Apideck index finds gaps in embedded finance vendor disclosures

Fintech and embedded finance companies are far more likely to disclose their sponsor banks than the providers they use for know-your-customer and fraud services, according to a new industry index from Apideck.

The unified API provider launched its Embedded Finance Index Oct. 1, describing it as a public, quarterly benchmark mapping relationships among more than 6,000 fintech and embedded finance companies and 1,297 verified providers across 12 infrastructure layers.

Apideck found 965 companies in its dataset publicly identify their sponsor banks, compared with 345 that identify their KYC vendors and just 80 that disclose their fraud-tooling providers. The company said the findings reveal a transparency gap between the payments and compliance portions of the embedded finance ecosystem.

Mapping who buys from whom

Apideck said that unlike industry maps built primarily around what vendors offer, its index approaches the market from the customer side to identify which companies use which providers.

Each entry is derived from public evidence, including subprocessor lists, regulatory footers, trust pages, company announcements and articles. Evidence is graded in three tiers, with regulatory disclosures given greater weight than press announcements and structural integration signals.

"What we didn't know was which companies buy from whom. The Embedded Finance Index answers that question," said Gertjan de Wilde, Apideck CEO and founder.

Among payment service providers, Stripe leads with 595 disclosed buyers in the dataset. Evolve Bank & Trust has the most disclosed buyers among banking-as-a-service providers, with 64, while Plaid leads financial data connectivity with 248.

Apideck cautioned that disclosed customer counts represent a floor rather than necessarily showing a provider's full market share.

Regional differences emerge

The index also found significant geographic differences in banking-as-a-service relationships. The three leading disclosed providers in the United States are Sutton Bank, Evolve Bank & Trust and Cross River Bank. In the UK, they are ClearBank, Modulr and Railsr, while Swan, Mangopay and Treezor lead in the European Union. None of the top three providers overlaps among the three regions.

Apideck noted the finding challenges the tendency to describe BaaS as a single global market and instead points to distinct regional provider ecosystems.

The company also identified financial data connectivity as the most consolidated infrastructure layer it tracks. Apideck expects open finance regulations expanding data-access rights beyond banking into areas such as accounting, payroll, investments, pensions, insurance and tax to reshape that market.

The Embedded Finance Index will be updated quarterly. Apideck said it has also made the underlying material available in plain-text Markdown so the data can be read and analyzed by large language models and AI agents.

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