Enfuce has announced its partnership with Swedish banking as a service (BaaS) provider SEB Embedded, part of SEB, to offer a full virtual and physical card solution tech stack to SEB Embedded's BaaS customers.
Ahead of this announcement at Money20/20, Finextra spoke with Denise Johansson, co-founder and co-CEO of Enfuce to discuss this partnership and the future of embedded finance.
Regarding what this partnership means, Johansson commented: “It’s taking us quite some time to work with incumbents being a newly founded fintech. So I think this is a great stepping stone for us to show that we’re not here to compete with anyone. We think that its all about collaboration and finding the best thing for what you do. I still think there is a big place for the incumbent established banks that they might need to package services in new ways and that’s what embedded is doing.”
This partnership with SEB Embedded is along the lines of a number of other notable partnerships for Enfuce, including issuing Mastercard for social neobank Science Card, being awarded a contract from the State Treasury of Finland and Kela, and provided embedded payments for Finnish e-commerce outfit Starcart.
Regarding this growth, Johansson stated that “you can be a paying customer but it's still about more than just bringing the tech and doing whatever you do with it. It is really about enabling their future growth. When they succeed, we succeed. So unless they win, we're willing them won't win either. And I don't think that it's just getting this is our services use them as you want. And I think that's we've seen quite a lot in the industry. So how we tried to differentiate is really, to be in that together with them.”
Established in 2016 in Finland, Enfuce is the first financial service provider to be PCI-DSS certified while running its service in the public cloud.
Regarding the position of embedded finance in the Nordics, Johansson argued that “even though the Nordics are very much in the forefront of financial digital development, we are still very loyal to the incumbent banks. We like we haven't had that many choices to get new and exciting financial devices like apps.”
She continued: “I think this will take us in an even further in the direction of really building services for the end users.”
Johansson said: “This partnership is a game-changer for banks and non-financial companies in Sweden. Offering card solutions traditionally required major investment, rigorous regulatory obligations and dependence on slow-moving core legacy systems. With SEB Embedded and Enfuce, clients have a unique opportunity to offer financial services without crossing the line of actually becoming a bank. We take care of BINs, licences, products, and compliance so that clients can focus on their customers.”
Regarding the partnership, Christoffer Malmer, CEO of SEB Embedded, said: “Creating new compelling financial services like BaaS and expanding into new customer segments is exciting but also challenging. SEB Embedded was looking for a provider to help us get new products to market quickly and efficiently, including the extension of Card as a Service within BaaS. Our must-haves for any potential partner included speed and responsiveness, cost efficiency, flexibility, proactivity and scalability.”