How to become your customers’ primary financial account

How to launch a top-of-wallet product

When it comes to financial products, your customers have many options. They could apply for a loan at Bluevine, get a credit card from American Express, or open a bank account at Wells Fargo.

So why should they choose yours?

It's a question many leading tech companies have started asking, and it's worth exploring. After all, if you're going to invest the resources to launch embedded financial products, then it’s important to ensure that your customers actually use them.

For most platforms, the goal is to become “top of wallet.” They want to be their customers' financial mission control—the primary account through which all of their money flows. If they can achieve that goal, their customers will engage more and stick around longer, and their lifetime value (LTV) will increase significantly. 

Roofstock is a great example. Over the last three years, they’ve become their customers’ primary bank account—and reaped the rewards of their success. Customers who use Roofstock’s embedded bank accounts have an LTV that’s 4x higher, and they’re three times more likely to upgrade to a premium SaaS tier.

For your embedded financial product to stand out, you’ll need to offer your customers something they’re not getting elsewhere.

At Unit, we’ve helped hundreds of leading tech companies partner with banks to launch and scale their embedded finance programs. Over the years, we've learned what makes a program successful. In this guide, we’ll show you how to become your customers’ primary financial account, covering topics like:

• How to design products that are uniquely valuable for your customers
• How to position and message your products in a way that will resonate
• How to streamline the onboarding process
• How to plan and execute a successful launch
• How to measure success and iterate your product after launch

1. Design products that are uniquely valuable to your customers

Your customers have a lot of options when it comes to managing their money. For your product to stand out, you’ll need to offer them something they’re not getting elsewhere.

In our experience, these unique value propositions tend to fall into one or more of the following buckets. By offering your customers embedded financial products, you can help them access:

1. Faster payouts. Your customers receive payments from many different sources—and each payment method has its own timeline. For example, card payments can take five days to settle in bank accounts, while invoices can take anywhere from 30-90 days. With embedded finance, you can help them get paid within hours of completing a transaction, or even instantly.

2. Better financing. What’s the number-one thing that small businesses want from their financial-service providers? Fast, affordable financing. By and large, they’re not getting it from legacy lenders. Fortunately, you know your customers and your industry; you know much they need and how much they can afford to repay. When you offer embedded lending options, you can reach them in their exact moment of need. 

3. An all-in-one platform. Many small businesses and individuals use 6-8 different apps to manage their money. It’s a haphazard experience, and they’re ready for something better. When you offer embedded financial products, you become their financial operating system—the single platform they use to manage every aspect of their finances.

Square is a case in point. In July 2021, they launched Square Banking in partnership with Sutton Bank. Today, their merchants can apply for bank accounts, credit cards, and loans from inside the Square app—and get approved, typically within moments. For Square merchants, the value is considerable. They can get paid immediately, access customized loans, and run their business, all in one place.

The product has been growing fast, and Square now generates significant revenue as a result. In fact, 23% of Square's gross profit now comes from banking. On top of that, their merchants are retained 8-15x when they use 4 or more of Square’s products (including embedded financial products).

Questions to ask while designing your embedded financial products

How do you design embedded financial products that are uniquely valuable for your customers?

Your first step is to understand how your customers manage their money today—what’s working, what’s not working, where they’re getting stuck. To kickstart your thinking, here’s a list of questions. You may also want to conduct user testing, organize customer focus groups, and/or meet with your Support Team.

• How do our customers manage their finances today?
• What software tools are they using?
• What are they paying for those tools?
• Which of those tools could we replace?
• For apps we can’t replace, can we offer integrations?
• Financially, what are our customers’ biggest pain points?
• Can we help them get paid faster?
• Can we help them get better financing options?
• What financial features would they find uniquely valuable?

‍

‍2. Identify success metrics and set targets

For most tech companies that pursue an embedded-finance strategy, success is ultimately measured in revenue. 

But revenue requires that your customers adopt and engage with your embedded financial products. So you’ll want to track a few other metrics that “build” to revenue, focusing on moments in your conversion funnel where customers are getting stuck or falling out.

Below are several key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help you transform your embedded financial products into reliable revenue generators. We recommend focusing on one or two “north star” metrics at any given time, setting quarterly targets, and building dashboards to track your progress.

• Website traffic. Do your customers know about your embedded financial products? One easy way to find out is to check the traffic for your landing page. Digging deeper: how long do they spend on the page? How far do they scroll, where do they hover, and what do they click? Heatmaps and behavioral analytics tools like Hotjar can help you investigate these questions.

• Application metrics. If your customers are visiting your landing page, but they’re not applying for your embedded financial products, then you may need to rethink your value proposition. If they’re starting applications but not finishing them, then you may need to work on streamlining your onboarding flow (more about this later).

• Average time to first transaction. How quickly do your customers fund their accounts and/or start spending with their branded cards? The sooner they make their first transaction, the more likely that yours will become their primary financial account—and the more likely they are to engage with it over the life of the account. How could you incentivize them to take that first step?

