ShopifyFor journalists · key findings
Nine things this dataset says
FINDING 01
$185B TAM
B2B SaaS embedded-payments TAM, <20% captured today. The remaining 80%+ is the headroom for the providers above — and the reason every horizontal SaaS that touches a workflow with money attached is looking at building one of the boxes in this report. Source: BCG + Adyen, Oct 2024.
FINDING 02
2.5× more
companies disclose their sponsor bank than name their KYC vendor (111 vs 45). The compliance layer goes dark by design.
FINDING 03
300+
verified third-party providers serve the 658 fintechs in the dataset — defined as ≥2 disclosed buyers or recognized Open Banking Tracker vendor.
FINDING 04
17 non-bank fintechs
have crossed from vendor relationship to owned banking, clearing, or card-issuing infrastructure — Square Financial Services, Coinbase, LendingClub Bank and others.
FINDING 05
Zero overlap
between US, UK, and EU BaaS leaders. US: Cross River / Bancorp / Helix by Q2. UK: ClearBank (3× the runner-up) / Modulr / Griffin. EU: Mangopay / Treezor / Solaris.
FINDING 06
US discloses 2-4×
more than other regions. 12% of US fintechs name their sponsor bank vs. 3-5% elsewhere. Driven by US regulatory disclosure norms (FDIC member badges, BSA/AML attestations) that don't exist in UK/EU.
FINDING 07
Plaid #1
in financial data connectivity — Plaid appears in 70 of 658 fintech stacks (11%), more than every other open-banking aggregator combined. The category is only genuinely competitive in UK/EU, where TrueLayer, Yapily, Tink, and Salt Edge each hold real share.
FINDING 08
Stripe #1
PSP by disclosed-buyer count (87 of 658, 13%). BaaS leader: Unit (11, 2%). Most-cited accounting connector: QuickBooks (21%).
FINDING 09
$179B raised
by the verified providers behind the embedded-finance stack. Capital footprint of the layer across 141 of the 300+ verified providers (the subset with disclosed funding amounts) — VCs, PE, and IPOs.
Section 02 · disclosure rates
Which layers are auditable. Which go dark.
For each layer of the embedded-finance stack: what share of 658 analyzed fintechs publicly named a vendor? The gap between the green and red rows is the dark half of the stack — the layers regulators, integrity researchers, and journalists can’t audit from outside.
Layer
% masked ?
% disclosed
32.8%masked
46.7%
26.4%masked
24.8%
0.0%masked
19.1%
1.8%masked
16.9%
18.9%masked
15.7%
25.2%masked
12.9%
16.5%masked
12.3%
34.2%masked
7.3%
0.0%masked
6.8%
6.3%masked
4.6%
—
3.2%
Regulatorily disclosed (named on trust/regulatory surface) Commercially disclosed (named via case studies, partnerships) Trade-secret layer (rarely disclosed publicly)
What this meansThe payments side of the stack is auditable from outside. The risk side isn’t. Public datasets of vendor relationships — including this one — will always over-represent payments and under-represent KYC, fraud, and sanctions screening. Treat the red rows as a floor, not a ceiling. The “% masked” columnis the second-order finding: even when a layer IS disclosed, a meaningful fraction of companies talk about their own-brand product (“Acme Pay”, “Acme Checkout”) without identifying the underlying provider. ~34% of fintechs that mention a PSP, and ~37% of fintechs that mention BaaS, hide the actual infrastructure behind a brand wrapper — a structural masking effect that makes the auditable-looking layers thinner than they appear.
“Open banking opened the access door to financial data, but access and usability are not the same thing. A full internal transaction record carries around nine usable data points. What comes through an open banking API is typically two, sometimes four.”
— Ivan Dovica · CEO & Co-founder, Tapix by Dateio
Section 03 · dataset composition
What kind of fintech are these?
The 658 fintechs in this dataset split into 9 working categories. Infrastructure providers (BaaS, card issuing, PSP) sit alongside the platforms that consume them (vertical SaaS, marketplaces, B2B fintech) — the report is a snapshot of an ecosystem where buyer and seller often appear in the same chart. 1158 entries were excluded as non-fintech (investor/advisory firms, non-financial orgs, press fragments) before this breakdown.
