Santander Join Forces
“Can a top-10 global bank become the embedded financial infrastructure layer for European SMEs and consumers by combining its own banking licenses and balance sheet with best-of-breed fintech partnerships?”
Banco Santander is one of the world's largest banks by assets, operating as a full-service universal bank across Europe, the Americas, and beyond. In the embedded finance era it has pursued a dual strategy: building its own digital infrastructure (Open Bank as digital banking arm, Getnet for acquiring, Zinia for BNPL) while selectively partnering with specialist fintechs (Ebury for SME FX, Worldpay for UK acquiring referrals, AirPlus for corporate cards, Two Inc. for B2B BNPL) to rapidly expand product breadth. The 'Join Forces' framing represents Santander's explicit partnership and co-distribution model — embedding third-party fintech capabilities into its own distribution network rather than building everything in-house.