‍We recommend focusing on one or two “north star” metrics at any given time, setting quarterly targets, and building dashboards to track your progress.‍

• Average monthly card spend. Many tech companies track this metric because it correlates directly with interchange revenue. Put simply: the more your customers spend with their branded debit and credit cards, the more interchange you earn. 

• Average account balance. Deposit fees are another significant revenue stream in embedded finance that you may be able to earn from your bank partner. 

• Retention. How long do you retain customers who use your banking products? And how does that compare with your non-banking customers? To understand how that number is evolving, it can be helpful to divide your customers into cohorts, e.g., those who applied for bank accounts in February 2025 compared with those in March 2025.

• Revenue. For many tech companies, the ultimate success metric for their embedded financial products is average revenue per use (ARPU). On a monthly or yearly basis, how much revenue do your banking customers generate? How does that compare with non-banking customers? 

3. Position and message your products

For most people, embedded finance is an unfamiliar concept. They’ll need help understanding what your products are and why they’re valuable.

To effectively communicate the value of your products, you need strong positioning and messaging. Here’s what that means:

• Positioning. How you position your embedded financial products relative to other solutions in the market will determine whether your customers adopt them; it will also serve as a foundation for all of your go-to-market efforts. First, create your ideal customer profile (ICP)—a detailed description of the person or company you’re selling to. Then, make a list of the other solutions they might pick instead of yours. Finally, identify your competitive advantage: why would customers choose your financial products over your competitors’? To get you started, here’s a template we like from Crossing the Chasm.

• Messaging. If positioning represents the raw ingredients you’ll need to bring your financial features to market, then messaging is the finished dish: the exact words, phrases, and sentences you’ll use when speaking to your customers. Start by using the template above to craft one-phrase, one-sentence, and one-paragraph articulations of your value proposition. From there, get a bit more granular about your product’s features and benefits. This will inform your landing page and your other marketing materials. You’ll also use it when training your team on how to talk about and sell the solution. We recommend developing a messaging document you can easily share with your team. 

Lyft is a great example. In 2019, they launched a debit card called Lyft Direct to help their drivers immediately access their earnings. In addition to instant payouts, their marketing materials emphasize outcomes that drivers care about—things like savings, cash back, and fee-free cash advances. Since then, tens of thousands of Lyft drivers have started using the card, and Lyft recently expanded their partnership with Payfare.

4. Design a streamlined onboarding flow

In financial services, onboarding is everything. 

Case in point: engagement data from Plaid has shown that if your customer can apply for an account, get approved, and start transacting in under 24 hours, then you are much likelier to become their primary financial account. As a consequence, they’ll spend and save significantly more—resulting in a higher average revenue per user (ARPU).

‍When customers fund their new bank accounts within 24 hours of opening them, they spend 5x more—and are 3x more likely to remain active.‍

‍Chime is a platform that partners with the Bancorp and Stride Bank to offer online financial services for individuals. They’ve observed that customers who fund their new bank accounts within 24 hours of opening them spend five times more, on average, than customers who wait longer to transact. A year later, these “fast funders” are also three times more likely to remain active.

To design a seamless onboarding experience, think through the following:

• Application form(s). The best applications have the highest completion rates. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that you’re capturing all the required information and that you’re compliant with relevant laws. Within those guardrails, you should make it as easy as possible for customers to complete their applications. Pay special attention to where customers are getting stuck or falling out of the application flow. Take inspiration from user-interface (UI) leaders like Shopify and PayPal. Develop an A/B testing plan and optimize relentlessly, on an ongoing basis. 

• First transaction. Once your customer has been approved and their account has been created, the next step is helping them make their first transaction. For customers with cards, that could involve issuing virtual cards, so they can start making purchases right away. As for banking customers: make it easy for them to fund their new accounts. Consider implementing solutions like Plaid and Astra, which enable your customers to fund in minutes. 

• Re-engagement. Despite your best efforts, some customers will not complete their applications, fund their accounts, and/or start making purchases. With re-engagement strategies, you can likely bring some of them back “into the fold.” Typically, this is accomplished through three channels: push notifications, email, and SMS. For example, you could gently remind them that their application is nearly finished, and that they could be earning 3% APY on their cash. 

5. Alpha and beta testing

In our experience, nearly every company that succeeds with embedded finance starts by alpha testing and beta testing their products. 

The reason? People have very little patience for a buggy financial product. When it comes to their money, you need to get it right on the first attempt. A thoughtful testing plan enables you to make sure your products work and optimize your user interface (UI) before you deploy them to your entire customer base. 

• Alpha testing. This is a small, internal test performed by your team in a staging environment (not in production). The goal is to ensure that your products work as designed. That means catching any feature gaps, bugs, and UI issues before your customers do.

• Beta testing. The goal of beta testing is to ensure that your customers are using your product as intended—and that they’re having a great experience. Notably, it’s when you test your assumptions about whether and how your product actually offers value. Start with a small group of power users who would be excited to try a new product and share feedback. In addition to collecting usage data and behavioral analytics, we recommend conducting qualitative interviews, which will help you understand why customers are behaving the way they do. 

The data you uncover may surprise you. For example, one of our enterprise customers, a vertical SaaS platform, planned to launch high-yield savings accounts. They thought the main thing their customers needed was a place to park their savings. 

