5 min read
I bet you used embedded finance this week, without ever calling it that. It’s the quiet step tucked inside the apps you already trust and use daily. The Uber payment that happens by itself through the app. The new iPhone loan offered right at the checkout. The travel insurance box sitting next to the plane tickets you’re buying. You never think about it. You don’t notice it… and that is the whole point.
Fastest growing part of FinTech
Embedded finance seems to be one of the fastest growing corners of finance and financial technology. It’s quietly pulling money away from anyone who still makes customers stop, leave, and go elsewhere to sort money out.
Here are three everyday moments that show how something works with embedded finance vs without it:
| Without embedded finance | With embedded finance |
|---|---|
| You finish the taxi ride, then dig out your wallet, hand over cash or tap a card, and wait | You step out of the Uber and walk off. The fare already left your card inside the app |
| You want the fridge but cannot pay in full, so you leave, go to a bank or a lender, fill in forms, and wait days to receive money in your bank account | You buy the fridge online and choose to pay in six installments with Klarna. One click and it is done |
| You book the flight, then go hunting on another site for travel insurance and compare policies yourself | You book the flight and the trip insurance sits right next to the ticket. You tick the box and move on |
What embedded finance really is
Embedded finance means putting a financial service, a payment, a loan, an insurance policy, right there next to a product on a website or in an app. The customer gets it in the place where they already are.
They don’t have to log off and go to a bank for a loan (physically). They don’t even have to switch to a bank website to calculate it. They don’t have to open a second app to buy an insurance policy.
| Clients simply stay where they were shopping, working, booking, etc., and the finance part is easily accessible to them. In the end embedded finance is about making life easier. Put it all on a plate so the client can pick and choose products and services. |
|---|
It flips the old model around. Instead of sending people to finance, you bring finance to people, at the exact moment they need it. Under the hood it runs on APIs. On the surface it feels like nothing at all, and that is exactly why it works.
“It all comes down to speed and convenience. If you apply fully online, you can often get a credit decision without ever talking to anyone. No broker, no conversations with bank employees. A lot of people, younger ones especially, just prefer avoiding human contact, some won't even call to order a pizza anymore.”
The six kinds of embedded finance
I would say there are six main kinds of embedded finance “shapes”. I bet you used several this week without noticing.
Embedded payments
Paying happens inside the app or the site, with no card to pull out and no separate page to visit. This is the most common shape and the one people notice least. You see it in Apple Pay and Google Pay, in an Uber ride that charges itself the moment the trip ends.
Embedded lending
Credit is offered to you right at the checkout. So, you don’t have to go to a bank. Convenient, fast, and basically for most people it means buy now, pay later. This is why companies like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay are so big right now. They let a shopper split a payment at checkout in one tap.
“With embedded finance lending you just fill in the application at your desk at home. One application can go to several banks at once, so the customer gets more offers and a better chance of approval from a single form.”
Embedded insurance
The insurance comes with the thing you are buying, so you do not have to go and find it on your own. You add trip insurance when you book a flight, phone cover when you buy a phone, extra warranty when you buy a fridge or a TV, or damage cover when you rent a car. You just tick a box, and you are covered.
Embedded investment
You can invest inside an app that is not a stockbroker. A payments app like Revolut or Cash App lets you buy shares or crypto in a few taps. Some apps round each payment up to the next whole amount and put the small change into investments (shares or even crypto) for you, so you can start saving/investing money without thinking about it.
Embedded accounting
This is accounting built right into the software a business already uses. The books keep themselves. When a sale or a payment goes through, it drops into the accounts on its own, sorted into the right place, with the tax worked out for you.
Platforms like Shopify or Stripe can do this bookkeeping in the background, so the owner is not copying numbers into a separate program at the end of the month. The accounting happens where the work happens.
Embedded banking
A company that is not a bank gives you the things a bank gives you, like an account, a card, and a wallet. An app can give its drivers or its sellers their own account and debit card, and hold and move their money inside the app. People get the feeling of a bank without ever picking one.
