Embedded Finance Review

Most platforms in Germany are still defaulting to a grey-label setup with their payment provider, where their merchants see and interact with the PSP directly. According to Julius Danek, product lead for Stripe in DACH and CEE, that is leaving real money on the table. In this episode, I sit down with Julius to talk about what Stripe Connect actually unlocks for a platform on day one, when it makes...

Embedded finance typically involves payments, banking, lending, investments, and insurance. But there are adjacent areas evolving with the same logic, and embedded accounting is one of them. In this episode, I speak with Mark Holleman, co-founder of Thred. Mark is a returning guest. The last time we spoke, we discussed embedded lending and the build-versus-buy decision. His first startup, the lend...

Tom Sellin has a way of explaining how Airwallex's embedded finance offering works. He uses a Lego set. You have all the pieces: wallets, cards, payouts, and FX. The platform or fintech on the other side decides what to build. A small car. A rocket ship. Just one piece if that is all they need. The point is that you are not buying a finished product. You are choosing which building blocks to p...

Jane Podbelskaya does in North America what I do in Europe. She advises software companies and investors on embedded finance, runs a media platform called Charge Forward, and spends most of her time translating the world of fintech for software executives who know their vertical inside out but have never heard of a payfac or an attach rate. In this episode, we compare notes across continents. We t...

Three years ago, a Moroccan e-commerce startup approached every bank in the country to request Banking-as-a-Service. None of them understood what APIs were. So the founders went to the central bank, obtained a payment institution license, and built the entire tech stack themselves. In this episode, I speak with Ismael Belkhayat, CEO and co-founder of Chari, a Y Combinator-backed fintech that has b...

Most platforms building embedded finance start with payments. Lending often comes next. What happens when invoices don't get paid is almost always the last thing on the roadmap — and for many SMEs, one of the most painful experiences. In this episode, I speak with Matteo Benedetti, co-founder and CEO of Debtist, a digital debt collection provider based in Berlin. Debtist embeds collection dire...

"At a certain scale, payments isn't a cost factor anymore. It becomes a strategic capability." In this episode, I speak with Christin Burmeister, Head of Product at Otto Payments. Otto is Germany's second-largest e-commerce marketplace with €7 billion GMV, 12 million active customers, and 6,000+ merchants. They started 70 years ago as a catalogue company and successfully transfor...

Intergiro was a bootstrapped Swedish BaaS provider with €20M in revenue, nearly 100 employees, and 40,000 clients. They had just hit profitability. Then, overnight, the Swedish regulator revoked their license. A month later, the company filed for bankruptcy. In this episode, former CEO Nick Root tells his side of the story: the AML investigation that started in 2022, the TV reports that accused th...

Most startups building embedded banking follow a familiar path: pick a Banking-as-a-Service provider, integrate their APIs, and build a custom front end. But NoCFO , an AI-powered accounting platform, took a different approach. Instead of building banking from the ground up, they partnered with Holvi , a neobank targeting the same customers, and white-labeled the entire banking product. In this ep...

What happens when embedded lending evolves from a nice-to-have experiment to a must-have competitive advantage? In this episode, I speak with Jens Roehrborn, co-founder of Banxware, a German embedded lending provider. Over the past six years, Jens has witnessed platforms transform their financing approaches for SME customers. E-commerce sites, neobanks, and accounting software have all embraced em...

Hope is not a strategy. That's a line from today's episode that stuck with me. Because in embedded finance, too many partnerships are built on hope: hope that customers will come or hope that the product will fit. But the companies that actually succeed? They do the work upfront. Today I'm joined by Jas Shah, a fintech product consultant who has worked on both sides of embedded finance: from insid...

Embedded payments sounds simple: integrate a provider, monetize transactions, watch revenue grow. But the reality is far more nuanced. In this episode, I sit down with Alex Schoonkind, Cofounder and CEO of Embed, to unpack what it really takes to successfully embed payments into your vertical SaaS platform. Alex shares hard-earned insights from working with dozens of platforms, revealing the commo...

