Embedded lending in practice: lessons from platforms
In 2026, embedded lending has become a common offering on every platform. The underlying basics for implementing embedded lending are similar for most the platforms, the platform makes the offer inside its own product and decides who qualifies from the data it already holds. What changes is the thinking behind decisions that can affect both the experience of merchants and the platform itself.
In this blog, we will go through practical examples of how platforms have implemented embedded lending and what you can learn from each.
Wolt Capital
Wolt is a Helsinki-based technology company, now part of DoorDash, that makes it incredibly easy to discover and get the best restaurants, grocery stores and other local shops delivered to you. To enable this, Wolt develops a wide range of technologies from local logistics to retail software and financial solutions.
In 2023, Wolt partnered with finmid to launch Wolt Capital, embedded financing for its merchants. It began as a pilot in Finland and has since grown to 20 European markets.
Most platforms do not operate in just one market, especially in Europe, where each market comes with its own regulations and challenges.
That is why it is important to build a product with a partner that has experience working in many different markets and can apply the standard no matter where your merchants are operating.
Since the launch, Wolt Capital has demonstrated a high renewal rate, with 85% of merchants who took a cash advance coming back for more, and a high NPS (Net Promoter Score) of above 80. Read more on what your lending program's NPS score is actually telling you.
Toast Capital
Toast is an all-in-one restaurant management and point-of-sale platform, based in the United States. By mid-2025 they had around 150,000 customers in the United States, which is close to one in five independent restaurants in the country.
In 2019, Toast launched Toast Capital. Restaurants run on thin margins, leaving little cash laying around to fall back on. Toast built repayment as a fixed percentage of each day's card sales, taken the same day, to solve exactly that problem: restaurants earn daily but can struggle to have spare cash to cover a bill that comes in later. The money for the loan is repaid before it ever becomes something the owner has to set aside.
When building your embedded lending product, it is important to know your merchants and build the product around them, the way Toast adapted repayment to its merchants' daily cash flow.
Merchants have taken more than $1bn in loans through Toast Capital since launch.
myPOS Financing
myPOS is a fintech that helps more than 350,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Europe take payments in-store, online and on the go. It operates in over 30 markets across the European Economic Area, plus Switzerland and the UK.
In 2026, finmid and myPOS partnered to launch myPOS Financing in Italy, addressing the country's €3bn SME financing gap.
Italy has one of the most complex regulatory environments in Europe for business lending, and that complexity is exactly why the opportunity there is so large: its 4.9 million small businesses have had little choice but to rely on slow, inaccessible banks.
The harder a market is to serve, the fewer platforms serve it well, and that gap is where the opportunity lies.
Many platforms would disregard a market like this because of its complexity. That is why it is important not to rule out a market just because it is hard, and instead find a partner who can support you through it.
myPOS Financing has reached more than 90,000 merchants to date.
Amazon Lending
Amazon is the world's largest online marketplace, and most of what sells on it comes from third-party sellers.
Amazon Lending has offered embedded lending since 2011, but it has changed shape over the years. Amazon initially built, funded, and managed the entire lending infrastructure internally before gradually transitioning into a multi-lender marketplace model, connecting sellers with a range of third-party lenders instead.
Building an in-house lending book for over a decade gave Amazon a clear view of what it takes to run embedded lending at scale, and that experience shaped its decision to move toward a partner-based model that could offer sellers more financing options.
That is the same decision every platform faces: build in-house or work with a partner who already has the infrastructure in place.
Most platforms choose to partner rather than build, since it gives merchants access to capital without taking on that infrastructure themselves. To help you make your own build-or-buy decision, read our guide on it.
Four lessons for platforms
Embedded lending is not easy, and that is the point. That is why it is important that every platform that considers implementing embedded lending understands the decisions it will have to make or works with a partner with the right experience.
Here are the lessons from four embedded lending programs:
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1.
Work with a partner who can serve all your active markets
If your platform operates across more than one market, it is important to choose a partner that covers them or has experience in those markets.
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2.
Hyper-adapt your financing to your customers
Every merchant's needs and cash flow look different, and that is something a platform can adapt to in ways a bank cannot, making it easier for merchants to take capital and safely pay it back.
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3.
Turn a complex market into an opportunity
Many platforms would disregard a market because of its complexity. Do not rule it out, instead find a partner who can support you through it, the way myPOS did in Italy.
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4.
Decide whether you build in-house, or buy from a partner
A platform can choose to build embedded lending in-house, Amazon did for over a decade before moving to a partner-based model. Each platform has to make the decision and understand the benefits and trade-offs of each option.
Curious to see how embedded lending could work for your platform? Book a demo.
finmid is the embedded lending infrastructure powering platform growth. With its API, finmid enables platforms to launch tailored financing products for their business customers at scale. Across industries, borders, and business models, finmid drives revenue, improves retention, and fuels core business growth. finmid is trusted by Europe’s most ambitious platforms, including Wolt, Delivery Hero, Just Eat Takeaway, Glovo, and FREENOW. Learn more at finmid.com.
