Written by Edouard Roca, Head of Business Development at Wallester.
Last month, JP Morgan published its five payments trendsto watch in 2026. Embedded finance made the list, alongside AI agents, blockchain, and real-time treasury. When one of the world’s biggest financial players starts treating embedded finance as infrastructure rather than innovation, it is clear that we are no longer talking about trend or possibility, but about real-world use. In short, what companies can actually do with it.
Two Markets, One Trend
Most of the conversation about embedded finance has focused on the consumer side. For example, buy now, pay later at checkout, insurance added at the point of sale, savings accounts inside super-apps, and so on. But there are parallels in the B2B space as well, though the mechanics and the stakes are different.
On the consumer side, embedded finance is largely about reducing friction at the point of purchase and capturing a share of the financial relationship that would otherwise go to a bank. And on the B2B side, it has to do with something more structural: keeping money, data, and decision-making inside a single platform instead of distributing them across tools and accounts that do not speak to each other. The outcome companies are chasing is essentially the same. It’s an environment where users do not need to leave the platform to complete financial actions. But the business case looks different depending on which side of that line you are on.
The Stickiness Argument
JP Morgan frames this in terms of closed-loop payment ecosystems: payments and rewards that remain within a platform, reducing friction and reinforcing loyalty. The logic holds on both the consumer and B2B sides. But it is particularly sharp for business platforms.
Every time a user leaves your platform to complete a financial action – say, topping up through a third-party bank, reimbursing expenses through a separate tool, paying suppliers, or issuing a card through another provider – you are creating an exit point. Each of those exits is a moment where the relationship can erode. Embedded finance closes them. Put simply, the product itself becomes the financial infrastructure, not just the thing sitting next to it.
Interchange Is Part of the Business Case
One aspect of embedded finance deserves to be stated plainly: interchange. Every card transaction generates interchange revenue. That is a percentage of each payment that flows back to the card issuer. But in embedded card programmes, that revenue does not just sit with the infrastructure provider. It can also be shared with the client running the programme.
For platforms embedding payments and card issuing into their product, this is not a secondary consideration. It is one of the core commercial arguments for doing it in the first place. Transaction volume that previously generated no direct return starts producing a recurring revenue line. So the product improves and the unit economics shift at the same time.
BCG estimates the total addressable market for embedded finance across the US, Canada, and Europe at $185 billion, spanning payments, capital solutions, accounts, and card issuing. The interchange opportunity sits inside that number, but it is worth naming separately because it changes how companies model the investment.
Where This Is Going
From conversations in this space, the companies moving fastest are not always the largest. Often, they are platforms with a defined user base and a payment flow they do not yet own but want to own. The infrastructure needed to build this – white-label card issuing, virtual accounts, API-first platforms – has become accessible in a way it historically was not.
That is the part of the market Wallester operates in, with its White Label solution supporting companies on both the consumer and B2B sides. JP Morgan is right to treat embedded finance as one of the defining trends of 2026. To treat it as a revenue and retention strategy, not just a product feature, is the way to get the most out of it.
