Treasury Prime focuses on bank-direct offering | Is UniCredit considering buying an European BaaS provider?

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My Updates 📬

Hi embedded finance friend,

Welcome to another edition of Embedded Finance Review. This edition is a bit different than usual since I cover two infrastructure provider news stories and skip the longer story about a non-financial brand (if you have a preference for either category, you can let me know in this short survey).

On a personal note, I started a new interim’s role at NX Technologies, where I am responsible for growing the payment partnerships for products and geographical expansion (customers are car dealers and manufacturers). If you think we should talk about this or are interested in this role as a permanent position, reach out to me.

Also, I tried to settle the debate about whether the abbreviation for embedded finance is EF or EmFi, which was highly unsuccessful.

This edition features:

• Treasury Prime pivots away from fintech and brands and focuses on banks. What does that mean for the US BaaS landscape?

• UniCredit is reportedly considering buying Vodeno. But would this be a good move?

• The job board includes a role for an embedded payments product manager

• Plus, many news pieces from Xero, Dayforce, Franklin, Griffin, Enfuce, Adyen and many more…

Let’s dive in!

Non-Financial Brands 🏢

Europe

• Danish startup Franklin launches a Visa card in partnership with Nium focusing on e-commerce businesses. Franklin is offering Visa cards with 0.5% cashback on marketing expenses as well as integrations with e-commerce platforms including Shopify and advertising channels like Google Ads and Meta Ads.

North America

• Human Capital Management provider Dayforce launches a wallet in partnership with Green Dot that enables employees to access early wages on demand, a prepaid card, and cash withdrawals at fee-free ATMs.

• Xero, a global small business platform, will enhance its accounts payable capabilities for its U.S. customers through a new partnership with BILL, a financial operations platform for small and medium-sized businesses.

• NetSuite OneWorld, an enterprise resource planning solution, has announced the integration of a global card and spend management solution in partnership with Mesh Payments. This integration enhances global spend management by streamlining inter-company transfers and syncing transactions across multiple entities.

Infrastructure Provider 🏗️

Treasury Prime focuses on bank-direct offering

US banking-as-a-service provider Treasury Prime has announced a strategic shift and will be focusing on banks instead of fintech companies and brands (this shift also includes a substantial reduction in workforce). Treasury Prime was founded in 2017 and has received investments from notable VCs such as Deciens and QED.

Treasury Prime enables non-regulated companies to launch financial products such as card and account products. Due to the absence of the concept of an e-money licence in the US, those companies usually work with two partners: a technology partner (like Treasury Prime) and a licence partner (a bank). But this model has recently gotten under a lot of pressure due to the various actions from US regulators (see news section below). The main challenge is that the bank often does not have the necessary oversight of the fintech programmes it supports and, therefore, cannot take action when it is necessary.

To avoid this, a bank could offer the technology themselves, which is, for obvious reasons, a big challenge for many banks. Crossriver Bank is one of the very few exceptions, and Treasury Prime’s offering aims to enable other banks to offer the same.

It appears that Treasury Prime, despite being one of the best-known players in the space, has struggled to gain momentum with it’s banking-as-a-service product. The regulatory scrutiny is likely just the cherry on top. Thus, the strategic shift does make sense from the outside, especially if this model is preferred by the regulator. Nevertheless, focusing on banks instead of fintech and non-financial brands seems (at least a bit) less attractive due to a smaller number of potential customers, even longer sales cycles, and a higher chance that some customers want to build the services in-house. But the market has obviously changed a lot since companies like Treasury Prime started. It will be interesting to see how the new product offering is being received by the market and if other BaaS players consider making a similar switch.

Is UniCredit buying BaaS provider Vodeno?

The Italian bank UniCredit is reportedly considering (!) acquiring Polish banking-as-a-service provider Vodeno. The story is in its infancy, and people involved in the process mention that the deal might not go through. But it’s worth a closer look nonetheless. For many, including myself, this news came as a surprise, most importantly because of the two names the news included.

I did not consider UniCredit to be a bank that would acquire an infrastructure fintech of this size. I did learn during my research that UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel (who still looks great even when wearing a down feather vest under his suit jacket—an advantage of being Italian, I guess) is being held in high regard for his achievements at UniCredit in the past few years, but his background is ‘banking’ and not ‘technology’.