223·33.9%
148·22.5%
77·11.7%
46·7.0%
43·6.5%
36·5.5%
31·4.7%
21·3.2%
17·2.6%
16·2.4%
Segments resolved via an enrichment cache + a local-profile fallback classifier sniffing each company’s public industry, tagline, and thesis. “Other” entries are kept in the dataset; we surface them as a visible gap rather than dropping them or guessing.
You’ve reached the teaser
The full report continues with sponsor banks, regional breakdowns, the self-banked club, the BaaS failure cycle, and methodology.
Six more sections + the 300-provider landscape. Register to receive the full report (PDF + dataset), or — for accredited journalists and analysts — email us for instant access.
Section 04 · sponsor banks
Who backs the banking
Every non-bank fintech that holds customer balances or issues cards sits on top of a US regulated bank charter — the “sponsor bank.” This is the single most-disclosed layer in our dataset because it’s a regulatory requirement to name. No single sponsor bank dominates. The top 5 (Cross River, Sutton Bank, Celtic Bank, The Bancorp Bank, Community) together back 35% of disclosed relationships — the rest spreads across 52+ smaller banks.
Top sponsor banks · disclosed relationships
1
Cross River9.0%
2
Sutton Bank8.1%
3
Celtic Bank6.3%
4
The Bancorp Bank6.3%
5
Community5.4%
6
Column5.4%
7
Pathward5.4%
8
Evolve Bank & Trust4.5%
57 distinct sponsor banks across 111 disclosed relationships. Percentages are share of disclosed relationships, not of all 658 analyzed fintechs.
What this meansFor regulators: there’s no concentration risk; oversight has to scale to every regional bank doing BaaS. For VCs: fintechs have real sponsor-bank optionality, and the post-Synapse fragmentation is structural, not a transition.
“Requirements such as independent reconciliation, per-partner FBO accounts and treasury-grade audit trails are becoming standard — capabilities that are significantly faster to access through established partners.”
— Anna Porra · CRO, Paymentology
Section 05 · category leaders
Who's winning each layer · US
A handful of providers dominate every category — and the share of the leader tells you whether the layer is a winner-take-most market or still fragmented. Filtered to US (658 companies). Clear the filter to see global leaders.
● PSP
Payments / PSP
Traditional payment service providers — sold to merchants to take their own payments. Many category leaders (Stripe, Square, Adyen) self-process and don't appear as customers of any third-party PSP.
◌ FDC
Financial Data Connectivity
Open-banking aggregators (Plaid, TrueLayer, Tink, Yapily) plus unified-API providers over accounting / payroll-HRIS / FX (Apideck, Codat, Rutter, Merge, Finch, Pinwheel, Argyle). The most-consolidated infrastructure category — Plaid holds 16% of disclosures alone — and the one most likely to reshuffle as open-finance regulation (CFPB §1033, EU FIDA, UK CMA, Brazil Phase 4) lands in 2026-27. DISCLOSURE: Apideck (the report publisher) appears in this leaderboard. Apideck's customer page was a seed source for the dataset, inflating its absolute count relative to vendors whose customer walls weren't scraped. The relative ranking of every other vendor is unaffected.
◐ EPAY
Embedded Payments
Platform-payments specialists — sold to vertical SaaS, marketplaces, and platforms so they can offer payments to their own customers. Distinct from the PSP card above; same buyer disclosure may appear on both when relevant. Curated allowlist (Finix, Moov, JustiFi, Tilled, Rainforest, Worldpay for Platforms, Modulr, Mangopay, Banking Circle, Swan).
◆ BaaS
Banking-as-a-Service
Self-operated banks (Square Financial Services, LendingClub Bank, Amazon Payments) are excluded — they're not a vendor relationship.
▣ CARDS
Card Issuing
⇄ FX
FX & Cross-Border Payouts
$ LEND
Lending
✦ PAY
Payroll Infrastructure
CheckHQ has aggressively owned vertical SaaS payroll — most B2B platforms that ship payroll embed it. Includes EWA (W-2 wage advances: DailyPay, Payactiv, Wagestream) and gig-worker instant pay (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash) — the latter is technically faster-settlement of completed earnings, not a wage advance, but the user experience is identical and most analyst writeups collapse both.
⛨ INS
Insurance
₿ CRY
Embedded Crypto / Stablecoins
Issuance, custody, on/off-ramps. Crossed from native-crypto products into mainstream embedded finance over the last 18 months.
What success looks like
Three platforms whose 10-K filings show embedded finance pays
Public-company evidence that platforms which embed financial products end up out-earning their software business. From the comprehensive PDF report.
