What happened: Accounting and bookkeeping provider Sage is expanding its Sage Embedded offering to Europe and North America (Sage). The service enables financial institutions, fintech companies and any other type of business to embed accounting features into their product. The service was initially launched in the UK.
My comment: Embed everything. I recall our Embedded Finance Review Event from last year in Frankfurt, where we discussed the role of incumbent banks in the Embedded Finance space. One option to “fight back” was to integrate non-financial services (Event Recap). Accounting features tend to be the most popular ones, as they are focused on freelancers and businesses (who have a higher willingness to pay than consumers) and address a large market (any business will need such services).
Embedding Sage into your product means that your customers either use Sage already or are willing to sign up / switch to them, but the brand and size of Sage are helpful. One of the companies that has already integrated Sage Embedded Service is British SME neobank Tide. While any business can incorporate Sage Embedded, SME focused neo- and possibly incumbent banks are likely to be the primary focus.
I have already covered a few infrastructure providers in the embedded accounting landscape. Still, I have not seen another company like Sage with an embedded and direct-to-business service offering. Maybe more will follow? But it needs to be a company with a similar brand or size to Sage.
