The FDIC issued a consent order against Cross River Bank, a major fintech sponsor bank, citing inadequate oversight of fintech partners, fair lending compliance failures, and unsafe banking practices. The action heightened regulatory scrutiny on the bank-fintech partnership model. Cross River is one of a small number of banks serving as BaaS sponsors for fintechs.
PortX, a ModusBox spinoff, raised $17.5 million in a Series A round to build out its Banking-as-a-Service-like platform connecting community banks with fintechs. Fuse and BankTech Ventures invested $10 million of the round. The platform focuses on seamless API integrations for smaller financial institutions.
Tarabut Gateway, a MENA-focused open banking platform, closed a $32 million Series A led by Pinnacle Capital with participation from Aljazira Capital, Visa, and Tiger Global. The platform connects banks and fintechs via APIs, functioning as BaaS-adjacent infrastructure. Proceeds will fund expansion in Saudi Arabia.
Entities: Tarabut Gateway · Pinnacle Capital · Aljazira Capital · Visa · Tiger Global
Treasury Prime partnered with Sydecar and Grasshopper Bank to provide embedded banking-as-a-service with white-label options. The platform processed $131.9 million in transactions by late 2023. The collaboration demonstrates the growing scale of BaaS middleware connecting fintechs with bank partners.
Entities: Treasury Prime · Sydecar · Grasshopper Bank
Mastercard and Fabrick signed a strategic partnership to accelerate embedded finance adoption across Europe. The collaboration enables companies to integrate payments, banking, and insurance into their products via APIs. Fabrick's platform already connected over 400 counterparties generating more than 330 million API calls monthly.
Citi Retail Services launched Citi Pay, a new embedded payment product family starting with Citi Pay Credit, a digital-only credit card for participating retailers. The company also announced plans for Citi Pay Installment Loan. The launch reflects Citi's strategy to embed payment capabilities directly within retail experiences.
Maast launched embedded finance solutions enabling software companies to integrate banking, payments, and financial services directly into their platforms. The launch makes embedded finance more accessible for software providers and their end customers. This positions Maast as a BaaS enabler targeting the vertical SaaS market.
Staking service provider P2P.org secured $23 million in funding supported by Jump Crypto, Bybit, and Sygnum. The capital will fund blockchain infrastructure development and a new platform offering institutional-grade staking via APIs, RPC nodes, and white-label services for intermediaries.
Airwallex launched its global payments platform in Canada, offering cross-border payments, treasury, spend management, and embedded finance capabilities. The expansion provides Canadian businesses with an alternative to traditional banking for international financial operations. This marks a significant geographic expansion for Airwallex's embedded finance offering.
Texas-based TransPecos Banks partnered with fintech infrastructure provider Episode Six (E6) to launch a credit card program using E6's Tritium platform. The bank deployed E6Issuing and E6Wallet products for card issuing, processing, and virtual account ledger services. The partnership enables TransPecos to sponsor customer card programs with flexible support for multi-currency transactions and specialized products.
Open Payments, a Swedish fintech, raised €3 million to expand its B2B payment solutions. The company provides open banking-powered payment infrastructure, enabling businesses to embed payment capabilities. The round will support product development and market expansion.
Brassica Technologies closed an $8 million seed round backed by Mercury Fund, Valor Equity Partners, and others. Its subsidiary, Brassica Trust Company, holds a Wyoming Trust Charter and provides API-enabled custodial and transfer agent services for alternative assets, marketed as investment infrastructure as a service.
Entities: Brassica Technologies · Mercury Fund · Valor Equity Partners
Clear Street raised an additional $270 million in its Series B round, led by Prysm Capital, bringing the total Series B to $435 million at a $2 billion valuation. The company builds technology-enabled infrastructure for capital markets and prime brokerage, serving as a modern alternative to legacy bank-provided services.
Malaysian full-stack payment provider Soft Space completed a US$31.5 million Series B1 round led by Southern Capital Group, with participation from transcosmos Inc., JCB, and Hibiscus Fund. The company's payment technology is used by over 70 financial institutions globally, positioning it as embedded payments infrastructure for banks and financial partners.
Entities: Soft Space · Southern Capital Group · transcosmos Inc. · JCB · Hibiscus Fund
Apiture introduced Business Insights, a digital banking feature integrated with Monit, providing cash flow analysis, forecasting, and business health insights. The feature supports embedded banking strategies for U.S. banks and credit unions. This partnership enhances the digital banking toolset available to community financial institutions.
Peach Payments, a Cape Town-based payments gateway, raised €29 million ($31 million) in Series A funding led by Apis Partners. The company provides API infrastructure enabling merchants across Africa to accept payments via cards, digital wallets, mobile money, and BNPL services.
Bread Financial launched the Bread Cashback American Express Credit Card in April 2023, winning a Fintech Breakthrough Award for Best Credit Card Payments Solution. The card is the company's first partner product featuring digital wallet push provisioning. This highlights active white-label credit card innovation in the BaaS space.
Inbank, a European fintech with an EU banking license, began developing its next-generation embedded finance platform in April 2023 with customer rollout planned for Q4 2023. The platform connects merchants, consumers, and financial institutions for financing, deposits, and embedded services. Inbank also refreshed its visual identity to align with the new strategic direction.
KeyBank partnered with fintech infrastructure provider Qolo to offer virtual accounts and digital payments solutions. The partnership enables KeyBank to leverage Qolo's modern payment and account infrastructure. This represents a bank-fintech partnership model central to embedded finance and BaaS.
UK fintech Penny launched Penny Connect, a no-code embedded finance widget enabling platforms to integrate invoice finance for small businesses. The tool provides instant quotes with just three data points and next-day funding, removing the need for complex API integrations.
Conduit, a crypto-native infrastructure platform, raised $7M in seed funding led by Paradigm. The company provides API infrastructure enabling fintechs and neobanks to launch high-yield savings and crypto products quickly. The funding supports regulatory compliance tooling and low-cost go-to-market strategies for embedded crypto offerings.
Liberty Bank joined The BaaS Association on March 27, 2023, as part of its broader BaaS strategy. The bank aims to develop best practices and expand services beyond physical locations, including for underbanked communities. The association represents over 80% of U.S. BaaS sponsor banks. The membership underscores growing coordination among sponsor banks.
Middleware firm 42Flows.Tech and verification platform Sumsub announced a strategic partnership to deliver end-to-end identity verification, transaction monitoring, and AML screening. The collaboration targets banks, fintechs, and early-stage startups seeking rapid KYC integration into core banking systems.
Cross River and Pay.com partnered to build simplified embedded finance systems for US business payments. The collaboration leverages Cross River's banking infrastructure to scale Pay.com's payment capabilities amid projected embedded finance market growth to nearly $7 trillion by 2030.