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
“Payments may be the entry point, but lending is becoming the real revenue engine for vertical SaaS platforms because they own operational data traditional lenders do not have access to.”
— Sam Boboev · Founder, Fintech Wrap Up
Section 06 · regional differences
The stack is not global
BaaS, open finance, and sponsor banking look almost completely different depending on where the company is incorporated. Disclosure norms vary even more — US fintechs name their stack 2–4× as often as the rest of the world, an artifact of regulatory disclosure rules (FDIC member badges, BSA/AML attestations) that don’t exist elsewhere.
BaaS by region
No overlap between US (Cross River, Bancorp, Helix), UK (ClearBank dominant, then Modulr/Griffin), and EU (Mangopay, Treezor, Solaris). Each region has its own BaaS oligopoly.
Open finance
Plaid leads US disclosures by a wide margin — more than every other open-banking aggregator combined. The category is genuinely competitive only in UK/EU, where TrueLayer, Yapily, Tink, and Salt Edge each hold real share.
Disclosure asymmetry
12% of US companies name their sponsor bank vs. 3-5% elsewhere. Outside the US there often isn't a sponsor bank to name — UK/EU fintechs hold their own EMI license.
| Region | Companies | Top PSP | Top BaaS | Top Card Issuer | Top Sponsor Bank | Top Open Banking | Sponsor named % | KYC named % | Acct. connector % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | 658 | Stripe | Unit | Marqeta | Cross River | Plaid | 17% | 7% | 30% |
| EU | 461 | Stripe | Swan | Marqeta | Solarisbank | Salt Edge | 4% | 5% | 19% |
| UK | 325 | Stripe | ClearBank | Paymentology | ClearBank | Yapily | 7% | 5% | 18% |
| APAC | 283 | Stripe | Nium | Nium | Federal Bank | Plaid | 10% | 2% | 15% |
| Other | 151 | Stripe | ClearBank | Mastercard | Coastal Community Bank | Plaid | 3% | 4% | 9% |
| MENA | 95 | Checkout.com | Mambu | Mastercard | Commercial Bank International | Tarabut | 5% | 4% | 9% |
| LATAM | 87 | Fiserv | S.A. de C.V | Paymentology | Banco de Crédito del Perú | Khipu | 13% | 5% | 17% |
| Canada | 69 | Stripe | Stripe Treasury | Stripe Issuing | Peoples Trust Company | Plaid | 10% | 3% | 35% |
| Africa | 41 | Mastercard | SBS | Mastercard | Access Bank | Mono | 2% | 2% | 7% |
Region inferred from
company_profile.headquarters. “Top” = the most-disclosed vendor within each region (not necessarily the highest revenue / market share). “Other” = HQ not inferable from the dataset.Section 07 · self-operated infrastructure
The self-banked club
Most fintech companies rent their banking, card-issuing, and payment infrastructure from a vendor. But a growing tier of category leaders has crossed the threshold and now operates that infrastructure themselves — through an owned bank subsidiary, an in-house clearing entity, or a self-issued payment product.
When a company graduates from vendor relationship to owned stack, the economics flip: margin retained, latency controlled, but compliance, capital, and operational burden internalized. 17 of 658 companies in our dataset have crossed that line for at least one layer.
Operates own banking / clearing / issuing
excl. licensed banks
AirwallexAnchorage DigitalBooking HoldingsElavonFISFinxactIncommInswitchInterMoonpayPaxosPayoneerPriorityRippleStripeSynchronyTipalti
Section 08 · compliance disclosure
Where the compliance stack goes dark
Payment processors and BaaS providers are routinely named on trust pages and subprocessor lists. The compliance layer — KYC, fraud, sponsor banking — is far more guarded. Comparing public disclosure rates across the dataset is itself the finding.
Why the asymmetry: sponsor-bank disclosure is regulator-driven (FDIC Section 18 “Member FDIC” signage rule, OCC third-party-risk-management OCC 2023-17); KYC-vendor identity is treated as competitive information under the GLBA Safeguards Rule (no disclosure obligation). One layer is forced into the open; the other is allowed to stay private. The data reflects exactly that.
Sponsor bank named
111
/ 658 · 17%
Disclosed in regulatory footers, terms of service, and licensing references.
KYC vendor named
45
/ 658 · 7%
Identity-verification providers (Persona, Onfido, Jumio) are almost never publicly attributed by the customer.
