Hi from Berlin,
Hope you are all surviving the heatwave in Europe. We didn't buy an AC (yet), but at least we upgraded our fan at home. Life changing ;-)
On Friday, we are hosting our Virtual Event focused on Embedded Lending with Temi from HSBC and Nicolas from Credibur. My goal is to bring the builders of European Embedded Lending into the same room for this discussion. I have already sent personal invitations to a few relevant folks, but if I missed sending it to you, please sign up here: Is Embedded Lending Hype or Reality?
Swedish Direct Lender Qred Bank Buys Into Embedded Lending with Liberis
Qred and Liberis are combining into a single SMB finance group, backed by Nordic Capital. Last week, Nordic Capital announced an agreement to acquire Liberis and further invest in Qred, bringing the two businesses together. Qred is the Stockholm-based digital bank for small businesses, founded in 2015, running on a full Swedish banking licence with a deposit-funded balance sheet across seven markets, and has served more than 80,000 businesses. Liberis, founded in London in 2007, is an embedded lending platform that delivers funding through more than 30 partners across Europe, the UK and North America, and has financed over 70,000 small businesses. The combined group will have around 600 employees, revenue above €250m, and more than 53,000 active SMB customers across 17 countries.
Qred sells direct, through its own brand and app, backed by a full banking licence and a balance sheet funded by customer deposits. What it has never really done is embed. Liberis is the opposite case, a pure embedded play that lends through partner platforms rather than reaching customers directly. Qred has built real scale selling direct, and that kind of scale tends to generate inbound: a platform serving tens of thousands of small businesses across seven markets is likely to be asked to integrate its lending into other people's products more than once. I suspect Qred reached a point where selling direct was no longer enough, and that buying Liberis is the fastest way to add an embedded channel it had never built itself. Did Liberis seek a buyer, or did Qred seek distribution? The result is the same group: a direct SMB bank on one side, an embedded specialist on the other.
Read the full story on Embedded Finance Review
myPOS embeds finmid lending for 90,000 merchants in Italy
myPOS and finmid have launched embedded lending for myPOS merchants in Italy, enabling more than 90,000 eligible businesses to access financing directly within the myPOS platform. myPOS is the pan-European payment service provider used by 350,000 merchants across 35 countries for card machines, online payments, and business accounts. finmid is the Berlin-based embedded lending infrastructure provider, operating in more than 30 European markets and delivering capital offers to over 150,000 merchants since 2021. The offers are pre-approved from a merchant's business performance data, so there is no separate application, and accepted funds arrive within 48 hours. finmid provides everything behind the product, from underwriting and compliance to servicing and the capital itself, and myPOS distributes it.
So why does Italy get its own launch? Both companies call it one of Europe's most complex regulatory environments for business lending. Moving a lending product from one European country to another is harder than for most other financial products. A company with a payment or e-money licence can passport it across the EEA and be live in a new market quickly, but the wider lending stack does not move as easily. For lenders without a licence, offering lending products requires registration with Banca d'Italia under a prudential regime built for non-bank lenders. The setup most Central European lenders use does not carry over to Italy, so an Italy-specific structure is needed. That is one reason few foreign SME lenders are active in the market, and it is the barrier finmid had to clear to launch there.
Read the full story on Embedded Finance Review
In other Embedded Finance news
Adyen pushes into agentic commerce and buys its way up the monetisation stack: Adyen launched Adyen Agentic, a modular API suite that lets enterprise merchants integrate once and transact across multiple AI commerce platforms, now in limited US release with American Express, Mastercard, Salesforce and Visa as partners and retailers including Scheels, Sézane and SharkNinja already on board. Days earlier, it agreed to buy the enterprise billing platform Orb for $335m. (The Paypers, Adyen)
Treasury management lands in Sage Intacct via Embat: Sage Intacct customers in the UK can now connect their ERP and banking data through Embat, a treasury fintech that automates reconciliation, cash forecasting, payments, and reporting within the finance system they already use. Embat says it is the first treasury management provider in the Sage Intacct marketplace, with Sedna and Together Group among the first to integrate with it. The move follows Embat's €30m Series B, led by Cathay Capital, and fits the wider pattern of treasury tools shifting from standalone enterprise software to midmarket ERP. (ERP Today)
Whistle launches an embedded regulated advice layer for UK financial platforms: Whistle has launched in the UK to plug regulated financial advice into the customer journeys of banks, pension providers, investment platforms and fintechs, offered as a co-branded journey, an embedded widget or an API. The startup gained direct FCA authorisation in April, is backed by a £550,000 pre-seed, and expects its first partners to go live this summer. Its pitch is to let firms offer regulated advice at the point of need without having to build an advice business themselves, aimed at addressing the UK's long-running advice gap. (FinTech Futures)
That's it for this edition. If you enjoy my newsletter, podcast, or events, the best way to support me is to share them with others in your network. Feedback is always welcome, too.
Need help with an embedded finance project? Visit my website and let's talk.
Best wishes from Berlin,
Lars Markull (LinkedIn)
