Embedded Finance is Boosting Business Outcomes for Major Brands—Forcing a Shift From Technical to Customer Excellence

Major UK brands with an annual average revenue of over £100M are seeing a positive business impact from deploying embedded finance, according to a new study from NatWest Boxed. Businesses across travel, retail, financial services and utilities have all seen an increase in customer conversion, increased basket size, and repeat purchases. However, brands have rightfully increased their expectations on embedded finance providers in a market with growing demand and diverse supplier archetypes.

NatWest Boxed’s new report, Embedded Finance: Success and shifting goal posts, anonymously asked C-level executives at major UK consumer brands that have implemented embedded finance about their current offering, its impact on their brand, and what they expect from their provider.

It finds that 80% of brands have reported improved business outcomes following their rollout of embedded finance. The most common outcome is increased customer conversion rates, followed by improved loyalty, positive customer feedback, and repeat purchases.

Brands were found to offer a diverse range of embedded finance products. While point-of-sale credit was the most popular product, offered by 62% of those surveyed, surprisingly, savings accounts, insurance, and merchant wallets were almost as popular, despite not being products commonly associated with embedded finance.

When asked to rank their needs from a provider, brands rank customer excellence as the priority over operational and technical excellence. However, only 53% of brands say that ‘customer excellence’ applies to their current provider.

The success and growing scale of embedded finance for brands has left some providers lagging behind customer expectations. While 90% of brands that launched an embedded finance product saw a rise in customer support enquiries, only 38% of brands say that their provider offered customer support that was as good as their own.

In addition, only 46% of brands believe that their current provider will be able to handle increased customer intake without delays or downtime. Brands need a trusted partner who can support their growth ambitions and can scale with them.

When it comes to risk and compliance, the feedback is largely positive. 99% of brands said that they were satisfied with their provider’s current approach to risk, and almost all brands had confidence that their provider met new Consumer Duty regulations (84%). However, 75% said that they had concerns about future compliance and regulatory requirement support. With new regulation for Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) expected to come into effect in 2026, this may require brands to seek reassurance regarding future compliance.

“Embedded finance has seen great success and still holds huge promise for growth. Consumer brands are seeing tangible benefits from its implementation—but with success comes bigger expectations, and our research indicates that providers need to step up to meet them,” said Andrew Ellis, CEO at NatWest Boxed. “Brands are looking to work with trusted embedded finance providers that can address customer, operational and regulatory challenges as they seek to scale and optimise their offerings”

Providers can better understand these challenges with a grasp of what brands look for in an embedded finance provider. 31% had rejected a potential provider thanks to a lack of brand recognition; the same number had rejected providers for a perceived lack of regulatory support.

The most important demands of a provider are easy integration (31%) and easy customer support (28%). An important change could be more self-promotion, particularly to consumers, with more than half of brands keen to promote their embedded finance provider to their customers as a recognised, trusted name.

Embedded finance: Success and shifting goalposts can be downloaded here.