From workflow tool to financial hub: The embedded banking opportunity

Your platform has become essential for managing workflows. But what happens when those workflows need money to move?

Your users are copying data between your tool and their banking app, manually reconciling transactions, and losing the seamless experience you've worked so hard to create.

But what if financial workflows felt as native to your platform as the features that made users choose you in the first place? What if payments were as seamless as everything else you've built? That's where embedded banking gets into action.

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What is embedded banking?

Embedded banking integrates financial services like accounts, payments, and cards directly into your platform, allowing users to complete their workflows without leaving your product or switching to external banking tools. It transforms platforms into complete financial hubs where money can move seamlessly as part of the natural user experience.

When you design around complete workflows instead of isolated features, the right embedded banking use case becomes obvious. Your competitors aren't waiting; they’ve already implemented these capabilities to meet user expectations for a fluid, modern experience.

Major market players have already proven these pathways work. Let’s explore how these players determined embedded banking was the right strategic move for their platform.

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Use Case 1: Embedded business accounts and invoicing

From workflow tool to financial hub

The most transformative embedded banking use case turns workflow platforms into complete financial hubs. Instead of managing processes that eventually require external banking services, your platform becomes the place where payment and money flows actually happen.

This transformation changes everything for your users. They can send, receive, and reconcile funds directly within your platform. No more switching between your software and external banking services. No more manual data entry or reconciliation delays.

The strategic advantage

Embedded business accounts transform your business model. You move beyond SaaS subscriptions to become a transaction hub, earning revenue from interchange, float, and payment fees alongside your subscription income.

When financial workflows happen natively within your product, users spend more time on your platform and have fewer reasons to look elsewhere. You own the entire customer relationship. Users no longer need external accounts for the workflows your platform manages, which dramatically increases switching costs and customer lifetime value.

This seamless experience increases daily active usage, deepens product dependency, and the financial relationship creates particularly strong switching costs. Once users store funds, process transactions, and manage cash flow within your platform, migrating to a competitor means disrupting their entire financial operation, not just switching software.

Becoming a financial hub prioritises user experience by making the end-to-end payment process seamless. Your users don't need to leave your platform, which boosts engagement and product stickiness.

E-invoicing: The regulatory shift that's opening doors

Europe is undergoing a massive regulatory transformation. E-invoicing requirements are sweeping across the continent, turning what was once optional into a legal necessity. Italy led the way years ago. France and Belgium join in 2026, followed by Denmark and Germany in 2027, Spain in 2027, Ireland in 2028, and the United Kingdom in 2030.

For SMBs, this means their invoicing workflows are already changing. They're being forced to digitalise, which creates a perfect window for platforms to step in with embedded banking. When you integrate financial services directly into your platform, something powerful happens: every invoice payment is automatically matched and reconciled, all within your system.

The real opportunity lies in what happens after the invoice goes out. That's where SMBs feel the pain: waiting for approvals, chasing payments, reconciling transactions manually, tracking down overdue bills, piecing together cash flow reports. This is the work that drains their time and energy.

The platforms that win will be those where:

• Invoices get paid right after approval → no extra steps
• Payments match invoices automatically → no manual checks
• Cash flow is always visible → no guesswork

The result is a platform that handles the entire invoice-to-payment cycle without users ever leaving the interface.

Real-world success: Pennylane

Pennylane, a digital accounting platform for European entrepreneurs and SMEs, added a payments online business account, powered by Swan for invoice management. Now their customers can receive, pay, and book invoices directly within their core accounting service and use their Compte Pro.

The result? A smoother user experience and a stronger recurring revenue model. As CEO Arthur Waller explains:

"Swan’s technology fits perfectly with our commitment to meet entrepreneurs’ need for simplicity and practicality in running and managing their businesses. The Pennylane Compte Pro drastically changes the way bills are managed, saving time and significantly lightening the mental load of entrepreneurs and their accountants."

Real-world success: Syndic Yourself

Property management involves complex financial flows with long delays and high fees from traditional banking services. Syndic Yourself integrated Swan's embedded banking for direct in-app payment handling, allowing co-owners to manage shared finances easily and compliantly without traditional banking services.

The implementation advantage was significant. As the former Head of Product, Julien Mourlon notes:

“We have a small development team. We can’t afford to reinvent the wheel and code every single thing at first. With Swan’s no-code banking app, we were able to launch fast and keep integrating by API at our own pace.”

This flexibility allowed them to start simple and add complexity as their needs evolved.

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Use Case 2: Company Card Programs

Extending product experience to real-world transactions

Company Card Programs represent embedded banking's most visible implementation: branded debit cards that extend your product experience to real-world purchases, reimbursements, or benefits.

Card Card Programs can generate new income through interchange fees, while providing businesses with powerful spending behaviour and employee activity analytics. The data insights alone often justify the implementation, even before considering the revenue upside.

Thinking outside classic applications

Common applications include employee expense cards, travel cards for business expenses, and centralised cost tracking.

The real value comes from workflow integration. When approvals, budgets, and analytics happen within your platform, you create a solution that's hard to replace.

Take a benefits Car Program, for example. Combining a benefits Card Program with embedded banking provides a win-win solution for HR teams and their employees.