Where you lose money
As a credit/mortgage broker
If you don’t own the moment where money moves - you leak. Each leak is real and countable - it’s the loss of a potential client.
Picture this. You’re a mortgage broker. A good lead comes in. A married couple of 30 year olds with two children. Good jobs and a steady income source. Anxious and excited to move to their first home. The customer is ready and emotional.
The process is spread across a few tools. The form drags and the decision takes days… During that few day gap, the customer finds someone else or just walks straight into a bank. The lead was paid for, almost converted, but lost at the very last step.
“Plenty of firms have a 'calculator' on their site, but it's really just a lead magnet. The customer types in their details, nothing actually gets checked, and the data disappears into a spreadsheet somewhere. A real embedded flow prequalifies that lead, so your agent starts the call already knowing what the person can afford, instead of burning the first twenty minutes just gathering context."
As an insurance agency
The best time to sell a policy is the second someone buys a home, a car, or a phone. That’s the moment when it almost sells itself. That is when the cover almost sells itself. If you cannot quote it and attach it right there, in the same flow, the sale is gone.
Think of the electronics shop that lets a customer add product’s insurance on the checkout page. The ones who build that within win the sale. The ones who send the customer away to sort it out alone lose an opportunity to upsell.
As a marketplace or a big-ticket seller
If you sell expensive things, cars, property, high-end electronics, you are probably sitting on money you never collect. Today you might earn a little from ad clicks through to a partner lender. Build the financing path into your own site instead, and you earn from the financing itself. You never become a bank, you just stop handing that revenue to someone else.
"You don't have to become a bank to benefit from this. A marketplace selling something expensive, say cars, usually just earns from ad clicks to a partner lender. Build the financing path that allows you to switch earning from ad clicks to commission from financing. If you compare the numbers between those two revenue streams it will shift how you think about the business."
It doesn't replace your people
One myth is worth killing before we go on. Embedded finance does not remove the human from the process, it removes the cold start. Even when everything can be done online, plenty of people begin an application and never finish it, so you still want a person there to nudge them over the line.
What changes is that your expert no longer starts from zero. They pick up the phone already knowing what the customer wants and what they can afford, so a call that used to take thirty minutes of context gathering takes ten.
If you don’t use embedded finance, you’re losing money…
The companies that use EF made the buying steps easier and faster. Every time a customer has to stop, go to another website, fill in a new form, or wait. It’s a risk they will stop, and give up on the purchase. And you lose the sale.
The best companies took those risky stops out. They built the money step right into the user experience or should I say user’s journey, so the customer never has to leave.
| Old way | Embedded finance way |
|---|---|
| Customer leaves to arrange money | Finance appears where the customer already is |
| Second app, second login, more forms | One flow, no redirects |
| Days to a decision | Minutes to a decision |
| One lender, one offer | Many lenders, real choice |
| Compliance bolted on at the end | Compliance built in from day one |
Do you have proof, though?
Well, we do. Let’s focus on the money lending aspect - buy now, pay later (BNPL) specifically.
Stripe tested this across more than 150,000 checkout sessions and found that when buy now, pay later was offered, businesses saw up to a 14% increase in revenue, from both higher conversion and larger average order values.
PayPal found that small and midsized businesses using its Pay Later option had an average order value about 20% higher than standard. And more broadly, BNPL is consistently reported to raise average order value by roughly 20 to 40% by cutting checkout friction.
Why do most companies still stay out?
If the pros of adding embedded finance to your business are this clear, why do so many companies watch the money drip away? Because building embedded finance tools in “the traditional way” from scratch hurts in four places at once.
One thing to keep in mind as you read: the 4 points are an issue only if you’re building everything yourself. There is a faster alternative, and we get to it right after this.
- Slow: It’s a slow process. Usually 12 to 18 months before anything goes live.
- Risky: Regulations such as GDPR in the EU are a minefield where one wrong step can block you from the market.
- Costly: Most of the budget goes on the same plumbing every system needs, like login, the customer record, documents, consents, alerts, and audit.
