Shake-ups in the new year will include hyper-personalization, tech companies venturing further into embedded finance, and the prospect of super apps in Western countries.

The UK-based neobank’s founder and CEO Anne Boden outlined plans to offer banking as a service globally in 2022, giving Starling a potential opening into embedded finance.

Consumers’ growing willingness to get their financial services from non-FI providers is spurring consumer brands to embed financial elements in their products and services. But this new form of finance will mean dramatic changes for incumbent and startup FIs.

While doubling down on its embedded finance solution puts Younited Credit in competition with the likes of Klarna and Afterpay, the booming ecommerce market in France could also present a lucrative growth opportunity.

In 2021, VCs allocated $4.25 billion in embedded finance investments, almost three times the amount of 2020 funding, according to PitchBook. Payments is the most mature area of embedded finance. Big Tech’s competitors should take note if embedded payments is any indication of what might be on the horizon for other financial service sub-verticals.

It’s not alone in the race. An influx of new BaaS entrants indicates the emergence of an industry to underpin embedded banking.

eBay rolls out lending to UK SMBs: The ecommerce giant is partnering with embedded finance platform YouLend to extend loans to its sellers—giving the former a chance to make itself stickier for platform sellers and the latter access to data and loan growth.

In 2021, venture capital firms allocated $4.25 billion in embedded finance investments, almost three times the amount of 2020 funding, according to PitchBook. Payments is the most mature area of embedded finance. Big Tech’s competitors should take note if embedded payments is any indication of what may be on the horizon for other financial services subverticals.

Big Tech’s “on ramp” to financial services will be embedded finance—the inclusion of financial products and services in the customer journeys of nonfinancial companies. In 2021, VCs allocated $4.25 billion in embedded finance investments, almost three times the amount of 2020 funding, according to PitchBook.

Responsible’s BuyBack plugin, on the other hand, is embedded within an ecommerce site as an API or at a store through scanning. As an embedded finance offering, the goal for both fintech and site is to make consumer transactions more seamless and to create a deeper brand affinity.

Embedded finance will be another significant source of payfac growth. Embedded finance is when nonfinancial companies offer financial products and services to their customers while retaining control over the customer experience. Companies like Square and Stripe set the stage for payfacs to embed other financial services, and other payfacs have done just that.

Its offerings include an embedded finance bank account solution (Stripe Treasury), lending (Stripe Capital), and a corporate credit card—many of the solutions a bank might provide a small business. One offering that sets Stripe apart is Stripe Treasury, which was introduced in December 2020 and involves a Stripe-made API.

This trend is becoming known as “embedded finance,” in which the financial element is a stepping stone in a broader customer journey. Omnichannel is an increasingly crucial element in driving engagement. Heads of digital, despite their title and responsibilities, are increasingly invested in the idea of omnichannel, or catering to consumers in their preferred channels, whether they’re digital or not.

eBay seeks to plug small business financing gap with an embedded lending product for its UK SMB sellers. eBay and other ecommerce firms will likely add more financial services, like accounting solutions, to better serve their user bases.

The emergence of digital banking in recent years has given rise to BaaS and embedded finance. BaaS enables banks and fintechs to offer their services to third parties, while embedded finance enables financial products to be weaved into nonfinancial platforms.

Tech companies with charters may also covet revenue from embedded finance, a space where financial institutions now provide software that backs nonbanks’ products.

Some of its competitors are moving toward embedded finance, another potential growth area for Plaid. In September, open banking competitor Tink teamed up with energy provider Enel X to fuel the development of personal finance management tools for the latter’s end users.

The data: Convenience is the driving factor in why US consumers turn to technology to complete financial activities, and the top open banking use cases among the cohort support this. 57% of US adults said they used technology to manage their finances because it saved time or required less work.

Consumers are averse to spending much time on their finances: US consumers spend, on average, just over an hour on finances per month, versus 85 hours watching television, per an Ascent study.

The nature of the planned PS5 integration is not yet public, but it’s likely that Discord will be deeply embedded into the experience. Given the rapid rise of social audio, it’s probably not a bad investment either. The bigger picture: Although Discord’s recent growth has been aided by the pandemic, it already had a large user base of 70 million in December 2019.

Expect to see health equity interventions embedded into clinical workflows, more initiatives tied to addressing social determinants of health (SDOH), and new health system tie-ups with community-based organizations. Tech-centric players are entering the SDOH space.

And I'm leading an effort right now to make sure we have a well-defined and well-articulated corporate strategy, and that our product strategy is embedded in that. Every CMO leans to a certain area, and I've always positioned myself as a strategic CMO, but also one who understands product very well—which is vitally important to an early-stage technology company.