Why Embedded Finance Needs Orchestration — Not Just Infrastructure

Money20/20 is always a place to track the pulse of the fintech industry, not just through the buzz on stage, but through the quieter, candid conversations happening in the side rooms, lounges, and informal gatherings. This year, a recurring theme surfaced: embedded finance is evolving, but it still hasn’t solved its orchestration problem.

We’ve made significant progress as an industry. The infrastructure exists. APIs are live. Platforms are programmable. However, delivering embedded finance solutions that work, in context, at scale, across industries, still requires much more than connectivity.

Infrastructure Alone Isn’t Enough

There’s a growing realisation that while the backend plumbing is increasingly commoditised, the real value lies in orchestrating that infrastructure into cohesive, end-user-focused financial experiences.

Many conversations in Amsterdam focused not on building new rails but on aligning systems, compliance frameworks, UX layers, and business logic. It’s the orchestration layer, not just the connectivity, that determines whether embedded finance is delightful or disjointed.

This orchestration challenge goes beyond technical integration. It touches compliance, scalability, user experience, and the ability to adapt quickly as regulations and customer needs shift. That’s where much of the friction still sits and where a lot of future innovation will take place.

Embedded Finance Meets Operational Reality

Another key takeaway: organisations looking to embed finance, whether retailers, travel platforms, or B2B SaaS companies, aren’t trying to become fintechs. They’re looking for plug-and-play simplicity that doesn’t drain internal resources.

That means orchestration isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential. It's the layer that can translate raw banking functionality into something usable, customisable, and compliant for non-financial platforms. And it’s what allows partners to focus on experience rather than infrastructure.

Context is King

Across verticals, there’s a rising demand for contextual finance: credit offered at the right moment, insurance embedded where risk appears, payments that feel native to the user journey.

These experiences aren’t powered by static products; they’re driven by orchestration. As demand for hyper-relevant financial experiences grows, the ability to manage complexity behind the scenes becomes a competitive edge.

What the Industry Still Needs

If embedded finance is to move from experiment to infrastructure — from potential to predictable revenue — several shifts need to happen:

• Standardisation across APIs, compliance, and onboarding journeys
• Shared orchestration logic that can be adapted across use cases
• Better alignment between tech providers and the businesses embedding finance, so that collaboration doesn’t become custom development every time
• And critically, a mindset shift from product-push to user-first design

This year’s Money20/20 made it clear: the next phase of growth in embedded finance won’t be powered by raw functionality alone. It will be shaped by how well we orchestrate that functionality into systems that work for platforms, for partners, and ultimately, for people.