- Uncertain/unsafe: There aren’t a lot of experienced software houses out there to do it. Most learn while working on your project.
So a lot of companies decide to wait. And while they wait, someone faster takes their moment.
Where OSS Core fits in embedded finance
If you want embedded finance without the 12 to 18 month build and the guesswork, this is the part that makes it faster and easier. OSS Core is a modular platform from Pirxey, and the point is simple: you get there quickly and with far less risk, because you are working with a team that has built these systems before, not one learning your domain on your budget.
OSS Core’s ready modules focus on two of the shapes above: lending, both cash and mortgage, and insurance. On top of that it brings a built-in mini CRM, multi-application (one form that reaches several banks at once), and bank integrations.
Because the core is already built and shared across projects, you are not paying to reinvent the basics. Your budget goes on what is actually yours: the domain, the real integrations, and getting it live.
Think of OSS Core as three layers stacked on top of each other:
| Layer | What it is |
|---|---|
| Core, the base | The parts every finance system needs, already built. Logins, customer files, documents, messages, and a record of everything. The same in every build, so nobody pays to make it twice. |
| Verticals, your product | Your actual product. The loan, mortgage, insurance, or lease, with the rules that make it yours. This is where your time and money go. |
| Connectors, the plugins | Links to the outside world. Banks, ways to pay, ID checks, and credit agencies. Adding a new partner just means adding one more link. |
That structure gives you three things.
- You can drop a payment, a loan, or a policy into any customer journey just by adding a connector.
- The record of everything that happens is locked. Once something is written, no one can quietly change it later, not even an administrator. That is exactly what rules like DORA ask for.
- You own all of it. The code is yours and runs on any cloud or on your own servers, so you are never tied to us.
And you are not doing it alone. OSS Core is backed by people who have been CTOs at financial institutions in Poland, so the regulatory and technical experience is on your side from day one, not something you have to go and hire for.
Building this way is also much faster. Instead of the usual 12 to 18 months, it takes about 6 to 9, close to half the time (rough numbers taken from our experience).
“You are not paying us to build the core from scratch, that part already exists. You pay for wiring it into your setup and for the custom pieces that make it yours, billed as we go. The base saves you the build, and your money goes on the parts that are actually specific to your business.”
Our system works today. In one short session we can show you the whole thing on real screens, from a sale, through the customer file, and payments, to the locked record at the end. Anything this article says, we can show you live.
Where is embedded finance heading
The next shift is already visible. Forms and widgets start to disappear, and the finance step turns into a conversation. Instead of clicking through fields, you just tell the site what you want, something like "I'd like to buy this place but I'm not sure I can afford it", and an embedded assistant walks you through the options, pulls real offers, and helps you finish. It is embedded finance plus AI, working the way you already talk to a chat assistant today.
Your next step
Want to see it for real? Contact Pirxey for a 15 minute presentation of OSS Core. In a quarter of an hour we will walk you through every point in this article, live on real screens. Reach out and we will find a time that works.
TL;DR
- Embedded finance means putting payments, loans, and insurance right where the customer already is, in the app or on the site, instead of sending them off to a bank.
- You already use it every day. Uber charging itself, Klarna at the checkout, trip insurance next to a plane ticket.
- There are six kinds: payments, lending, insurance, investment, accounting, and banking.
- If you make customers stop and leave to sort money out, some give up and you lose the sale. Brokers, insurance agencies, and big-ticket marketplaces leak the most at the very last step.
- For customers it means speed and control: apply online, get a decision without calling anyone, and reach several lenders with one form.
- Most companies stay out because building the base from scratch is slow (12 to 18 months), risky (GDPR, DORA), costly, and hard to staff.
- OSS Core by Pirxey gives you a ready made base for the lending and insurance shapes, built for the Polish market, so you build faster (about 6 to 9 months) and pay for the custom parts, not the plumbing.
- Next step: contact Pirxey for a 15 minute live demo of OSS Core.