Glovo
“Can Glovo convert its multi-country delivery marketplace into an embedded financial services platform for couriers and SME merchants across Europe, Central Asia, and Africa?”
Founded in 2015 as a multi-category on-demand delivery app in Barcelona, Glovo expanded rapidly across Southern Europe, Central Asia, and Africa, differentiating on breadth of categories beyond food. As the platform scaled to tens of thousands of couriers and merchant partners, Glovo began layering embedded finance products — first courier card issuing via Adyen (2021), then courier insurance via Qover, and progressively embedded lending for merchants via YouLend, finmid, and Salad Africa (2023–2025). The embedded finance strategy is primarily about monetising its merchant and courier network rather than building a standalone fintech, with lending and insurance positioned as platform stickiness tools.