Embedding Finance Into Industry Workflows
Ross Fubini, Managing Partner at XYZ Capital, on the biggest opportunities in fintech today
The real opportunity is shifting from generic fintech plumbing to software that bakes money movement into one industry specific workflow. Once card issuing and BaaS make the basics easier to launch, the winning products are the ones that handle the messy details a horizontal provider will not build, like healthcare eligibility and reimbursement rules, e-commerce installments and approval steps, or consumer app wallets and closed loop spend controls.
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This is the same pattern behind vertical ERP. A vertical product stops being just a dashboard and starts controlling the actual flow of funds. In restaurants that can mean tip routing, in travel it can mean installment payments and supplier payouts, and in healthcare it can mean payments tied to claims and restricted spending rules.
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The stack below is getting commoditized. BaaS platforms and issuer processors already handle cards, accounts, and compliance rails, so differentiation moves up a layer into approval logic, ledgering, and workflow software built for one customer type. That is why newer infrastructure and fintech winners look more specialized than the broad neobank wave did.
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The business model also gets stronger when the product is vertical. Instead of only taking a small share of interchange, companies can pair payments revenue with SaaS fees, faster payouts, lending, or premium workflow tools. Brex, Ramp, Shopify, Toast, and category specific software all point to this bundling direction.
From here, embedded finance keeps disappearing into industry software. The next wave is less about launching another generic fintech app, and more about owning a narrow workflow where money is already moving, then layering cards, accounts, credit, and payments into that flow until the software becomes the financial operating system for that vertical.