But their beta test suggested something different. Their customers weren’t carrying large balances in their accounts; rather, they were using the accounts to pay vendors. Subsequent customer interviews revealed that a higher APY wasn’t a priority for these small-business owners; instead, they wanted to get paid faster and get insights into their cash flow.

So the enterprise vertical SaaS platform decided to pivot their product strategy. Now, they offer their customers operational checking accounts, assuming that most of them will hold just a few thousand dollars in their account at any given time. 

6. Launch your product

A strategic and well-executed launch is critical to the success of your embedded financial products.

If you nail it, you’ll generate some organic buzz with your target audience. They’ll understand what you’re launching and why it’s valuable. There may even be a rush to sign up. The recent launch of Robinhood Gold is a great example; you probably heard about it, yourself.

On the other hand, a poorly planned product launch could cause your embedded financial products to languish. Your customers won’t know what they are or why they might want them. You’ll be forced to play catch-up, spending extra money on advertising and incentives.

Remember to leave plenty of time to plan and execute your launch; 2–3 months is a safe estimate. To increase the likelihood of success, we recommend:

• Go-to-market (GTM) plan. Successfully launching embedded financial products requires input from many stakeholders on different teams. To keep it all organized, we recommend creating a unified GTM plan. It should include things like the goals of the project, success metrics and targets, team members and their roles, action steps and their owners, and target timelines. It should also contain links to all launch materials. Google Docs will work for this; or you could use project-management software like Monday.com or Notion. Personally, we’re fans of this free template from Asana.

• Documentation. If your product requires technical implementation, you’ll need to publish technical docs and guides. Your customer-facing teams (e.g., Sales, Success, Support) may also need to be trained on how to use the new products and talk about them. Finally, you should consider publishing a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs); it will make life easier for your Support Team.

‍Once you’ve launched, continue to understand how customers are using your embedded financial product and how it can be improved. ‍

• Marketing materials. Launches can include the following marketing assets: a landing page, a blog post, product shots, videos and/or GIFs, email content, social media, paid ads, press and earned media, sales enablement (e.g., pitch decks), and even events (e.g., webinars). Which you choose to create will depend on how you typically reach your customers and how they like to get their information.

• Customer support. If you don’t already have a customer support team, make sure that you have staff, a support platform, and an escalation process for handling issues. Your support team may need specialized training to address customer questions about financial services, technical integrations, and compliance.

• Approvals. At a minimum, your embedded financial products, marketing materials, technical documentation, and customer-support workflows will need to be reviewed and approved by your bank partner. In all likelihood, you’ll also want to get sign-offs from members of your own team. That list could include: Compliance, Legal, Sales, Success, Support, and even your Board of Directors.

7. Ensure success after launch

As with most products, success in embedded finance requires a committed approach and a sustained effort. 

Once you’ve launched with a minimum valuable product (MVP), you’ll want to understand how customers are using it and how it can be improved. This will involve revisiting many of the themes we’ve articulated earlier in this guide—as well as a few new ones:

• Collect customer feedback. User testing, NPS surveys, focus groups, and even closed-lost interviews can be efficient ways to continue gathering insights into customer behavior.

• Evolve your product. The tech companies that win with embedded finance are committed to testing, evaluating, and iterating. Focus on improving convenience, helping your customers get paid faster, and providing better financing terms.

• Refine your metrics and set better targets. If your existing key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets aren’t generating revenue as you had expected, experiment with new ones. Perhaps, for example, a focus on increasing average monthly card spend would drive more revenue than a push for additional deposits. 

• Launch an A/B testing program. Refine your in-app experience and marketing materials by testing different versions of your website, landing pages, and product UI screens.

• Provide educational resources. Content marketing is a great way to help your customers understand what you’re offering and why it’s valuable. This is especially true for embedded financial products, which are still relatively new and not yet widely understood. Consider creating content (e.g., blog posts, webinars) that answers your customers’ questions; it can be an effective way to drive additional adoption and engagement.

‍

‍‍How Unit can help

Launching embedded financial products can feel like a big undertaking. The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone. 

Our company, Unit, is the market leader in embedded finance. That means we help platforms like yours partner with banks to launch and manage their embedded financial products.

Here are a few of the things we offer to help ensure your success:

• Technology. We’re the only platform that provides all of the technology you need to launch modern embedded banking products. Our White-Label App enables you to go live with a single line of code.

• Bank partner(s). Unit offers a network of experienced bank partners. We’ll introduce you to our network to help you identify the right partnership for your program. 

• Underwriting and capital. If you’d like to make lending options available to your customers, you’ll need to determine whether and how much money to offer—a process known as underwriting. You’ll also need operational capital to support your lending program. Fortunately, we can help you take care of both. 

• Premium support. During onboarding and throughout your customer journey, we’ll provide access to our support team and our team of experienced solutions engineers. We typically respond to your questions within an hour.

If you’re thinking about how to become “top of wallet” for your customers, please reach out. We’d love to brainstorm with you. You can also check out our sandbox and build in minutes.