Embedded finance solutions give customers the convenient, encapsulated experience they’re looking for. These value-added solutions should enable consumers to not only make traditional payments, but access account information and make lifestyle-embedded payments, such as sending and receiving money through Facebook Messenger, or utilizing banking services, such as accessing a line of credit using your product.

In addition to payments processing, Business-to-Business clients are looking for integrated business tools, such as payroll, invoicing, and reporting for greater visibility into finances. For more information about building a merchant portal with access to real-time financial data, browse our Business Reporting API documentation.

Developers who are most successful in delivering these solutions will think outside the box and focus on leveraging sophisticated tools to craft virtually invisible payment experiences. Your return on investment can be substantial, since early adoption gives you the opportunity to become a disruptor in the payments industry: Capgemini’s study found that 65% of bank executives see non-traditional players as more competitive than their established peers.

Merchants are increasingly in need of dashboards to access and analyze key business data. The data needed is often financial, including real time payments and deposit reports, as well as business-related, such as inventory and chargeback data.

Your forward-thinking payment solution can address this need by leveraging APIs as more than tools – they can be the basis of new products. As an ISO with an in-house payment processor, our Business Reporting API allows you to programmatically consume financial and business data directly from the processor. This data can then be displayed on your custom dashboard, allowing you to provide merchants with the information they need while completely controlling the experience. In addition to passing through data, the Business Reporting API includes endpoints that can allow merchants to close batches, create invoices, submit transactions, and more, directly from your environment. Powerful business dashboards are quickly becoming one of the best ways to add value to your existing products.

Statista reports that as much as 72% of ecommerce transactions occur on mobile devices. In addition to paying for goods and services with traditional payments, mobile-first payments apps should take innovative features into consideration, such as enabling customers to respond to text offers, use mobile payments services such as QR codes, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, or redeem loyalty points through integrations with mobile wallets.

Paralleling the growth in digital payments, the cost of digital marketing also increased, including prices for competitive keywords and cost-per-click campaigns. With higher costs of acquiring new customers, your clients may instead focus on retaining current customers. Part of that strategy should include providing everything your customers need in one convenient, mobile-friendly solution.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is a payment model that allows consumers to make a purchase and pay for it through a series of installments. BNPL offers customers instant approval without the need for a credit approval process. Many BNPL plans offer interest-free periods during which customers can pay off their balance without incurring additional fees, although late fees may apply if a payment is missed or if any other terms of the agreement are broken.

Using biometric authentication to authorize credit card payments increases security compared to other methods such as PIN numbers or passwords. This is because biometric data, such as fingerprints or facial recognition, is unique to each individual and is harder to replicate. Whereas criminals may try to access a password-protected account by entering various combinations of letters and numbers in the password field, faking a fingerprint is much more difficult.

Biometric payments also add convenience to any checkout process by eliminating the need to remember credentials (or use a password manager) and type them in. Customers can simply touch or look at their device's screen to authorize a payment and complete the process in seconds for an improved customer experience.

Open Banking APIs allow financial institutions to securely share customer financial information with third-party providers, enabling new financial products to leverage customer data from various financial services, make cross border payments, and more. These products include:

• Account aggregation services: These allow users to view all of their information from multiple bank accounts and other institutions in one place.
• Financial management services: These can offer personalized budget insights and recommendations, or even investment planning recommendations.
• Lending and credit scoring: These access financial data to assess creditworthiness and offer personalized loan offers.