Fintech Finance presents: The Fintech Magazine 21

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FINTECH FOCUS: EMBEDDED FINANCE ‘Embedded finance should be everywhere the customer needs it to be‘. That user-centric vision of financial services is redefining both individual and corporate relationships with the institutions that have facilitated finance for so long. But what does it mean for traditional business models? “It’s a powerful shift,” says Florian Redeker, VP of Product at German Solarisbank, which, with its European banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, is doing its best to disrupt those models. “Before, the incumbent banks were able to get away with subpar user experience because they had a monopoly on their processes and market entry barriers were so high. There was no incentive to

improve because they had built this walled garden and they had it very comfortable in there. Maybe those times are over, because, with technology and a new view of finance, it is possible to create seamless user experiences and deeply integrate those financial services into a multitude of use cases. This is what people care about. “With embedded finance and BaaS, we make banking a commodity. We do our best to move financial burdens to the background." You only need to have taken an Uber ride once to know what that means for a truly painless customer journey – quite literally. Those in the driving seat are benefitting from embedded finance, too. Uber Instant Pay uses Visa rails to allow the ride-hailing firm’s employees to cash out their earnings up to five times a day using the Uber Driver app. But Redeker’s concept of ‘commodity banking’ is, of course, anathema to legacy banks, who fight for brand recognition every day. Should they – and can they – keep doing what they’re doing, or is their destiny to become anonymous and leave the customer dog fight to others? According to Agnieszka Walorska, executive director at global technology

and management consultancy Capco and founder of Creative Construction, the design consultancy it acquired in 2020, ‘the battle is not yet lost or won’ for legacy institutions… but the future is unclear. It depends on what, as-yet-unimagined, applications emerge of embedded finance – or what Walorska prefers we call ‘contextual’ finance, because it’s basically in the context of whatever the customer happens to be doing at the time. “Being right there where they need it –this is the future,” she says. “We will see more and more finance in every service.” Customer experience – be that an individual or a business – is the key here. Retailers ‘got’ that decades ago, which is why brands like IKEA and Apple are now so keen to enter financial services, not necessarily because they’re empire

Magıcal bankıng Technology is sprinkling the fairy dust of frictionless journeys on everything from trade finance to Uber rides. So where does that leave the traditional bank? Michael Pierce from Mambu, Florian Redeker of Solarisbank and Capco’s Agnieszka Walorska conjure up ideas

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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 21

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Articles inside

The modern art of the FPGA

8min
pages 103-106

A Fresh start

3min
pages 110-112

Regime change

8min
pages 99-102

Just the ticket

7min
pages 107-109

A new chapter for AI

8min
pages 95-98

Testing times

6min
pages 88-90

Beyond ISO 20022

7min
pages 91-94

The digital hello Nordic-style

11min
pages 84-87

Banking on BNPL

8min
pages 78-80

Time for a reinvention

7min
pages 81-83

Time to let Zip

7min
pages 72-74

First mover

8min
pages 69-71

Ahead of the eight

11min
pages 64-68

The great fintech bake-off

7min
pages 58-59

Richly deserved

11min
pages 60-63

Magical banking

10min
pages 54-57

Sunset on the office

9min
pages 46-50

At your service

8min
pages 51-53

A moving target

8min
pages 43-45

Getting to know you

8min
pages 31-33

Local heroes?

7min
pages 40-42

A world on the move

17min
pages 8-13

Bringing ATMs in from the cold

8min
pages 37-39

The ATM pool table

4min
pages 34-36

Meet ‘The Enablers’

7min
pages 24-27

Stick or twist?

8min
pages 28-30

Cool to be kind

10min
pages 20-23
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