# Embedded Finance Index 2026

What 5,902 fintechs actually run on. Half the stack is auditable. The half regulators care most about isn't.

- Generated: 2026-09-07
- Source URL: https://www.embeddedfinanceindex.com
- Publishers: Apideck × Open Banking Tracker × Embedded Finance Review
- License: free to quote with attribution and source link

> $185B B2B SaaS embedded-payments TAM · <20% captured (BCG + Adyen, Oct 2024)

## Headline numbers

- 5,902 fintech and embedded-finance companies analyzed
- 1,241 verified third-party providers (≥2 disclosed buyers or recognized Open Banking Tracker vendor)
- 929 fintechs name their sponsor bank
- 273 fintechs name their KYC vendor
- 73 fintechs name their fraud tools
- Ratio: 3.4× more fintechs disclose a sponsor bank than a KYC vendor
- 360 non-bank fintechs operate their own banking / clearing / issuing infrastructure
- $538B in disclosed venture funding across 494 of 1,241 verified providers
- 517 Embedded Finance Review articles indexed

## Layer disclosure rates

For each layer of the embedded-finance stack, what share of the 5,902 analyzed fintechs publicly named a vendor:

- Payments: 44.7% (2,639 fintechs)
- BaaS: 23.3% (1,378 fintechs)
- Sponsor bank: 15.7% (929 fintechs)
- Open Finance: 13.4% (788 fintechs)
- FX / Payouts: 11.9% (703 fintechs)
- Card issuing: 11.8% (695 fintechs)
- Lending: 11.6% (685 fintechs)
- KYC / identity: 4.6% (273 fintechs)
- Insurance: 3.9% (231 fintechs)
- Crypto / Stablecoin: 3.6% (214 fintechs)
- Payroll: 2.3% (137 fintechs)
- Fraud: 1.2% (73 fintechs)

The payments side of the stack is auditable from outside. The risk side isn't. Public datasets of vendor relationships will systematically over-represent payments and under-represent KYC, fraud, and sanctions screening. Treat the bottom rows as a floor, not a ceiling.

## Category leaders (top 5)

### Payments / PSP

1. Stripe — 563 buyers · 9.5%
2. Adyen — 220 buyers · 3.7%
3. PayPal — 122 buyers · 2.1%
4. Checkout.com — 88 buyers · 1.5%
5. Worldpay — 67 buyers · 1.1%

### BaaS

1. Evolve Bank & Trust — 63 buyers · 1.1%
2. Sutton Bank — 60 buyers · 1.0%
3. Cross River — 51 buyers · <1%
4. Pathward — 46 buyers · <1%
5. ClearBank — 34 buyers · <1%

### Card issuing

1. Marqeta — 60 buyers · 1.0%
2. Stripe Issuing — 28 buyers · <1%
3. Paymentology — 25 buyers · <1%
4. Sutton Bank — 21 buyers · <1%
5. Enfuce — 20 buyers · <1%

### Lending

1. Affirm — 44 buyers · <1%
2. YouLend — 31 buyers · <1%
3. Klarna — 28 buyers · <1%
4. Stripe Capital — 27 buyers · <1%
5. Wisetack — 20 buyers · <1%

### Payroll

1. Gusto — 17 buyers · <1%
2. Stripe — 16 buyers · <1%
3. Salsa — 15 buyers · <1%
4. Check — 14 buyers · <1%
5. Gusto Embedded — 13 buyers · <1%

### Insurance

1. Cover Genius — 26 buyers · <1%
2. Qover — 11 buyers · <1%
3. Sure — 9 buyers · <1%
4. Zego — 7 buyers · <1%
5. Authentic Insurance — 6 buyers · <1%

### FX / Payouts

1. Currencycloud — 70 buyers · 1.2%
2. Nium — 62 buyers · 1.1%
3. Airwallex — 59 buyers · <1%
4. Wise Platform — 57 buyers · <1%
5. Stripe — 55 buyers · <1%

### Open Finance / Data

1. Plaid — 209 buyers · 3.5%
2. Apideck — 55 buyers · <1%
3. Salt Edge — 50 buyers · <1%
4. GoCardless — 39 buyers · <1%
5. TrueLayer — 38 buyers · <1%

### Crypto / Stablecoin

1. Zero Hash — 24 buyers · <1%
2. Fireblocks — 23 buyers · <1%
3. Circle — 19 buyers · <1%
4. BitGo — 11 buyers · <1%
5. Bridge — 11 buyers · <1%

### Accounting

1. QuickBooks — 719 buyers · 12.2%
2. Xero — 452 buyers · 7.7%
3. NetSuite — 288 buyers · 4.9%
4. Sage — 129 buyers · 2.2%
5. Sage Intacct — 117 buyers · 2.0%

## Sponsor banks

345 distinct sponsor banks across 929 disclosed relationships.

