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Have you heard terms such as ‘Banking-as-a-Service’ (BaaS), ‘Embedded Payments’, and ‘Embedded Finance’ being used a lot recently?
Do you know what these terms mean? What might it mean for your business? What might it mean for your financial life?
If so, you’ve come to the right place!
I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about these three game-changing fintech concepts.
Let’s get started!
Definitions
The world of financial services has been in the process of a radical transformation driven by nation state-level laws such as PSD2 in Europe and various types of fintech technologies (eg, BaaS, Embedded or Embedded Payments / Embedded Finance).
So what do all these terms mean? Let’s take a look.
What is Banking-as-a-Service?
For example, your firm in the sporting goods business would like to have a retail relationship with customers beyond merely passing goods, making it as simple as possible for them to buy and use your products, building loyalty in the process. You don’t want to become a bank by getting a banking licence and building a back-end for your business like a bank would do.
This is where Banking-as-a-Service, or BaaS needed!
BaaS allows other business to develop banking services without the associated banking licence, and through the bank’s technology infrastructure and connection to core banking software. Your e-commerce site, for example, could accept payments using an account and debit card delivered through BaaS APIs (application programming interfaces) – quite literally, banking as a service – without needing to become a bank yourself.
In a BaaS model, your company ‘rents’ the services of a regulated bank ‘under the hood’, allowing you to create bespoke financial products for customers, free to market these to the Contracting with a BaaS provider can help you avoid some of the key risks inherent in creating a finance company – such as regulatory compliance, operational risk and counterparty risk.
This means that customers could have branded bank accounts and cards, even if issued through your e-commerce platform. This could all happen right under the nose of your customers, with many unaware that a BaaS arrangement is pulling the strings beneath their app. For you, it could mean the ability to spin up banking services directly for end-customers without having to deal with the licensing overhead.
What Are Embedded Payments?
At the same time, imagine that your e-commerce company wishes to enhance the financial use case even further: not only financial products but payments too. You want your customers to be able to checkout and transfer money within your site or app, and not every time be redirected to a gateway outside.
This is where Embedded Payment takes place!
Embedded Payment is the technology that helps businesses embed payment acceptance and transfers deeply within their own digital platforms. Unlike asking your customers to enter their payment details over and over again, when using Embedded Payments the checkout will happen directly within your app or website, and money will passage securely.
For example, you can work with a licensed payment technology provider, and then use their APIs to build payment flows directly into your user experience, such as checkout, peer-to-peer payments, in-app payments and more.
The result is silky smooth payments woven directly into your customer experience!
What is Embedded Finance?
We’ve explored how BaaS can offer ‘back office’ banking infrastructure and how Embedded Payments can simplify payments. Embedded Finance, however, takes this to the next level.
Embedded Finance takes a broad-brush approach to the meaning of the term: it’s a financial service of any sort, including not only payments but also, investments, or crowdfunding, layered within the proprietary digital service or product experience of a company.
For example, imagine your e-commerce website allowing customers to apply for financing at checkout for a large purchase. Or to insure products at checkout against theft or damage.
You bake into the digital product the financial services of the future in such a way that the financial services are aligned with user experience, where any financial services become integrated into the native workflow seamlessly. This is what enables the massive business benefits we’re going to explain right about now.
We have embedded payments, lending, banking and insurance into any business, from retail to transport to real estate, to make that business a ‘finance anywhere’ competitor, a revenue generator.