How Integration Excellence Separates Embedded B2B Finance Winners From Pack

All technologies ultimately grow up and mature, to the point where their usefulness is all that remains of their initial buzz. That very cycle is playing out now across embedded finance in the B2B space.

The findings in “B2B Platforms Expand Embedded Finance to Enhance Customer Experience, Drive Revenue,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Marqeta collaboration, reveal that embedded finance no longer signals innovation in B2B platforms. It signals competence.

What was once considered an optional enhancement is now a core expectation across procurement platforms, vertical software-as-a-service (SaaS), marketplaces, and ERP ecosystems. This evolution mirrors earlier shifts in enterprise technology. Cloud computing, mobile access and APIs all began as differentiators before becoming baseline expectations.

But expectations only become table stakes when they are able to be easily integrated and used by much of the market. That’s where the embedded finance sticking point is now: the integration experience.

A conceptual level embedded finance is often described as modular: plug in a provider, activate a few APIs, and unlock financial functionality. In practice, the work is rarely so clean.

Payments must reconcile with accounting systems. Payouts must align with vendor management, payroll and tax reporting. Wallets must integrate identity, permissions and controls across multiple user roles. Each additional capability multiplies integration points across the platform’s technical and organizational stack.

As a result, the report found that platforms are choosing embedded finance partners based on their integration speed, reliability and risk management. Seamless integration is now the top success factor, outranking even measurable ROI.

Still, the report found that more than half of B2B platforms report direct revenue increases from embedded finance, with larger platforms seeing the strongest lift.

The Invisible-Integration Advantage

In consumer tech, differentiation often comes from what users can see. In embedded B2B finance, it comes from what they don’t see: the absence of friction, delays, errors or surprises.

The costs of poor integration are often underestimated because they surface gradually. As platforms scale, their integration challenges compound. What works for early adopters or pilot programs can often breaks under real transaction volume or regulatory scrutiny. The result is a growing recognition that embedded finance success depends less on product breadth than on integration discipline.

The report makes clear that enhancement beats expansion: Platforms want higher retention and better conversion, not feature sprawl. This signals a maturation phase in which execution quality separates leaders from laggards.

One of the most telling signals of embedded finance’s maturation is how platforms are allocating their development resources. Instead of aggressively adding new capabilities, many are focused on enhancing what they already have.

Read the report: B2B Platforms Expand Embedded Finance to Enhance Customer Experience, Drive Revenue

This reflects a pragmatic understanding of how value is actually created. Enhancements such as real-time spending controls, automated reconciliation, and tighter linkage between payments and analytics often deliver more business impact than launching entirely new financial products. They reduce churn, improve conversion rates, and lower operational costs — all while minimizing incremental risk.

Another reason integration excellence matters is risk. As platforms embed deeper financial functionality, they inherit responsibilities traditionally handled by banks and financial institutions. Regulatory compliance, fraud prevention and financial controls become existential concerns rather than back-office considerations.

True integration creates value by aligning financial services with the systems businesses already depend on. This includes ERP, accounting, procurement, order management and compliance. Shallow integrations that simply transmit payment instructions or credit approvals may enable a launch, but they rarely support scale or sustained usage.

Platforms that invest in deeper, bidirectional integration enable finance to appear at the precise moment of need, embedded directly into familiar workflows. This removes friction from decision-making and turns finance from an interruption into an enabler.

Ultimately, leading embedded B2B finance providers recognize that integration is not a technical afterthought but a strategic decision. Product design starts with workflow alignment rather than feature checklists. Engineering teams prioritize extensibility and resilience over speed to launch. Partnerships are structured around long-term system compatibility rather than short-term deployments. This approach requires more upfront investment, but it creates defensible advantages that are difficult to replicate.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.