Fintech
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Imagine opening your favourite shopping app—not just to buy something, but to get a credit line. Or opening your payroll app and finding a checking account waiting for you. Maybe your business software offers instant payments, a business card, or working capital without sending you to a bank.
Sounds like a bank, right? Except it isn’t.
This is the strange—and increasingly important—shift happening across the U.S. financial ecosystem. Instead of consumers and businesses going to a bank for every financial need, financial services are moving directly into the apps and platforms they already use.
And that shift is being powered by embedded finance.
Your Bank May Be Hiding in Plain Sight
For decades, banking had a familiar formula: choose a bank, open an account, get a card, apply for a loan, and manage everything through a banking channel.
Now, the channel itself is changing.
A restaurant-management platform can offer a merchant financing option. A marketplace can provide sellers with payment services. A payroll platform can give workers access to financial products. A retailer can offer financing at checkout.
McKinsey describes this model as financial products being delivered by nonfinancial companies inside broader customer experiences. Its research estimated the U.S. embedded-finance market at $20 billion in revenue in 2021, with the potential to grow significantly.
The surprising part? The customer may barely notice that banking is happening.
The experience simply feels like another feature.
The App Is Becoming the Financial Relationship
Think about how people use technology today.
You don’t necessarily want a separate financial product. You want to solve a problem.
A small-business owner doesn’t wake up thinking, “I need a banking product today.”
They think:
“I need to pay my employees.”
“I need cash flow before my customers pay me.”
“I need to accept payments.”
If the software they already use can solve those problems instantly, why leave the platform?
That’s the fundamental appeal of embedded finance: financial services appear exactly where the financial need occurs.
For businesses, this can create new revenue opportunities and deeper customer relationships. For consumers, it can mean fewer forms, fewer logins, and fewer disconnected financial experiences.
McKinsey has also highlighted how software platforms and marketplaces are increasingly becoming important distribution channels for financial products.
But Here’s Where It Gets Interesting…
If apps can provide banking-like experiences, who is the bank?
That’s where the story gets more complicated.
The company you interact with may not hold a banking charter or provide every financial service itself. Behind the scenes, banks, fintech infrastructure companies, payment providers, and technology platforms can work together to make the experience possible.
In other words, the future of banking may look less like one company doing everything—and more like an ecosystem quietly working behind one interface.
That creates an important shift in power.
The company owning the customer experience can become just as important as the institution providing the underlying financial infrastructure.
Convenience Comes with a Catch
There’s an obvious upside: convenience.
But financial services aren’t the same as adding a new notification feature to an app.
Payments, lending, deposits, and other embedded finance products involve regulatory requirements, risk management, data protection, fraud prevention, and consumer protections.
The CFPB, for example, has examined how consumers use payment apps and highlighted questions around the treatment and insurance coverage of funds stored through those platforms. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults had used at least one type of payment app in the data cited by the agency.
That means the bigger these platforms become, the more important trust and transparency become.
The question isn’t simply whether an app can offer financial services. It’s whether it can do so responsibly.
From Payments to an Entire Financial Ecosystem
Payments may have been the gateway, but the opportunity is expanding.
Accounts.
Cards.
Lending.
Working capital.
Insurance.
Payroll services.
Business banking.
BCG and Adyen estimated a combined North American and European total addressable market of approximately $185 billion across four embedded-finance categories: payments, capital solutions, accounts, and card issuing. Their research estimated current penetration at roughly $32 billion.
That gap suggests something bigger is happening.
Financial services aren’t simply becoming digital.
They’re becoming contextual.
Instead of asking customers to enter the financial world, financial products are increasingly entering the customer’s world.
So, Will Every App Become a Bank?
Probably not literally.
But many apps could start behaving like financial hubs.
Your commerce platform could manage payments.
Your business software could provide financing.
Your payroll platform could offer financial products.
Your marketplace could become the place where sellers manage money.
And from the customer’s perspective, the distinction between a “banking app” and an “everyday app” could become increasingly blurry.
That’s the real story behind embedded finance.
The next generation of financial services may not win customers by convincing them to open another app.
It may win by making the financial service they need disappear into the experience they’re already using.
And when that happens, the biggest question may no longer be, “Which bank do you use?”
It could be:
“Which apps do you trust with your money?”
Also read: How Mobile Banking Apps Are Reshaping the American Banking Industry
