In 2024, we saw embedded finance take meaningful steps toward maturity. While the fintech industry faced increased scrutiny and regulatory oversight, these shifts underscore the importance of building safe, secure, and scalable solutions.  

Embedded finance is now enabling millions of people and businesses to access better financial tools. Within the Unit ecosystem alone, over 800,000 individuals, 300,000 independent contractors, and 200,000 small businesses depend on embedded financial products to manage their money every day. 

Together, they hold over $1.3 billion in deposits—up 65% from one year ago. As a result, they’re getting paid faster, accessing the capital they need to grow, and taking control of their finances.

It’s helped people like Roger Felder, a domestic freight carrier in Texas who struggled to keep his trucking business afloat until he discovered TruckSmarter. By integrating embedded finance tools, TruckSmarter enabled Roger to book more loads, grow his business by 4x, acquire new trucks, and hire additional drivers. 

Stories like Roger’s remind us of our mission to help companies bring those products to life, unlock value, and expand financial access. In this blog post, we’ll outline the increased regulatory oversight we witnessed in 2024, the steps we took to adapt, what we’ve accomplished during this time, and what we think 2025 will look like. 

Strengthening the foundations for embedded finance

2024 required the industry to mature quickly and build a stronger foundation for launching financial services. We focused on making changes that would enhance trust, security, and resilience. 

In 2024, we spent the year deepening our commitment to banks. We announced two new bank partnerships and shipped dozens of products and features designed to enhance bank oversight. A few of the steps we took included:

• Strengthening oversight: We launched tools like Audit Logs to ensure every bank partner has real-time visibility and detailed tracking that documents operational changes to customers and their accounts. Our Audit Log feature provides a record of sensitive changes (e.g., freezing and unfreezing an account) complete with timestamps, the change made, and the user associated with the activity. In 2025, we’ll continue to streamline and automate oversight and decisioning processes. (Learn more in our new roadmap for banks.)

• Streamlining risk management: We rolled out tools, like an automated workflow for Safer Wire Transfers, to make fraud and risk reviews for outgoing wires simpler and more actionable. If an end-customer initiates a wire that meets specific risk parameters (as determined by the bank), the workflow assigns callback, review, and approval tasks for the bank and tech company directly via the Oversight Dashboard. The workflow includes a clear audit log of completed tasks and decisions, visible in real-time to both banks and tech companies.

• Ensuring resilience: Our Business Continuity Tool was designed to ensure end-customers maintain continuous access to embedded financial products in the unlikely event of a third-party failure. Banks can leverage our suite of white-labeled digital banking experiences to give end-customers uninterrupted access to their banking services and funds using the same account and card numbers. (Learn more in our product announcement.)

Making it easier for tech companies to launch embedded finance

One of the consistent themes we’ve heard from our customers over the last five years is the need for simplicity to launch and succeed. 

Unsurprisingly, tech companies face many competing priorities for their roadmaps. Implementing embedded finance needs to be fast and easy—in weeks rather than months, with minimal engineering lift. 

In 2024, the focus of our work was ensuring simplicity. We shipped new code more than 3300 times and focused on products that make it easier to launch embedded financial products, including:

• Wallets. Wallets are a new type of account on the Unit platform. They’re a simple way for your customers to move and store money without the need for a traditional deposit account (i.e., checking or savings). Depending on the use case, they can be faster and easier to set up, with streamlined onboarding flows. (Check out the announcement for more details.)

• New White-Label Components. Our suite of White-Label Components provide pre-built frontends that can be fully customized with your brand. We released several new products designed to minimize engineering lift and accelerate time to market. They include: White-Label Fraud Outreach (which helps your customers confirm or report suspicious card transactions), White-Label Application Form (a frontend application experience), White-Label Repayment Components (which enables automatic repayment for end-customers), and the ‘Create Card' Component (a way for your customers to order their own debit cards inside your app).

• Owned Workflows. For companies that prefer to invest more heavily in program management, it’s now possible to build and manage specific workflows, subject to bank approval. For example, you could work with your bank partner to independently manage application decisions and/or payment authorizations while maintaining bank oversight and control. 

Looking ahead to 2025

As we start the new year, we anticipate a continued rise in demand for embedded financial products, particularly among vertical SaaS platforms and SMB-focused software providers. To meet this demand, we’ll prioritize two themes:

• Plug-and-Play Solutions. For many tech companies, the barriers to launching embedded banking remain too high. In 2025, we’re building a suite of true plug-and-play products that will minimize both the time and resource investment to launch embedded financial products. 

• Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable Solutions. Expanding our suite of products so that tech companies can offer more services for their small-business customers—including paying their vendors (accounts payable) and being paid by their customers (accounts receivable). With banking, these tech companies are well positioned to be the core operating system for their customers.

We’d like to thank our customers, banks, and—most importantly—our team for a powerful year of innovation and growth. We’re excited for 2025 and what we’ll build together.

If you’re thinking through your next steps for embedded finance and would like to chat, drop us a line or start building in Sandbox.