Fraud tool named
21
/ 658 · 3%
Fraud-scoring and decisioning vendors (Sardine, Sift, Forter) sit even deeper in the stack.
Known failures · 2024-25
Sourced from public regulatory orders
Why public-disclosure matters: the 2024-25 enforcement cycle
Six named failures in eighteen months. Each one took partner fintechs offline, locked out customers, or revealed pooled-account architectures with no independent source of truth. The compliance layer goes dark in normal times — and it’s the layer that fails first.
SynapseUS · 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.
Source · Ch. 11 docket (E.D. Cal.)
Blue Ridge BankUS · 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.
Source · OCC consent order EA-2024-005
Evolve Bank & TrustUS · 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.
Source · Fed enforcement action · 2024-06-14
SolarisGermany · 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.
Source · BaFin measure · 2024-03-15
RailsrUK / EU · 2023
Special administration; forced downstream migrations across dozens of fintech customers.
Root cause · Compounding losses + funding gap.
Source · UK Gov special-administration notice
IntergiroSweden · 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.
The KYC opacity gap
2.5× more companies disclose a sponsor bank than name a KYC vendor.
Sponsor-bank relationships surface because they’re a regulatory requirement to disclose. Identity-verification providers are treated as trade secrets — and the rest of the compliance stack (fraud orchestration, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring) is darker still. The vendor catalog you can build from public evidence is therefore systematically biased toward the payments side and away from the risk side.
◇ BANK
Sponsor banks named
57 distinct sponsor banks appear across 111 disclosures — no single bank holds more than a handful. The US sponsor-bank market is genuinely fragmented post-Synapse.
Vendor-side back-attribution
Who’s really running KYC for whom
Because fintechs rarely publish their identity-verification vendor, we inverted the lens: pulled the public customer pages of the five major KYC vendors themselves, then back-attributed each named customer to its vendor. 114 disclosed integrations across 8 vendors.
Customers compiled from each vendor’s public case-study, customer-grid, or success-story page. Includes companies outside the embedded-finance dataset; counts reflect disclosed integrations, not market share.
Looking forward
Four things to watch in 2027
The patterns above set up several testable predictions for the next refresh of this report. We’ll publish year-over-year deltas in the 2027 edition.
PREDICTION 01
KYC disclosure stays under 10%
Sponsor banks disclose because regulators force them to. KYC vendors don't have that pressure, and our prediction is the gap widens — not narrows — as more fintechs view their fraud and identity stack as a competitive moat. Watch for 1-2 high-profile vendor disclosures from regulated neobanks; everyone else will stay quiet.
PREDICTION 02
US BaaS oligopoly consolidates further
Cross River, Bancorp, Pathward, and Lead Bank already concentrate disclosed US sponsor-bank relationships. Synapse's collapse pushed a wave of mid-tier fintechs onto a smaller bench. We expect the top-4 to absorb ≥75% of new US BaaS launches by end of 2027, with Column and Lead Bank making the biggest gains.
PREDICTION 03
Embedded crypto crosses the chasm
Stablecoin and on/off-ramp providers (Brale, BVNK, Bastion, Crossmint, Fireblocks) appeared in the 2026 dataset for the first time. By 2027 we expect ≥10% of analyzed fintechs to disclose at least one stablecoin or embedded-crypto vendor — up from <2% today — driven by cross-border payouts and B2B settlement.
PREDICTION 04
Open finance keeps eating open banking
Open banking unlocked the current account; open finance unlocks pensions, investments, insurance, and tax. With US CFPB §1033, EU FIDA, and Brazil Open Finance Phase 4 all landing in 2026-2027, expect Financial Data Connectivity to be the most-reshuffled leaderboard — and a wave of consent-management entrants with no category last year.
Method
How we built this dataset
By
Gertjan De Wilde · Founder, Apideck
with Open Banking Tracker · Embedded Finance Review · last updated 2026-05-28
01 · COLLECT
Evidence across nine signal categories
For each target we run nine parallel Exa web-search queries plus a direct fetch of the company’s trust / legal / footer pages, collecting subprocessor lists, customer announcements, regulatory disclosures, and script signatures.
02 · GRADE
Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 evidence
Subprocessor and regulatory disclosures (Tier 1) outrank job posts and pricing inferences (Tier 2), which outrank structural integrations (Tier 3). The model is required to cite the source URL for every named vendor.
