Small businesses use embedded finance to accept payments, receive payouts, access financing, or manage funds and spending through a commerce, industry, or software platform they already use. The financial service is built into the workflow; it does not necessarily mean the platform itself is the bank or lender.
What embedded finance means for a small business
The International Finance Corporation describes embedded finance as integrating financial services into nonfinancial platforms or applications so micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises can access financial products where they work. For a business, the practical difference is that a financial task appears inside a familiar platform rather than requiring a separate financial app.
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That can mean taking a customer payment and receiving the proceeds through business software, seeing a financing offer in a merchant dashboard, or using an account or card connected to a platform. The specific financial provider, terms, and availability can vary by product and location.
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How businesses use embedded finance
Taking payments and receiving payouts
Payments are a common starting point: a platform can let a business accept customer payments and manage payouts as part of its commerce or service workflow. For example, a software platform may provide payment acceptance and send funds to a business. This links payment activity to the platform, but does not by itself show that the business uses a loan, account, or card through it.
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Finding financing inside a platform
A commerce or payment platform may display a financing offer based on activity it can observe. Shopify says Capital offers may depend on a merchant’s store location, history, use, and interaction with the platform. It lists inventory, marketing, physical retail space, and staffing as possible uses. Availability is limited to specified countries, and eligibility conditions apply; a merchant should check the current offer and terms rather than assume an offer will be available.
Square says it assesses loan eligibility using processing activity and that repayment is automatically drawn from daily Square sales. The offer is invitation-based, and the merchant should review the product’s cost, repayment terms, and effect on cash flow before accepting. A platform offer is neither guaranteed access to credit nor a general recommendation to borrow.
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Holding and moving money, or paying business expenses
Embedded services can also include accounts for holding or moving funds and virtual or physical cards for business spending. Stripe describes platform infrastructure that can support accounts, ACH and wire transfers, and cards for platform users. The platform’s configuration and the provider’s availability determine which services a particular business can use.
Why platforms build financial services into their products
For a small business, using financial tools inside an existing workflow can mean fewer steps between a sale, a payout, and a business task. For a platform, the IFC identifies possible revenue diversification and stronger customer engagement. These are potential benefits, not evidence that every embedded-finance product saves money, improves access to credit, or produces better business outcomes.
The model can apply beyond online retail. The IFC describes embedded financial services across mobility, agriculture, manufacturing, services, supply chains, and e-commerce, where platforms may already handle transactions or coordinate business activity.
What the available numbers do—and do not—show
There is no representative overall estimate in the reviewed sources for the share of small businesses using embedded finance. Bank use of fintech in lending and businesses’ credit applications measure different things, so they should not be presented as embedded-finance adoption rates.
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| Measure | What it reports | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| FDIC report on a 2022 bank survey, published in 2024 | 31% of surveyed banks used fintech in small-business lending; a further 22% were discussing or developing it. The survey ran from June 2022 through January 2023. | The share of small businesses using embedded finance. This is bank-level use in lending processes. |
| Federal Reserve Banks’ Small Business Credit Survey, 2023 data reported in 2025 | 37% of U.S. small employer firms applied for a loan, line of credit, or merchant cash advance in the previous 12 months. Among those applicants, 50% applied for $100,000 or less and 30% for $50,000 or less. | Whether applicants received finance through an embedded service. These figures describe credit demand. |
| Federal Reserve Banks’ Small Business Credit Survey, 2023 data reported in 2025 | Among applicants, 44% applied to large banks and 28% to small banks. Small banks approved 75% of applicants for at least some requested financing, compared with 66% at large banks. | Overall small-business adoption. These are applicant and partial-or-better approval measures, not rates for all businesses. |
| Bank of England’s 2025 Financial Stability Report, citing SME Finance Monitor survey evidence | Around 80% of UK SMEs were not seeking external finance in 2024. | Embedded-finance usage. This measures whether SMEs were seeking external finance. |
The geographic scope matters: the credit-application figures concern U.S. firms, while the finance-seeking figure concerns UK SMEs. They should not be generalized to small businesses worldwide.
What to check before using an embedded financial product
A familiar dashboard does not remove the need to understand the financial service behind it. Before accepting an offer or routing business funds through a platform, check:
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- Who provides the financial service: identify the lender, account provider, or payments provider, rather than assuming the software platform is the financial institution.
- Eligibility and geography: confirm that the service is available to your business in its location and that you meet the provider’s current conditions.
- Full cost and cash flow: review the financing cost, repayment schedule, and how payments are collected. For sales-based repayment, estimate how automatic deductions could affect cash available for operating expenses.
- Data use: understand what transaction or platform information is used to assess eligibility or deliver the service, and how it is handled.
- Support and complaints: establish whether the platform or the underlying financial provider handles account problems, disputes, or complaints.
The IFC identifies evolving regulation, data protection, fraud, privacy and security, and accurate credit-information reporting as areas of concern for embedded finance. The details depend on the product and jurisdiction, so businesses should read the applicable terms and privacy information rather than infer protections from the platform interface.
Examples are not proof of broad adoption
Stripe describes infrastructure for platforms to offer payment acceptance and payouts, financing, accounts, and cards, and names Shopify, Housecall Pro, and GlossGenius as examples. These are provider-described product examples; they show the kinds of services platforms can integrate, not how many small businesses use them or whether they outperform alternatives.
Likewise, a financing offer visible in a merchant account is evidence that a product is available to an eligible user, not evidence that the business has accepted it or that the offer is suitable. Availability, uptake, and business impact are separate questions.
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