“Banking Matters” is a series written for banks and the companies that want to work with them. The goal is to share knowledge and best practices about how to build a compliant, scalable digital financial services ecosystem.

From the moment we launched Unit, our platform has facilitated direct, ongoing relationships between banks and the tech companies they partner with.

Today, we’re a service provider to multiple banks, with additional partners to be announced in coming weeks. We believe that strong, ongoing relationships between banks and their fintech program partners are essential to the success of embedded finance.

Here’s how the relationships between Unit, our bank partners, and their fintech program partners are structured:

• Banks. Banks on Unit’s platform establish and maintain direct, ongoing relationships with their fintech program partners (e.g., Roofstock, HoneyBook). In a given partnership, the bank provides financial services to both the tech company and its end-customers. As such, the bank is responsible for all oversight.

• Tech companies. Tech companies use Unit’s API to digitally connect with their bank partner(s). For example, when an end-customer requests a new debit card, that request flows through Unit’s API to the tech company’s bank partner. Unit also helps tech companies understand and meet the needs of their bank partner(s).

• Unit. Our role in the ecosystem is to provide banks and tech companies with best-in-class technology to facilitate these partnerships. That means equipping banks with industry-leading oversight tools to ensure transparency, consistency, and control across all of their fintech program partnerships. 

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We believe these kinds of partnerships represent the future of financial services. Over the next twenty years, the winners in this market will be those banks and tech companies that partner to build tailored financial products and offer them in context.

That’s why we’re more committed than ever to our mission of expanding access to financial services. We’re supporting the next generation of innovators by creating tools like our White-Label App, which helps tech companies get to market faster—while simultaneously making it easier for banks to oversee these programs.

In coming weeks, we’ll be sharing knowledge and best practices about how to build a compliant, scalable digital financial services ecosystem in our new Banking Matters blog and podcast series.

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