Embedded Finance: What It Takes to Capture Revenue (and Why Most Banks Don’t)

Embedded finance for banks is no longer a question of strategy — the case for it is settled. The embedded finance market is on track to grow from USD 145 billion in 2025 to roughly USD 1.9 trillion by 2034, and most of that revenue is financial services delivered inside the software SMBs already use. Banks understand this. What separates the banks that capture the revenue from the ones that watch it leak is not conviction — it is execution.

This article answers the operational question: what does it take for a bank to deliver a successful embedded finance solution — and why do so many programs stall before they ever produce a dollar of new revenue?

What Makes “Embedded Finance for Banks” Different?

Most embedded finance coverage is written from the platform’s point of view: a software company adds payments or lending and earns margin on financial services it never offered before. For a bank, the framing is inverted. The bank already holds the licenses, the balance sheet, and the SMB relationship. It is not adding financial services to a product — it is moving services it already owns to where the customer now works.

That distinction changes the entire problem. A fintech embedding finance is building new capability. A bank embedding finance is defending revenue it is currently leaking to those same fintechs — and the willingness to switch is real and measured.

By the numbers: 71% of SMBs are open to a new financial provider and 84% are open to non-bank financial services. Embedded finance is what decides whether that openness becomes the bank’s revenue or a competitor’s.

Source: The State of Business Finances Report, Unit

3 Things That Determine if a Bank Captures Revenue

Embedded finance programs rarely fail on the idea. They fail on three under-resourced fundamentals. A bank that is honest about these before committing avoids the most common reason programs stall.

1. The data layer is the hard part — not the interface

The visible product is a dashboard or a pre-qualified offer. The work that makes it possible is aggregation, normalization, and insight generation across accounting platforms, payment providers, and hundreds of fintech apps. Maintaining those connections is a permanent engineering commitment, made harder by the ongoing lack of API standardization.

2. Security and compliance raise the bar, not the timeline

Embedding financial services into the SMB’s workflow widens the data surface. A credible embedded finance capability is ISO 27001 certified, penetration-tested, and compliant with GDPR, PSD2, and CCPA — not a point solution bolted onto the bank’s brand. For banks, this is non-negotiable, and it is where buy-cheap decisions resurface as risk later.

3. Adoption is earned with benefit, not consent screens

An embedded feature only generates revenue if SMBs use it. They will not connect their data for a screen that says, “connect your accounts.” They will for “see your cash position across every account in one place.” The benefit has to be visible before the consent, or the program produces sign-ups without engagement — and engagement is what drives every downstream product conversation.

Where Banks Go Wrong: 4 Common Patterns

Build, Buy, or Partner?

The pillar guide frames the strategic choice in full; here is the version a bank needs to weigh when the goal is capturing revenue quickly without taking on a multi-year engineering program.

What “Done Right” Looks Like for a Bank

A bank that captures embedded finance revenue tends to share the same characteristics, regardless of size:

• It keeps its own brand and relationship front and center — the SMB experiences the bank, not a third party.
• It runs on one unified data layer rather than a patchwork of single-use widgets, so each new product builds on the last.
• It leads with insight, not data — the SMB gets answers about their cash, cards, and revenue, which is what drives daily engagement.
• It treats security and breadth of connections as selection criteria, not afterthoughts.
• It measures the program in deposits retained, lending volume captured, and fee income — not in features shipped.

How 9Spokes Helps Banks Capture the Revenue

9Spokes is a white-labeled data insights platform built for financial institutions that serve SMBs. It is the partner route done right: It embeds inside the bank’s existing digital channels via single sign-on, keeps the bank’s brand front and center, and delivers aggregation, normalization, and insight generation from one stack — the data layer banks most often underestimate.

SMB customers connect accounts across 800+ financial and business service providers for a unified view of their finances under the bank’s brand, while relationship, credit, and marketing teams get the consented data shaped into cross-sell signals and early risk indicators. The platform is ISO 27001 certified, annually penetration-tested, and compliant with GDPR, PSD2, and CCPA — the bank-grade foundation embedded finance requires.

Unlock new revenue from your SMB customers: See how 9Spokes embeds financial services and insight inside your existing digital channels — under your brand, on your rails, and measurable in deposits, lending, fee income, and retention. Book a platform walkthrough

Keep reading:

• Embedded Finance for Banks
• Open Banking & Open Data for Banks
• SMB Financial Insights