For HR teams, embedded cards streamline administration tasks: every transaction is contextual to the specific benefit or expense category, reducing administrative overhead. Automated processing and reporting eliminate manual tracking, giving teams real-time visibility into adoption, spending, and savings. Compliance is also built in, with regional specifics that ensure transactions are automatically approved based on policy, with all payments logged and audit-ready to minimise risk.

For employees, cards deliver immediate value:

• Card transactions feel natural within the existing workflow
• Employees don't see them as separate banking features, just as part of how they use benefits or manage expenses.
• Tax-advantaged benefits increase disposable salary without raising employer costs.
• Cards activate in minutes, integrate into daily routines, and make benefits easy to use.
• Lastly, employees can personalise benefits with gamification that boost engagement and stickiness of your platform.

Their experience is seamless: tap for lunch or commute without paperwork.

Regulatory considerations

Benefits Card programs become even more valuable in markets with complex compliance requirements.

Spain exemplifies a regulatory landscape where built-in compliance is critical. The country's overlapping e-invoicing and benefits regulations create a complex environment where platforms must integrate compliance directly into their core workflows to help SMBs avoid penalties and operate efficiently.

Spain's regulatory landscape includes “retribución flexible” (flexible benefits with strict tax compliance), and specific tax-advantaged meal voucher rules (€11 daily limit, with employers covering 50–60%). Every euro spent above these limits triggers tax penalties, making compliance essential for both employers and platforms.

Embedded banking platforms handle payment infrastructure, automated controls, transaction categorisation, and audit-ready records, removing manual record-keeping burdens and compliance anxiety. The financial capabilities helps users navigate regulatory changes while capturing transaction revenue and deepening customer relationships.

Benefits cards in action: Betterfly

Betterfly tackled a common problem: employee benefits typically scattered across multiple platforms and services. To solve that, they created personalised cards giving employees easy access to flexible benefits while maintaining HR control over spending and allocation.

The results speak for themselves: over 80% of employees use their Betterfly cards regularly. Benefits are no longer a hassle to actually use and manage, and as Country Manager Antonio Sas notes:

“Before, benefits were scattered across different platforms. Now, with Betterfly, employees can access them in a simple, integrated way, while HR teams face less administrative burden and gain more time to focus on their benefits strategy.”

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Use Case 3: Expense and spend management

Completing the financial cycle

Many SaaS tools are great at tracking financial workflows, but can't actually process transactions. Embedded banking bridges this gap, covering the complete cycle from tracking spend to executing payments.

This transforms expense management from an administrative burden into a seamless process. Users can issue cards, approve purchases, and reconcile expenses in one place that creates a complete, integrated product experience.

Comprehensive platform benefits

Completing the workflow creates significant competitive advantages. Planning, monitoring, and executing payments all happen in one tool, which increases product stickiness and opens new recurring revenue streams from financial activity.

Users no longer need separate expense management tools, corporate cards, and approval workflows. Your platform becomes the single source of truth for all spending decisions and execution. Payments become part of the natural workflow rather than a bolt-on feature, so users don't think about "using a payment tool," they just complete their work.

Practical application: Expensya

Expensya started as an expense tracking platform but transformed into a complete spend management solution by adding cards and transfers with Swan. Now users both track expenses and actually pay with the platform, covering 100% of the expense lifecycle.

The business impact has been significant. As Head of Operations for Payments Agi Dhima explains:

"By providing cards and new ways to manage expenses, our customers get more value. This positions Expensya as an end-to-end expense platform and, while our customers get a much better experience, it’s also good for business. We’re getting great lead generation, and more revenue.”

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How does embedded banking fit into your platform?

Not all embedded banking implementations are created equal. The key is matching your platform's core workflow to the financial pain point you can solve most naturally.

Quick assessment questions:

• Where does money currently leave your platform? Look for payments to external accounts, manual expense processes, or separate invoicing tools.
• What financial tasks create the most friction for your users? Consider switching between tools, manual reconciliation, or delayed payments.
• Which financial workflow would make your product indispensable if it were seamless? This becomes your primary use case.

Evaluation framework:

When you're building embedded banking features, success depends on focusing on adoption rather than just adding capabilities.

Here's how to approach it:

• Start with pain points: Identify customer friction before selecting features
• Map minimum features: Choose the smallest set of embedded banking capabilities that remove friction
• Prioritise reliability: User trust comes from consistent, dependable financial operations
• Balance ROI discussions: Keep revenue potential in view without sacrificing user experience
• Phase your rollout: Align feature depth with validated user needs over time

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Your next step: From recognition to implementation

The use cases presented above demonstrate how embedded banking eliminates friction at critical financial touchpoints. Whether you're enabling seamless invoicing, issuing company cards, managing expenses, or processing payments, the principle remains the same: embed banking where money moves, and user engagement deepens.

Ready to identify your opportunity? Review the assessment questions in the framework above. Your answers will reveal which use case best fits your platform's workflow and user needs.

The window is closing: Your competitors are already implementing these capabilities. The question isn't whether embedded banking applies to your platform; it's if you’re committed to making your product indispensable.

Want to learn more about how embedded banking can transform your platform?

👉 Read our comprehensive ebook to explore more here.