Walmart may be in the spotlight for its “Hazel by Walmart” financial services trademark application, but the big-box retailer is not alone, as non-financial companies with a strong e-commerce operation are adding banking services for their large customer bases.
Advancements in payment technology and pandemic-era trends toward automated commerce provide these firms with the ability to register and store credentials for hundreds of millions of users internationally.
The firms can also use open banking API connections to build a stack of services that not only resemble a traditional bank, but can actually provide a broader menu of offerings.
“Companies with no previous financial products are taking customer-centricity to a new level, introducing services like financing and integrated payments that deepen their relationships with customers at the expense of banks,” writes Sandeep Sood, CEO of Kunai, in a recent PayThink column.
The embedded finance market will generate more than $1 trillion in yearly market value in the U.S. and $230 billion in transaction revenue by 2025, according to Lightyear Capital, levels that are both exponentially higher than current levels. In embedded payments alone, yearly transaction revenue will jump to $140 billion in 2025 from $16 billion in 2020, according to Lightyear.
What’s particularly threatening to legacy banking is most of the firms that are taking advantage of embedded payments have core brands that have little to do with financial services, but are still recognizable and regularly used, creating regular habit-forming usage that’s transferable to banking.
Gig economy brands have proven adept at accumulating large user bases of stored payment credentials to serve as the foundation of a full service stack.
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