Running a small business is hard enough—juggling operations, customers, and cash flow. Now imagine software that not only streamlines day-to-day work but also provides the financial tools needed to grow. That’s the promise of embedded finance.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ian Hillis, SVP of Growth at Worldpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, examined the emerging embedded finance landscape, the value it offers merchants and software providers, and what the future holds for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) embracing this new paradigm.
Speaking the Language
Two forces are fueling this shift: the thriving U.S. small business sector and the expanding universe of software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that serve them.
“It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of the technology as the cost of delivering SaaS solutions continues to drop,” Apgar said. “The size of the business that’s too small to utilize software is now zero. Quite frankly, it’s a win-win for the SaaS company that you can use payments as a revenue driver, but also for the user because it’s easy to consume the service in the application rather than to source that service separately.”
As these platforms become more deeply integrated into SMB operations, business owners are increasingly demanding solutions tailored to their specific needs. Vertical-specific software has existed for years, but it has traditionally focused on the largest markets—restaurants, retail, and hospitality.
Now, with cloud technology lowering the barrier to building software for niche verticals, more SaaS platforms can meet the unique demands of their SMB customers. The result? Rapid adoption and a wave of innovation changing how small businesses operate.
“In 2018, we did a study and came back with about 34% adoption in the U.S. for SMBs leveraging vertical-specific software to run their business,” Hillis said. “Fast forward to 2022, and that jumped up to 48%. If you fast forward to 2024, it’s nearly 64%, which is incremental and explosive growth in a short time.”
“You’ve got SMBs that are using vertical-specific software to run their business, and that software platform is sitting on a lot of data—employee data and customer data,” he said. “They speak the language of that vertical and it’s a trusted resource. A natural evolution of that is for the SMB to look to that trusted relationship in a high-traffic area for expansion of additional products and services, many of which are financial in nature.”
Reducing Time and Complexity
For SMBs, time is often the most valuable currency. Embedding finance helps reclaim it. With the right tools in place, transactions become faster, insights sharper, and growth more attainable.
“Each product is provided by a best-in-class partner who wakes up every day thinking about that experience with deep expertise,” Hillis said. “Service, support, and risk are all taken on behalf of the software platform, so they don’t have to take away resources from their current focus. That helps reduce time to market and operational complexity, while unlocking new revenue streams.”
For time-strapped SMB owners juggling countless responsibilities, that immediacy is invaluable. Embedded finance solutions not only provide access to more effective products, but also offer deeper insights into business performance.
With all key data visible in a single, unified solution, business owners can make faster, more informed decisions—and focus their energy where it matters most: running and growing their business.
“We’ve seen some research recently where small businesses will spend 20 to 25 hours per week just reconciling data between applications—between their merchant statement, their bank statement, their financial needs, supplier invoices—all these things are basically taking a number from one application and inserting it to another application so the business owner can run their business,” Apgar said.
“There’s a tremendous need to have a shared data set that can drive all the financial needs of a small business,” he said. “Then, if you look upstream from a supply chain perspective, especially when you get into credit products, having access to all that data on the SaaS platform gives the lender real-time visibility into the borrower’s business.”
Growth Compounds Growth
When a SaaS platform can use its data to recommend products that are relevant to a business, it evolves from being just a payments provider to becoming a true business partner. Taking that a step further, giving merchants access to capital directly within the software keeps them more deeply engaged in the ecosystem.
“If I have an embedded bank account and I have a loan with my platform—and then I move into a commercial charge card or I expand into payroll—that becomes the spot where I no longer have to start swivel-chairing between all of these different offerings and I log into my vertical-specific software platform,” Hillis said. “That’s not just retention, that’s 360-value coverage on their financial health offering.”
For example, a point-of-sale system provider for bars could offer a loan to an existing customer who wants to expand into a food truck venture. Loans like this have been shown to drive roughly a 15% increase in transaction volume.
What’s more, data from venture capital firm a16z shows that companies embedding financial services into their platforms can see a 2x to 5x increase in average revenue per user.
“That’s everything from payments to accounts to capital offerings—hence the wide range of 2x to 5x—but that means significant dollars for a software platform when you think about the average revenue per user basis,” Hillis said.
“Many of these products create growth that compounds growth,” he said. “If you take a capital offering out and can invest in that as an SMB, theoretically your revenues then go up. If you’re already monetizing payments to the software platform, you see the benefit of that as well. You are delivering both increased value from the experience lens, and then you get to enjoy that from the commercial side as well.”
More Runway to Go
Although embedded finance is an important tool for revenue generation, it also gives software providers a powerful way to deepen customer relationships. This represents the next frontier of fintech—where companies move beyond payments services to play a larger role in their customers’ overall financial lives.
This model will take shape through new products such as flexible loans, merchant cash advances, embedded account search, and commercial charge cards. Complementing these products will be platforms that unify and simplify access to embedded finance solutions.
“In September, we went live with our embedded finance engine, and it makes it ridiculously simple for software platforms to offer embedded financial products to their customers,” Hillis said.
“It’s leveraging that high-trust, high-traffic environment, and it can be done in a single sprint without having to push anything else from the road map,” he said.
Platforms like Worldpay give SaaS providers access to services such as accounting, financial health insights, payroll tools, and even business insurance, which can be either general or industry specific.
As innovations continue to emerge, these platforms allow software firms to integrate them seamlessly. For example, data-driven orchestration represents the future, with platforms leveraging artificial intelligence to deliver agentic, adaptive embedded finance solutions.
All of these possibilities stem from the cloud-based software systems that many SMBs have already embraced.
“We’re early innings on embedded finance,” Hillis said. “We’re just starting to see the threshold crossed on some core products. It’s been exciting to watch those get adopted, and we’ve got lots more runway to go.”
