shut down in 2021. But the card was neither the start nor the end of Razer’s fintech product offering.

The company launched their first fintech product in 2018, which was an e-wallet service for teenagers and millennials in Malaysia. The unit responsible for this product was called Razer Fintech, which is now rebranded as Fiuu.

In the years after the launch in Malaysia, Razer Fintech expanded to other Southeast Asian markets (i.e., Singapore) and launched additional services (i.e., banking products). The company then shut down its e-wallet solutions in 2021 to focus fully on online payments. It seems that all of Razer Fintech's (or now Fiuu’s) activities are in Southeast Asian markets, and none of them are in the US or Europe.

From my research, there does not seem to be a strong connection between Razer’s main product (gaming hardware) and their fintech products, except, of course, leveraging the popular brand name.

The “exceptional growth” of Fiuu (doubling revenue over the past four years and projected revenue of $295b by 2025) shows a different angle for how companies can leverage embedded finance, even when this was not in their DNA before.

Europe

• Taulia, an SAP company, announces a new partnership with Visa to make embedded finance accessible to businesses worldwide. The collaboration will integrate digital payment technology into Taulia Virtual Cards. This news is another example of ERP providers extending their embedded finance products, a clear trend in the past few months.
• Nationwide agrees terms for a £2.9 billion takeover of Virgin Money.

North America

• Amazon announces that it’s lending division will cease underwriting its own loans to merchants in the US and UK. Instead, Amazon will be focusing on working with trusted third-party providers with deep experience in lending and servicing financing programs.
• Uber launches the Uber Pro Card, providing free instant payouts after every trip or delivery and enhanced loyalty features for drivers and delivery people on the Uber platform in Canada.

Infrastructure Provider 🏗️

Griffin and Lemon Markets with major announcements

Probably many of the European readers have heard from Griffin and Lemon Markets multiple times, including in this newsletter. Both companies provide infrastructure services: Griffin is a banking-as-a-service provider, and Lemon Markets is an investment-as-a-service provider. Both companies had major announcements in the past two weeks:

Griffin announced that they received their “full” banking licence from the UK regulator FCA, which brings them a massive step closer to offering their banking-as-a-service products in the British market. Some other providers in the market rely on an e-money licence, which excludes them from offering lending and interest-bearing account products. On the other hand, an e-money licence is obviously easier to obtain than a banking licence and can be more flexible. It is impressive, though, that Griffin has obtained their banking licence roughly a year after starting the process (excluding the initial preparation work before starting the process).

Lemon Markets had already received their investment licence in January of this year and announced last week their public launch with their first customer, Beatvest. It took Lemon Markets approximately three years after founding to receive the licence and another few months to go live.

Obviously, the two cases are very different (different financial products; different markets), but it clearly shows the time and perseverance it takes to win (or even launch) a fintech infrastructure product. As you hopefully know, I am unbiased when it comes to infrastructure provider offerings; however, I was really excited to read the two announcements for a few reasons:

I am very excited for Griffin’s full launch in the UK. By then, we will likely have three providers in the market with a bank licence (Griffin, NatWest Boxed, and ClearBank) and a few more with an e-money licence (i.e., Modulr, Weavr, and Nium). Maybe this many providers on each side will help us in a few years to see which model is better suited for embedded finance? (In Germany, we do have Solaris with a bank licence and two others with e-money licences, but the numbers are a bit too small for such an analysis.)

Lemon Markets will now compete directly with their biggest rival in Germany, Upvest (in the UK, Seccl and Wealthkernel are similar providers). Upvest has already received their licences in 2022 and won major deals with N26 and Revolut. But the team at Lemon Markets is great, and the market is massive (we are not just talking about ‘embedded’ investment but fintech companies and financial institutions). And competition is good, especially for buyers. So I am hoping to see even more announcements from all these providers in the near future.

Europe

• Banking Circle extends their agency banking solution, which allows their (regulated!) customers to obtain their own IBANs and BICs in local markets. This allows the customers to offer a better user experience compared to leveraging Banking Circle’s own IBAN and BIC setup.
• German BaaS provider Solaris receives a massive €6.5 million fine from Bafin for late filings of suspicious transaction reports.
• UK BaaS provider ClearBank is eyeing an EU licence and has chosen the Netherlands.
• UK embedded lending provider SAPI has closed a £7.5 million fundraising round and is coming out of stealth. The company enables payment companies to offer business loans to their clients.
• Banking and crypto infrastructure provider Baanx raises $20 million and aims to expand to the US and Latin America.

North America

• The video game payment company Xsolla launches an embedded banking product called Xsolla Wallet. Xsolla’s customers, game developers, can offer a financial reward program to creators, and the creator can use a Mastercard to spend the rewards.
• Koxa announces an integration with PNC Bank to deliver an embedded banking experience to PNC clients using the Workday Enterprise Resource Planning system.
• ChargeAfter, the embedded lending platform for point-of-sale financing, has unveiled the Lending Hub. The solution supports banks in delivering lending solutions for merchants and their customers at scale.
• Alviere expands their co-branded debit card product, which allows customers to offer merchant-funded rewards. Typical use cases are in the loyalty and rewards programs of airlines, hotels, and retailers.
• TreasuryPrime announces that OMB Bank is joining their bank network, shortly after Treasury Prime announced their strategic shift to focus on banks instead of fintech and brands.

Asia

• Indian Cashfree Payments launches a platform-centric payment solution for software platforms. The solution equips software platforms with the tools to facilitate seamless payment experiences for businesses.

Africa

• London-based Unlimit expands into Tanzania a year after entering Nigeria and Kenya. Unlimit received a licence from the Bank of Tanzania and can now offer business payments, merchant services, and outbound payments.

Insightful links 🤓

• Why embedded finance will accelerate in 2024
• How embedded finance can become football’s new growth strategy
• What happens when every company is an insurer?
• Waging Wallets: Changing Payments in 2024
• Banking as a service is here to stay
• Helping merchants keep their customers inside their ecosystems with Citi Pay: A dive into embedded payments

From the community 🏘️

• This graph shows the growth of sponsor banks in the US
• Latin American e-commerce provider MercadoLibre reveals new fintech numbers and aims to grow further.
• TabaPay is working on a deal to acquire US BaaS provider Synapse, sources say.

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