Embedded finance enables you to bring the bank to your customers – no matter what industry you’re in. You offer them an intuitive, invisible banking experience. And they walk away, perhaps barely aware of what has taken place, but all the more likely to return. 

If embedded finance confuses you, we have a guide to what is embedded finance that can help. But as for its benefits, they’re difficult to count. Because embedded finance pulls dynamically upon APIs and can integrate anywhere, what it can do for you is almost entirely up to your imagination. 

It doesn’t only make payment processes and transfers smoother. Embedded finance is not just another ‘faster, easier’ proposition – though it is that too. The thing is, embedded finance opens up entirely new possibilities for businesses. 

So while this is a question of how you can improve your customers’ experience. It’s also a question of how you, as an innovator, can disrupt entire industries using embedded finance.

It can keep customers coming back to you

First up, we’ll cover payments, because this is the bread and butter of embedded finance. If you have an online marketplace or an app-based service, embedded finance can keep customers glued to your brand. 

Embedded finance moves customer-brand relationships to the next level. Companies can create accounts for their customers and they can offer branded cards to go with them. Customers in turn can complete payments with minimal touchpoints. And by offering a frictionless experience, embedded finance makes that experience stickier.

Take the experience of buying an expensive item of jewelry such as an engagement ring or a prestige watch.    

All a customer would need to do is download an app and do a quick credit check. The app would then create a virtual card and give them a certain amount of credit for a loan, immediately accessible through their phone. After that, the customer could simply walk into the jewelers, choose what they want and – instead of a very lengthy financing process – tap to complete the purchase and take the item away in moments. 

It can help you retain talent

With the gig economy on the rise, employers need to up their game to keep their talent around. Embedded finance can enable employers and benefits package providers to gain the upper hand in the talent market. 

By making use of a combination of embedded finance’s capabilities, such as account creation, card issuance and spend controls, it’s possible to create more enticing packages – ones that give employees more autonomy in the benefits they choose. And by opening up the possibility for employees to access earnings before pay day, employers can offer employees more flexibility to live the lifestyle they want. 

We enabled ThanksBen to combine payments infrastructure with a marketplace to provide an innovative solution to employee benefits. Through us, ThanksBen can give employers corporate wallets and card issuing capabilities so that employees can spend an allotted amount on any number of dynamically connected providers for everything from e-learning to friday afternoon drinks.

The end user barely feels the process in action. They can just choose their benefits on an interface and be done with it. At no point does anyone think of the word ‘banking’ – but that is what has taken place. And as a result, employers increase their retention rates, employees get a better user experience (UX), and ThanksBen makes money from it all. 

It can help integrate learning experiences

Many businesses create products by combining the offerings of third party providers with a slick UX design. But both the quality of that UX and the versatility of that provider integration is dependent upon the finance that weaves the product, users and third parties together. 

Embedded finance could enable you to link multiple learning platforms – such as LinkedIn Learning or Coursera –  and integrate payments for them all, to create your own training offering. This could be a way of enhancing an existing L&D service, or of building a new training business model from the ground up, such as that of Multiverse. 

Weavr provided myskillcamp with the embedded finance capacities they needed – including account creation and spend controls – to give employees control over their personal and professional development. Employees on myskillcamp’s system can choose their own training opportunities (from a range of third party providers) according to a budget and other controls determined by their employer.

Because we were involved, everything could be automated, streamlined and secure. And as myskillcamp’s product manager said, “the time that Weavr saves us can be put straight back into driving strategic business objectives and ultimately helping our customers.”

It could change the healthcare industry

Because embedded finance pulls upon APIs, it can easily draw payment information from multiple sources and automatically distribute money to where it is needed. And it can integrate these actions into a simple process, turning an administrative nightmare into a click of a button on a user interface.

Passing over British healthcare for a moment, you’ll find that many healthcare systems in Europe and beyond, are more fragmented: you have to worry about policy, health insurance and excess, along with all that is needed for the procedure (operating theatre, clinicians, nurse, surgeon). 

Somewhere you have administrators trying to keep on top of all the moving parts and payments. And it’s a huge human operating expense. There’s the need to collect money from the patient (direct debit up front and the excess). There’s booking time in calendars, checking the capabilities of a location, etc.

But with a little innovation and some embedded finance capabilities, a developer could join the administrative dots using APIs, integrating all the processes with their associated payments into a single platform. With the right interface, you could make healthcare as simple as ordering an Amazon package.

It’s a way to change the face of healthcare, one country at a time. 

It can streamline the gig economy 

With the rise of the gig economy, there’s a need to develop applications and websites that have finance and payments embedded so that it can be easy to track and reward freelancers. 

Lyft, for example, has managed to streamline its payments. They issue debit cards to their drivers which enables drivers to get paid instantly by the ride-share company. This program even allows drivers to set up a separate savings account. 

But this is only scratching the surface of what’s possible. If you have an idea, we’re ready to weave together the finance capabilities you need to disrupt your industry or take your customer-brand relationships to the next level.

Embedding financial services into your product or service has never been simpler. With Weavr’s unique plug-and-play embedded finance platform, you can easily, quickly and safely integrate finance features such as cards, accounts and IBANs into your UX and workflows, for a seamless customer experience that directly enhances your offering.