Creating a Finance Digital Transformation with Embedded Payments

Often perceived as a back-office function, finance has become a strategic enabler of growth. The roles traditionally undertaken by finance departments, teams and leaders are moving away from manual, repetitive tasks that inhibit growth and minimise efficiencies towards leveraging technologies and tools that allow them to optimise their capabilities.

Finance has always been the backbone of the business. It has been limited by stodgy spreadsheets and slow-moving data points that offer little to no value and inhibit visibility into the business. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem anymore. Not when technology allows finance teams to take proactive steps toward business growth through agile data analysis, intelligent payment solutions, and insights-based decision-making.

From procurement to financial planning, finance can lead the business towards new opportunities, improved market share, better financial stability, and align expenditure and planning with long-term business strategy. All it needs is the right tools and technology.

Finance on rails

One of the core functions of finance is to facilitate seamless payments between customers and the business. The CFO determines what underlying infrastructure should be used to ensure payments are managed effectively, and which third-party platforms and solutions should be leveraged to ensure that every payment goes through perfectly.

These rails - the tracks that take payments from A to B, that connect the merchant to the customer, the service provider to the platform - are essential to the smooth management of business payments. However, they have often expected companies to rely on third-party service providers or complex payment processes that are slow, take customers outside of their ecosystems, and have limited functionality. The rails have forced the business train to stop at every other station along the way.

Until now. Embedded finance has changed the dynamic. It provides the business with access to real-time payment rails that are fast, easy to use, and that sit within the business ecosystem. Instead of customers jumping from one website to another to facilitate payments, they stay within your business environment, using your embedded payment rails to manage their accounts, payments, customers, and data.

Embedded finance has reimagined finance roles, capabilities and business growth.

• Embedded payments achieved 28% revenue share in 2022. As Grand View Research points out, ‘Embedded payments offer businesses a faster and more efficient way to receive payments than traditional invoicing methods’.
• The US ($26.5 billion) and the UK ($3.9 billion) had the highest embedded finance revenue in 2022.
• 94% of global financial technology leaders believe the key to success is ‘the relevance of a financial product in addressing customers’ real-time needs’.
• 70% of respondents to an EY survey believe that nonfinancial services platforms will offer more than half of financial services in the future.
• 94% of companies using embedded finance say that it has increased their revenue and 90% state it has increased customer loyalty.

Embedded finance and real-time payments are changing the shape of finance, but beyond providing finance teams with access to radically faster and more efficient tools, what else do these solutions bring to the table?

Finance data at speed

Data. That’s the answer. Embedded payments provide finance teams with litres of data that they can use to enhance their roles, improve decision-making and provide strategic insights and advisory. The challenge is to find a way for teams to manage this influx of data so they can really see and feel this value, especially when many are working with outdated approaches and models.

The risk for many finance teams is that they are now looking at a ton of data. They have more data than they have systems and people. This is made significantly worse by the speed at which this data and payments are moving today. They need to fully realise the potential of embedded payments and the data they have in the business to drive revenue and build their own strategic value.

If you look at the traditional payment model, banks have been slow to approve loans, payments and processes for an excellent reason. They’ve had teams working on analysing customer data and insights to determine if a customer is a safe investment, if they can afford a loan, and if they have funds for the payment. The momentum behind this decision-making has accelerated at a pace that is almost impossible to fathom - customer approvals are in micro seconds, not weeks or hours. And data is the reason why.

It’s easy to see why companies risk being left behind if they don’t manage their data more effectively. They need to tap into their data so they can unlock insights and visibility into their ecosystems, businesses and customers for this is where finance becomes the great strategic enabler.

As PwC points out, ‘delivering embedded finance solutions starts with well-integrated technology’ that protects the data, provides seamless authentication, and uses data to ‘retain customer loyalty in specific ecosystems’.

Looking forward with effective finance systems transformation

To thrive, finance teams need to embrace this fully digital future and grow their understanding of how they can use data and embedded payments to create comprehensive ecosystems that align with business needs. It is time to step away from ageing systems that limit your ability to truly flex your financial muscles - no more spreadsheets and data in silos and limited visibility. Instead, teams need to fully realise the potential of embedded payments and drive revenue by leveraging technologies that make their roles an increasingly agile and relevant reality.

To achieve this, a finance digital transformation strategy needs to:

• Embrace strong leadership that prioritises the right technology investments within the business ecosystem, and that drives ongoing skills development across tech and data capabilities.
• Choose the right partner to ensure that their embedded finance solution fits their business model, aligns with their expectations, and keeps customers within their ecosystem. In fact, this is where finance is absolutely critical. The expertise inherent within the finance role is essential to ensuring that the business chooses the right service provider.
• Embrace their role as strategic enablers, providing the business with advisory and insights to fully realise the potential of emergent technologies and gain a competitive advantage in a challenging market.

The UNIPaaS Solution

UNIPaaS is the perfect partner for finance teams looking to expand into embedded finance because we understand the pain points and challenges you must navigate for your business. We know how to help you build a comprehensive ecosystem within your own business walls - no redirects, no third-party websites, no complex processes. Instead of dealing with unnecessary payment issues, limited data visibility, or poor integrations, we help you build payments that transform your user experiences and give you exceptional insights into your customers and their behaviours.

Our tools ensure that the immense value in your transactional data is available to you so you can make the right decisions. You can see how your clients are using your services so you can personalise, customised and tailor their experiences. By removing a third-party payment control, we allow you complete access to exceptional data that enables you to design your flows as you see fit.

UNIPaaS provides you with a fully embedded and white-labelled payment solution that removes the technical barriers, allows you to flex your financial muscles while reducing your admin burden, and gives you the space within which to realise your strategic potential.