03 · SYNTHESIZE
Claude Opus 4.7 + canonical backstop
Opus 4.7 maps evidence onto a 12-layer embedded finance schema. A canonical vendor-to-slot mapping ensures known providers (Marqeta → card issuing, Check → payroll, Cover Genius → insurance) always land in the correct block.
Sourcing strategy
Where the evidence comes from — and where it doesn’t
Every datapoint in this report traces back to a public web URL. We don’t hold provider APIs, NDAs, or paid intelligence licences — the dataset is reconstructable by anyone with an Exa key and the source list below. The geographic shortfall in the Limitations block is a direct consequence of this sourcing strategy.
Covered surfaces
- Trust / security / privacy pages. Subprocessor lists are the highest-fidelity source for KYC, fraud, and BaaS attribution.
- Customer pages on vendor sites. Persona, Onfido, Jumio, Marqeta, Stripe, Adyen — every name lifted with a back-reference URL.
- Regulatory footers + Member FDIC signage. Drives the sponsor-bank disclosure rate.
- 10-K / S-1 / 20-F filings. SEC + LSE + Euronext primary docs for public companies (Toast, Shopify, Affirm, ServiceTitan…).
- Embedded Finance Review archive. 478 articles indexed by company & vendor; founder interviews and stack-story coverage feed Tier 2 evidence.
- Open Banking Tracker registry. Provider taxonomy + regulated-entity records for the vendor side.
- Press releases on PR Newswire / Business Wire / Globe Newswire. Quoted disclosures with date stamps.
Not covered (known gap)
- Non-English press & trust pages. The Exa query layer runs English-only prompts; Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin, and Indian-language disclosures aren’t reached. Direct cause of the LATAM / MENA / APAC / Africa shortfall in the Limitations section.
- Vendor-side APIs & private partner directories. No paid feeds.
- NDAs, internal docs, leaked decks. Excluded by design.
- Mobile-app SDK signatures. Not statically inspectable without binary analysis; out of scope for v1.
- Card-network or scheme-side records. Visa / Mastercard partner disclosures aren’t public at the granularity needed.
How we’re closing the gap for 2027: a curated seed list of ~250 LATAM / APAC / MENA / Africa fintechs and embedded-finance vendors (drawn from Distrito, Finnovista, FinTech Saudi, ADGM RegLab, Disrupt Africa, Briter Bridges, and Wamda directories) is queued through the same analyzer that handles US/UK/EU companies. Localized-language sourcing (es-AR, pt-BR, ar-SA, zh-CN, hi-IN), mobile-binary stack inspection, and a regulator-side partner-attestation feed for non-US sponsor-bank coverage are on the roadmap. The 2027 edition will publish a per-region delta showing which gaps closed.
Content partner · Vendor landscape · embedded finance directory
Open Banking Tracker
Open Banking Tracker maintains the most comprehensive public index of embedded finance, BaaS, open banking, and card-issuing providers worldwide. Each vendor surfaced in this report links to its full Open Banking Tracker profile — coverage areas, regulated entities, customer-disclosed integrations, and product taxonomy. openbankingtracker.com/embedded-finance.
Content partner · Press coverage · interviews · stack stories
Embedded Finance Review
Embedded Finance Review covers the embedded-finance ecosystem with original reporting, founder interviews, and weekly story round-ups. We indexed 478 Embedded Finance Review articles by company and vendor — every profile in this report surfaces relevant coverage in the “In the press” section where it exists. embeddedfinancereview.com.
Limitations
What this report is — and isn’t
- Public web only. No NDAs, no provider APIs, no paid intelligence sources. If a vendor relationship doesn’t.disclosed publicly somewhere, it’s not in here.
- English-language sources, US/UK/EU bias. LATAM, APAC, MENA, and Africa fintechs are underrepresented because their stack disclosures live in non-English press and trust pages we didn’t scrape.
- 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. Adyen’s real share is likely higher than its count.
- Point-in-time snapshot. Generated 2026-05-28. Vendor relationships churn — last quarter’s Synapse customer is this quarter’s Column customer.
- Confidence varies per row. Subprocessor disclosures and regulatory footers (Tier 1) outrank press mentions (Tier 2) and structural integration signals (Tier 3). Per-profile confidence is captured in the underlying schema but not rolled up to the leaderboard view.
- The compliance layer is genuinely opaque. See Section 02 — KYC, fraud, and sponsor-banking vendors disclose at fundamentally lower rates than payments and BaaS. Any insurance / KYC leaderboard built from public evidence will under-represent reality.
