fintech digest
Embedded Payments Rise, Crypto Clarity for Banks, UK’s Payments Push and More
Research Team
21 March 2025
Money Mobility Makes Embedded Banking Payments New Rising Star
The shakeup and shakeout of banking-as-a-service (BaaS), in the wake of the Synapse bankruptcy last year, has opened up new potential for embedded finance.
Money mobility’s at the center of it all, enabling the evolution of BaaS, where the original iteration of the service — call it BaaS 1.0 — had depended on intermediaries between banks and FinTechs.
Synapse, of course, had acted as one of those intermediaries, and unraveled when inconsistencies in ledger accounts and record keeping tied to “for benefit of” (FBO) accounts came to light.
Click to Pay Can Challenge Digital Wallets
Network tokenisation is on the rise, and according to the new findings from the fintech and payments researcher, Juniper Research, its revenue will reach $8.9billion by 2029 – a 117 per cent increase from 2025 ($4.1billion).
The research was published in Juniper Research‘s Global Network Tokenisation Market: 2025-2029 report, and predicts that the growth of network tokens will mean they are better placed to fight fraud, lower processing costs and streamline checkout experiences for users in the future.
Crypto Clarity: OCC’s New Guidelines Pave the Way for Banking Innovation
On March 7, 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) released Interpretive Letter 1183, marking a pivotal change in regulatory guidance for national banks and federal savings associations engaging in cryptocurrency activities. This recent directive, issued under Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood, rescinds the requirements set by Interpretive Letter 1179 from November 2021. The updated guidance reaffirms the permissibility of certain crypto-related activities while eliminating the need for prior supervisory non-objection.
The Payments Association Calls on UK Government to Push for Growth Through Payments Innovation
The Payments Association, a trade group representing the payments sector, today sees the official launch of its Payments Manifesto 2025, containing key policy recommendations to support the government’s vision for a world-class payments industry.
The Manifesto, Creating the Conditions to support Growth and Innovation in Payments, describes the 66 policies recommended by the 216 payments professionals working across financial crime, regulation, open banking, ESG, cross-border payments, digital currencies and financial inclusion. It also includes a foreword written by Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, House of Lords.
UK Must Ensure SMEs Have Better Access to Finance Needed to Invest
In the Small Business Finance Markets 2024/25 report, the British Business Bank finds that, of the £62.1billion of gross lending to UK SMEs in 2024, £37.3billion was provided by challenger and specialist banks. Their share of gross lending (60 per cent) exceeded that of the big five UK banks for the fourth year in a row, up from 59 per cent in 2023 and the highest on record.
The Bank also finds that business investment by SMEs continued to be low, a key reason for the lag in UK productivity versus other G7 countries.