On the other hand, Vodeno employs more than 200 employees (according to LinkedIn) and has received a sizeable investment since its founding. The company is well-known for its services in the embedded finance industry; however, I have not seen any new customer launches in the past few months (in Germany, I am aware of their current customers, Metro FS and UnitPlus, as well as Vantik, before it went bankrupt). Perhaps Vodeno’s owner, private equity firm Warburg Pincus, is pushing for an exit in light of the challenging atmosphere for fintech infrastructure companies?

Personally, I believe many traditional banks (incl. UniCredit) have a big opportunity when they become an infrastructure provider for fintech companies and brands. And obviously, the technology piece is the hardest for them to build, so an acquisition seems logical. But I would assume that with an acquisition, the bank is trying to get talent and technology in-house, while the brand of the infrastructure provider (which will likely go away) and their existing customers and revenue are not that important. If we agree on this, is Vodeno then the ideal target for an acquisition? Or wouldn’t a different provider be more appealing?

I have a feeling that UniCredit started directly speaking with Vodeno and has not looked at any other provider in the market. Personally, I would have done this differently and scouted the market properly before going into deeper discussions with one provider (if anybody at UniCredit wants access to my European banking-as-a-service provider list with 34 names, let me know 😉 ).

For the reasons mentioned above, I have my doubts that this exact deal will happen, but it would be great to see more banks getting into the embedded finance space, either through acquisitions or other strategies.

Europe

• Griffin, the API-first UK bank and full-stack Banking as a Service platform, has announced that it is accepting applications for its early access programme. The company has had a similar programme before, where rental service provider LettsPay was a cohort member.

• Finnish Issuing Processor Enfuce has received their e-money licence in the UK and appoints the former Tide CEO as chairman.

• Adyen partners with Billie, enabling Adyen’s platform customers to offer a flexible payment solution (aka BNPL) as part of the payment options.

• Embedded insurance provider Embea has raised €4 million in seed funding. Embea is enabling non-insurance providers (i.e., travel bookings or loan applications) to offer life insurance protection.

North America

• Alloy, the identity risk management company behind nearly 600 banks and fintech companies, announced Alloy for Embedded Finance, a new product custom-designed for sponsor banks, BaaS providers, and their fintech partners to collaboratively manage identity risk and stay ahead of regulatory requirements.

• Green Dot, a partner of Apple, Uber, Walmart, and Dayforce (see news above), is another player in the US BaaS space that has received a proposed consent order from the Federal Reserve tied to its compliance. Green Dot has set aside $20 million for the proposed consent, but it could cost them up to $50 million.

• According to rumours, Piermont Bank is exiting its relationship with the Banking-as-a-Service Platform Unit, but is seeking to keep some fintech clients the two shared.

• Unlike it’s competitors, Synctera seems to be unaffected by the current turmoil in the US BaaS segment and announces a new $18.6 million in funding. Synctera seems to be a bit more diversified than its competitors, as it has partnerships outside of the US (in Canada and Brazil) and caters to wealth management use cases as well.

• ChargeAfter, a point-of-sale financing firm, has debuted an embedded lending platform for banks. It is designed to let banks streamline the development, distribution, and management of multiple lending products with the aim of integrating their lending products directly into merchants’ points of sale.

• The processing volume from global card issuing platform Marqeta increases by 34% to $222 billion, generating $676 million in annual revenue.

• Embedded insurance startup Coverdash raises $ 13.5 million in Series A funding and will use the new funding to expand its embedded partner network, grow its internal team, and broaden its insurance carrier panel.

• TrueNorth and Brim announce their strategic partnership aimed at bringing commercial credit card solutions to banks, fintech, and major brands in the US and Canada.

Asia

• Nium, a provider for real-time cross-border payments, announced that it is the first non-Japanese company to have secured a Type 1 Funds Transfer Service Provider licence from the Japanese Financial Services Agency.

Insightful links 🤓

• Comparing North American and European PayFacs in 2024

• What broke Indian fintech poster child Paytm? The rise and fall highlight the balance between ambition and compliance.

• The embedded finance market is expected to reach USD 730.5 billion by 2032, fostered by frictionless transactions and technological advancements.

From the community 🏘️

• A German vertical SaaS company is looking for a product manager with a focus on embedded payments (hit reply if you want to know more).

• Why did Capital One acquire Discover? The answer is interchange, and how does it matter for embedded finance? Read this LinkedIn post.

• Lithuania: A David slaying Goliath in the fintech arena

• EU adopts instant payment rules, likely pushing new use-cases in fintech and embedded finance.

Help me 💪