Dataset · 658 companies · 300+ verified providers · 478 Embedded Finance Review articles indexed · generated 2026-05-28
“Verified providers” = vendor with ≥2 disclosed buyers in our dataset OR a recognized Open Banking Tracker provider (total mentions including singletons: 815).
“Verified providers” = vendor with ≥2 disclosed buyers in our dataset OR a recognized Open Banking Tracker provider (total mentions including singletons: 815).
Section 09 · the landscape
250+ providers. 16 categories. One map.
The Embedded Finance Landscape maps every major provider — BaaS, card issuing, payments, lending, payroll, compliance, and the data infrastructure underneath — into a single quadrant view. Published by the Open Banking Tracker team, refreshed quarterly. The card below shows 163 highlighted providers across the 12 categories most relevant to this report; view the full 250+ provider, 16-category map on Open Banking Tracker ↗.
PUBLISHED BY · OPEN BANKING TRACKER BY APIDECK
The Embedded Finance Landscape — 2026
250+ providers across 16 categories — BaaS, card issuing, payments, lending, compliance, and more
250+ PROVIDERS · 16 CATEGORIES · Q1 2026
🏦
Banking as a Service (BaaS)
22
UnitStripe TreasuryTreasury PrimeSyncteraSolarisbankSwanGriffinGreen DotHelix by Q2RailsrColumnCross RiverClearBankTreezorOpenPaydIncreaseIngo PaymentsDC BankSolidPathwardVodenoWeavr
💳
Card Issuing
18
MarqetaGalileoi2cLithicHighnoteThreddWallesterBrexQoloWEXMonavatePayneticsPaymentologyCoreCardCardlessPliantKnotRatoon
⚡
Embedded Payments
22
AdyenCheckout.comNiumAirwallexMoov FinancialFinixWorldpay for PlatformsBanking CircleGoCardlessMollie ConnectRainforest PayTilledJustiFiForwardBraintree (PayPal)VoPayAurora PaymentsMelioWise PlatformFidel APIModulrXplor
$
Embedded Lending
16
ParafinKanmonDefactoFinmidPipeLiberisYouLendBanxwareWisetackSunlight FinancialEngineLendioFundwelleCapitalLoanProCanopy Servicing
🛡
Compliance & KYC/KYB
15
AlloyPersonaSardineVeriffSocureComplyAdvantageMiddeskTaktileFourthlineFootprintSignzyBaselayerOnfido (Entrust)OscilarSentiLink
✦
Embedded Payroll & EWA
13
Gusto EmbeddedCheck (Payroll)Remote EmbeddedZealSalsaNmbrADP EmbeddedWorklioDailyPayTapcheckZayZoonClairBranch
📚
Ledger-as-a-Service
9
Modern TreasuryFormanceFragmentTigerBeetleTwispBlnk FinanceOpen LedgerLayerThred
🧾
AP/AR & Expenses
11
MoniteBILLTealAutobooksDolfinPleo EmbeddedFindityEmburse EmbeddedCardlayVeryfiKlippa
⇄
FX & Cross-Border
7
Currencycloud (Visa)ConveraOkooraEbury ConnectGrain FinanceKyribaTreasure
📈
Embedded Investing
7
DriveWealthAlpacaApex Fintech SolutionsUpvestWealthKernelLemon.marketsBambu
🛡
Embedded Insurance
7
Cover GeniusQoverHokodoChubbZegoCoverdashAuthentic
🔗
Financial Data Connectivity
16
ApideckPlaidTrueLayerTink (Visa)YapilyCodatRutterMergeFinchKlarna KosmaFinicityYodleeMXPinwheelArrayChift
Section 10 · the agent layer
APIs for humans → APIs for agents
The first wave of embedded finance built APIs for humans operating software — accept payments, issue cards, originate loans from inside a SaaS. The next wave is the same layer being consumed by AI agents acting on a user’s behalf. The fintechs that ship agent-readable surfaces now — MCP servers, function-calling toolkits, structured product docs — set the defaults for who agents reach for when they need to move money, verify identity, or fetch a balance.
Stripe Agent Toolkit
function-calling SDK
Stripe
Toolkit + middleware for AI agents to call Stripe APIs safely (charges, customers, products) with built-in idempotency. Distributed via NPM and Python; integrated with the OpenAI SDK and Anthropic SDK.