A *sponsor bank* is the chartered institution that holds the regulatory charter — distinct from a *BaaS provider* (the API/platform layer), so this ranking differs from the BaaS leaderboard even where the same names appear.

1. Evolve Bank & Trust — 76 fintechs (8.2% of disclosed)
2. Sutton Bank — 60 fintechs (6.5% of disclosed)
3. Cross River — 48 fintechs (5.2% of disclosed)
4. Pathward — 41 fintechs (4.4% of disclosed)
5. Celtic Bank — 35 fintechs (3.8% of disclosed)
6. Community Federal Savings Bank — 34 fintechs (3.7% of disclosed)
7. Thread Bank — 27 fintechs (2.9% of disclosed)
8. The Bancorp Bank — 24 fintechs (2.6% of disclosed)
9. Blue Ridge Bank — 22 fintechs (2.4% of disclosed)
10. WebBank — 20 fintechs (2.2% of disclosed)

## BaaS failure cycle (2023–2025)

### Synapse (US, 2024)

Chapter 11. Serving ~100 fintechs and four partner banks. Over 100,000 customers locked out. Trustee identified $65-95M shortfall.
Root cause: Pooled FBO accounts with no independent source of truth.

### Blue Ridge Bank (US, 2024)

OCC consent order (original 2022, amended Jan 2024). Grew to ~70 fintech partnerships at peak without scaling compliance. Required to reduce partnerships and raise capital.
Root cause: BSA / AML breakdowns at scale.

### Evolve Bank & Trust (US, 2024)

Federal Reserve cease-and-desist (Jun 2024). Partner to Stripe, Mercury, Affirm, Airwallex, Dave. Created regulatory contagion across the BaaS ecosystem.
Root cause: AML / risk-management deficiencies.

### Solaris (Germany, 2024-25)

BaFin restrictions; special representative appointed. One of Europe's most-cited BaaS providers placed under sustained regulatory supervision.
Root cause: AML governance + capitalisation concerns.

### Railsr (UK / EU, 2023)

Special administration; forced downstream migrations across dozens of fintech customers.
Root cause: Compounding losses + funding gap.

### Intergiro (Sweden, 2025)

Finansinspektionen revoked authorization Jun 2025; wind-down through Sep 2025, bankruptcy filed Jul 2025. Downstream platforms lost access overnight.
Root cause: AML / CTF failures — STR filing + CDD deficiencies.

## Public-company benchmarks

### Toast — 82% of revenue is fintech

FinTech Solutions revenue reached $4.05B of $4.96B total in FY2024 — ~82% of revenue. The fintech mix is what makes the unit economics work; software alone wouldn't.
Source: Toast 10-K · FY2024

### Shopify — $4.2B in Shopify Capital originations

Shopify Capital originated $4.2B in 2025, ~40% year-over-year growth. Embedded lending now sits alongside payments as a primary monetization layer — the loan book scales with merchant GMV, not just SaaS seats.
Source: Shopify Capital · 2025 disclosure

### ServiceTitan — 95%+ gross dollar retention

Embeds payments, payroll, and financing across its contractor base. 95%+ gross dollar retention across FY2023-FY2025 — among the highest reported for vertical SaaS at scale.
Source: ServiceTitan S-1 / 10-K · FY2025

## Methodology

- Dataset: 5,902 fintech and embedded-finance companies, deduplicated by canonical company key (one row per company, latest analysis version).
- Evidence sources: subprocessor lists, regulatory footers, trust pages, customer announcement pages, ~517 press articles.
- "Verified providers" = vendor with ≥2 disclosed buyers OR recognized Open Banking Tracker seed.
- Generated: 2026-09-07 (refreshes via ISR every 10 minutes from the live dataset).

## Limitations

- Public-web evidence only. No NDAs, no provider APIs, no paid intelligence sources. If a vendor relationship isn't disclosed publicly somewhere, it's not in here.
- English-language sources with US/UK/EU bias. LATAM, APAC, MENA, and Africa fintechs are underrepresented because their stack disclosures live in non-English press and trust pages that weren't scraped.
- Mentions ≠ market share. A leaderboard count is the number of analyzed companies that publicly disclose using a vendor. Stripe scores high in part because companies are willing to say they use Stripe.
- Point-in-time snapshot. Vendor relationships churn — last quarter's Synapse customer is this quarter's Column customer.

## Citation

[Apideck](https://www.apideck.com/), Open Banking Tracker, Embedded Finance Review. *Embedded Finance Index 2026*. 2026-09-07. https://www.embeddedfinanceindex.com