Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 29. Published 23 July 2025. Guest: Richard Würl, Redstone. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: Partnerships between fintech companies and banks are pretty common nowadays, as they create substantial benefits for both sides. However, the devil lies in the details, and not all partnerships make sense. And with the rise of embedded finance, more and more non-financial brands seek partnerships with banks.
That's the topic for the day, when I speak with Richard Würl from Redstone. Redstone is a Berlin based venture capital company with multiple funds, one of which is focused on fintech and B2B SaaS. In the episode we speak about the different types of partnerships, including those that are often overlooked. Richard shares learnings from his portfolio companies, and we discuss how fintech startups and non-financial brands can navigate the complex world of partnering with a bank.
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. And a quick reminder from my side. At Embedded Finance Review I publish weekly newsletters, a biweekly podcast, and host in-person and virtual industry events. You can find all of these on our website, embeddedfinancereview.com. In addition, I also work with non-financial brands, infrastructure providers, and banks in understanding, designing and launching their embedded finance products. If you are interested in working with me, visit the Embedded Finance Review website and reach out. And now let's dive in.
Welcome
Lars Markull: Hi Richard, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, and in what part of the world are you actually located right now?
Richard Würl: Hey Lars. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. I'm currently based in Berlin, which usually in summertime is the most beautiful place on earth, to quote Good Bye, Lenin!. Unfortunately, this year around it's quite rainy and it rather looks like autumn. But I'm excited to be here to talk about one of the most exciting topics in the fintech world.
Lars Markull: Yeah, you're very right. I'm obviously also based here in Berlin, and maybe that means the summer is a little bit less travel for some people and maybe a bit more activity and work. Maybe that would be a change.
And Richard, we connected a couple of weeks ago at the Tech Frontier event in Frankfurt, when we had the embedded finance day for the Digital Finance Accelerator. And that's when we started talking. And obviously we had a couple of chats after that. One of your topics that you spend a bit of time on is the partnership between fintechs and banks. Can you explain a little bit more what your focus is on the topic of banks and fintech partnerships? Why do you spend so much time on it? You also wrote an article about it, we'll talk about that later, but it's quite interesting to hear why this topic specifically.
Why Redstone works on bank partnerships
Richard Würl: Yeah, happy to answer that question. Some background on Redstone. So we are a European early stage venture capital firm and have a somewhat unique DNA in that we operate several sector based funds. And one of them is our fintech and B2B software fund, which we kicked off around 10 years ago. And this is entirely backed by banks and insurances.
And one thing we are very proud of is that we try to bridge our portfolio companies with our LPs and the wider financial institutions and insurance network, to help them enter into client relationships, partnerships, and help them to benefit from each other mutually. So that's also the reason why we wrote this article. Because, A, we are very passionate about this. B, we see tremendous value in those partnerships. And C, we often feel that there are pitfalls, or maybe different motivations, expectations, that if you would have known before, then it would have been easier to handle those.