Plaid MCP server
MCP server
Plaid
Plaid published an MCP server exposing account, transaction, and identity endpoints over the Model Context Protocol. Lets agents read user-permissioned bank data without learning Plaid-specific glue.
Brex AI / Brex Assistant
in-product agent
Brex
Conversational agent layered on Brex's expense + treasury data. Pulls policy rules, transactions, and approvals so finance teams can resolve exceptions without leaving the dashboard.
Ramp Copilot
in-product agent
Ramp
Copilot surface over Ramp's spend data — drafts approvals, flags policy violations, summarises spend by vendor or department on request. The agent has read/write access to the user's workspace.
Mercury AI
in-product agent
Mercury
Agent layer over Mercury's banking, treasury, and bill-pay data for startup finance teams. Composes payments, surfaces anomalies, and answers natural-language queries against the ledger.
Klarna AI assistant
consumer agent
Klarna
OpenAI-powered customer-service and shopping assistant. Klarna disclosed the assistant resolves the workload of ~700 full-time agents — one of the largest production deployments of agentic finance to date.
Backbase AI
bank-tech vendor platform
Backbase
Agentic AI layer for incumbent banks running on Backbase's Engagement Banking Platform. Modular agents embed into service and sales journeys, governed by AI-act-compliant controls. Distributed via ~120+ bank implementations (ABN AMRO, Citizens, RBC).
Proof point
This report is agent-readable.
The full report ships as plain-text Markdown at /llms-full.txt and a short index at /llms.txt following the llmstxt.org convention. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude can ingest the numbers without rendering JS or fetching dynamic endpoints. The denominators, citations, and methodology mirror the HTML report exactly.
Section 11 · ERP & accounting connectivity
Beyond accounts: open finance is open data
Open banking opened account data — Plaid, TrueLayer, Tink, Yapily. But money doesn’t move on bank data alone; it moves on accounting ledgers, payroll runs, ERP records, and tax-authority data. The unified-API tier — Apideck, Codat, Merge, Rutter, Finch — is the next leg of open finance, and it’s where the CFPB §1033 / EU FIDA / UK CMA regulatory wave actually lands.
Solved: open banking
Plaid leads with 70 disclosed buyers (10.6% of the dataset).
1Plaid
70·10.6%
2Rutter
8·1.2%
3Codat
7·1.1%
4Apideck
6·<1%
5GoCardless
4·<1%
6Array
4·<1%
Open: the rest of financial data
Accounting, ERP, payroll, FX — unified APIs are the connective tissue.
QuickBooks leads accounting connectors (136 disclosed buyers), but the unified-API providers — Apideck, Codat, Merge, Rutter, Finch — are the abstraction layer above them. One API, multiple downstream systems (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage; ADP, Gusto, Workday; FX rates, payroll runs, KYC providers). The Plaid of accounting hasn’t emerged yet — the category is wide open.
The regulatory clockFour open-finance frameworks land in 2026-27: CFPB §1033 (US — extends data-access rights beyond bank accounts to accounting/payroll), EU FIDA (Financial Data Access — full open-finance scope including investments, pensions, insurance), UK CMA open-finance roadmap, Brazil Open Finance Phase 4. The category leaders for “open ERP / open accounting” will likely be decided before any of these rules fully bind — meaning the unified-API tier is racing to set the defaults regulators end up codifying.
Deep stacks
Fintechs that disclose the most
Twelve companies whose public surfaces name the most layers of their embedded-finance stack — out of 12 we track. These are the showcase reads: concrete examples journalists can point to when they need a named fintech instead of a leaderboard. Each card links to the full profile.
Fifth Third Bank8 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingPayrollFX / payoutsOpen Finance
Novo8 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankPayrollFX / payoutsKYCFraud
Western Union8 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingLendingInsuranceFX / payoutsKYCOpen Finance
Coinbase7 / 12
PSPBaaSLendingInsuranceFX / payoutsKYCCrypto
Cross River Bank7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingFX / payoutsCrypto
Mastercard7 / 12
PSPCard issuingLendingInsuranceFX / payoutsKYCOpen Finance
Payoneer7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingFX / payoutsOpen Finance
PayPal7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankFX / payoutsCryptoOpen Finance
Square7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingPayrollOpen Finance
Stripe7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingFX / payoutsKYC
U.S. Bank7 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingLendingPayrollFX / payoutsOpen Finance
Affirm6 / 12
PSPBaaSCard issuingSponsor bankLendingOpen Finance
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Stats you can quote
Pre-baked one-liners for newsletter writers, analysts, and journalists. Each one already has its citation attached on copy. Free to use; attribution appreciated.