You've decided to build a Fintech product. Now comes the hard part: hiring the right team. Should your first hire be a product manager or a compliance expert? Do you need dedicated Fintech developers, or can your existing tech team handle it? How do you actually convince top Fintech talent to join a non-financial brand? In this episode, I sit down with Morten Laufer from Nova Search, a Hamburg...

In this episode, Lars explores embedded insurance through an unusual but fascinating lens: horses. Finlay Dargan (COO, Equine MediRecord), Paul Prendergast (Kayna), and Anthony Borgman (WTW) share how they partnered to bring mortality insurance directly into a horse health record management platform. The conversation reveals broader insights about embedded insurance opportunities, the challenges o...

What if property managers across Europe are spending hours every day just trying to figure out which tenants have paid their rent? In this episode, I speak with Marcel Meitza, founder and CEO of GetMomo, a Berlin-based vertical Fintech building what he calls "the real estate operating system for Europe." With a background in banking and consulting at BCG, Marcel identified a massive oppo...

What if jewellery retailers could access thousands of dollars in inventory with just a few clicks and no upfront cash? In this episode, we sit down with Stefan Scherpenborg, Head of Nivoda Capital, to explore how they're revolutionising B2B financing in the global jewellery trade. Stefan shares how Nivoda transformed from a diamond and gemstone marketplace into a comprehensive growth platform,...

How do you take a document-first SaaS and scale it into a global quote-to-cash platform? In this episode, Philipp Pohlmann shares his journey from fintech founder to scaling embedded payments into one of PandaDoc’s most strategic pillars. He breaks down the product, technical, and organizational challenges of embedding finance in a non-financial platform. Key Takeaways: Lessons from embedding paym...

🎯 Think embedded finance only happens in the US and Western Europe? Think again In this episode, Lars dives deep into the thriving embedded finance ecosystem of Central & Eastern Europe with Danuta Czapeczko, an industry veteran from PragmaGO - the region's largest embedded lending provider. 🔍 What You'll Discover: Why Poland has 380+ FinTech companies you've never heard of How A...

Discover how Procounter, Finland's largest accounting software company, is revolutionising small business banking through embedded finance. Guest Juho Putkonen sits down with host Lars Markull to discuss how they're making neobanks obsolete by building banking services directly into their invoicing and accounting platform. Procounter serves over 100,000 Finnish companies through their acco...

The partnership landscape between financial institutions and tech companies is rapidly evolving. What started as Fintech startups challenging banks has transformed into a collaborative ecosystem where embedded finance is the next frontier. In this episode, host Lars Markull sits down with Richard Würl from Redstone VC to decode the five partnership models that actually work when collaborating with...

Marcel Mansfeld, co-founder and CPO of ToolTime, shares how his German craft industry software company successfully launched embedded payments after raising € 55 million. From serving over 20,000 tradespeople with paperless workflows to building ToolTime Pay, Marcel reveals the challenges, learnings, and strategic decisions behind integrating finance into vertical software. Main Takeaways: Timing...

Some companies have Fintech in their DNA, even though they're not from the financial services industry. Wolt, the Finnish food delivery platform, is one of these companies that has built embedded finance operations across Europe. In this episode, host Lars Markull speaks with Anniina Heinonen, Managing Director at Wolt Payments, about how a restaurant platform evolved into a regulated financia...

Are you thinking about adding embedded lending to your platform? Mark Hollemann, co-founder of Spring (a B2B embedded lending provider that reached $1 million in ARR before shutting down), shares the real story behind build vs. buy decisions in embedded lending. From underwriting engines to debt financing, Mark breaks down what it takes to build lending products—and why most companies should think...

In this episode, Lars Markull is joined by Tino Keller, co-founder of Accountable, the freelancer-focused finance app active in Belgium and Germany. We explore how Accountable evolved from an intelligent tax assistant into a full-embedded banking solution and why now was the right time to launch their own bank account and card for freelancers. 🔍 Topics we cover: Why open banking wasn’t enough for...

In this episode of Embedded Finance Review, host Lars Markull speaks with Fintech veteran Arda Cagaptay about the evolution and future of merchant wallets. With 15 years of experience in Fintech and previously leading wallet initiatives at Delivery Hero, Arda shares his expertise on why merchant wallets are becoming increasingly valuable for businesses beyond just coffee chains. The conversation e...