“Embedded fintech” may be the least sexy industry trend term, but on the positive side it means everyone gets to be the banker (sort of)!

Embedded banking or finance is on the up over the last few years, meaning more businesses are giving their customers a one-stop shop by integrating finance services into their products. According to Forbes, embedded finance will generate $230 billion in revenue by 2025, a 10x increase from $22.5 billion in 2020.

Method is the latest launch to help companies provide financial services. Method allows makers to embed debt repayment into their apps for credit card, student loan, car loan, and mortgage payments. The makers formed the idea while building Gradjoy, an app that helps students tackle their loans.

The term “embedded fintech” was coined in 2019 and despite a couple of early risers in this space, we’re just at the start of its boom. Yet if you’re thinking “embedded fintech is old news,” Merritt Hummer, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, agrees. Her article in TechCrunch speculates that we’re on the heels of the next trend wave: embedded procurement.

Hummer sees this as a sister concept, where businesses will begin managing inventory and procurement for their customers too. Imagine a SaaS which provides scheduling and POS for salons adding inventory management for supplies like shampoo. That company can begin aggregating its customers' demand to purchase for their customers at better prices.

This transition from “every company will be a fintech company” to “every company will be a marketplace” is on our watchlist. In the meantime, here are six more embedded fintech launches you may have missed:

Stripe Treasury - Banking-as-a-Service API from Stripe
Puzzl - Embedded payroll
Check - Another embedded payroll service
Lendflow API - Embedded lending infrastructure
Finch - Payroll and HR API
Alpaca Broker API - End-to-end brokerage embedding (we also wrote about Alpaca’s fractional trading API here)

Last week we announced which makers received our latest round of grants to support them as they continue building and creating.

1Feed maker and grant recipient Ethan is sharing great advice for staying on track or figuring out your next steps.