300+ verified providers serve 658 fintech and embedded-finance companies — the full public stack analyzed in one place.
Stripe powers 87 of 658 fintechs we analyzed — 13.2% of the market, the largest single-vendor concentration in any layer.
More fintechs name their sponsor bank than name their KYC vendor: 111 vs 45. The compliance layer goes dark by design.
$179B in combined funding sits behind the 300+ verified providers we tracked — the venture capital footprint of the embedded-finance vendor layer.
Financial Data Connectivity is the most-consolidated infrastructure layer: Plaid leads with 70 disclosed buyers, Rutter is #2 with 8.
17 non-bank fintechs have crossed from a vendor relationship to owned banking, clearing, or card-issuing infrastructure — Square Financial Services, LendingClub Bank, Coinbase and dozens more.
Embedded finance is no longer a B2C phenomenon — roughly 12% of the companies we analyzed are vertical-SaaS platforms (restaurant, healthcare, salon, construction software) embedding payments, banking, or lending.
Outside the US, Adyen leads payments with 31 disclosed buyers — the most-named European PSP in the dataset.
Stack-layer schema: 12 layers covering BaaS, card-issuing, PSP, embedded payments, financial-data connectivity, payroll, lending, insurance, FX, KYC, accounting, and embedded crypto.
First systematic source-cited census of embedded finance from the customer side, not the vendor side — every claim traceable to a subprocessor list, regulatory footer, or press disclosure.
Each copy includes the citation tail — State of Embedded Finance 2026, www.embeddedfinanceindex.com. Need a custom data cut, embargoed access, or interview? Email marketing@apideck.com.
For media
Press kit
Pre-cleared assets and quotes for journalists, analysts, and newsletter writers. Free to use with attribution.
QUOTE · OPEN FINANCE
“Open banking unlocked the current account. Open finance is unlocking everything else.”
Four regulatory clocks land in 2026-27: UK CMA’s open-finance roadmap, Brazil’s Open Finance Phase 4, EU’s FIDA framework, and the US CFPB §1033 final rule. Expect the Financial Data Connectivity leaderboard to be the most reshuffled category between this report and next year’s.
QUOTE · DATA CONNECTIVITY
“Financial Data Connectivity is the fastest-moving infrastructure category in embedded finance — and the most consolidated.”
Plaid takes 16% of all disclosures in the category by itself. The open-finance regulatory wave landing 2026-27 (CFPB §1033, EU FIDA, UK CMA, Brazil Phase 4) will shift the next leg — accounting, payroll-HRIS, FX, investments — toward unified-API providers (Apideck, Codat, Merge, Rutter, Finch). Expect this leaderboard to look unrecognizable in next year’s edition.
QUOTE · MARKET STRUCTURE
“Embedded finance has zero overlap between US, UK, and EU BaaS leaders. The stack is regional, not global.”
US: Cross River, Bancorp, Helix by Q2. UK: ClearBank (3× the runner-up), Modulr, Griffin. EU: Mangopay, Treezor, Solaris. Three separate oligopolies that don’t compete with each other.
QUOTE · SCALE
“658 fintech stacks. 300+ verified providers. $179B in venture funding.”
The first systematic, source-cited census of embedded finance from the customer side rather than the vendor side. Every claim is traceable to a subprocessor list, regulatory footer, or press disclosure.
CITATION
Apideck, Open Banking Tracker, Embedded Finance Review. State of Embedded Finance 2026. 2026-05-28. www.embeddedfinanceindex.com
TWEET / SHARE TEMPLATE
State of Embedded Finance 2026 — what 658 fintechs actually run on. 300+ verified providers across BaaS, payments, lending, payroll, KYC, FX, data. $179B in venture funding.
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Data, analysis, and report design by Apideck, in partnership with Open Banking Tracker and Embedded Finance Review. Methodology + limitations documented above. First edition; year-over-year deltas in the 2027 report.
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We can comment on: embedded-finance market structure, vendor concentration, sponsor-bank disclosure rates, vertical-SaaS adoption, open-finance regulation (CFPB §1033, EU FIDA, UK CMA, Brazil), and the methodology behind the dataset. Custom data cuts and embargoed access available on request.
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