Embedded Finance and Connected Car Concept Prototype

The dawn of 2023 has brought with it a flurry of exciting advancements in AI technology. One trend or innovation that’s not quite grabbing the headlines as much as AI is “Embedded Finance”, which is set to revolutionise the way we access financial services over the next few years. Recently, we’ve been able to delve deeper into some concepts for Embedded Finance, much inspired by of Scarlett Sieber and Sophie Guibaud’s insightful book “Embedded Finance“, exploring its full potential.

Embedded Finance

Embedded Finance is already making its presence felt in our daily lives through simple features like tap-to-pay on our phones or “Buy now, pay later” directly in e-commerce checkouts. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as we’re likely to see a surge in the integration of financial services into various non-financial settings, making our lives more convenient and reducing friction in the process. As a UX and Product Design Company, we’re particularly excited about the relationship between Embedded Finance and User Experience, as they’ll be working hand-in-hand to provide seamless and effortless experiences.

Fintech has been a buzzword for some time now, and we’re all familiar with the disruption it’s caused to the traditional financial sector. Start-ups and neo-banks have done a great job of digitising the previously analog financial system, and now that the digitisation process is largely complete, we’re entering a new era of Embedded Finance, also referred to as Fintech 2.0. This new era is set to be even more exciting and will open up a vast array of new opportunities.

Connected Cars

One area that particularly intrigued us was the potential for Embedded Finance to interface with connected cars, particularly electric vehicles (EVs). Companies like Tesla have already embraced Embedded Finance through their Super Charger network, which makes charging a Tesla incredibly easy. All you need to do is enter your credit card information once, into the mobile app, and for the whole period where you own the car the charging process is taken care of, without the need to press any buttons or make any payments at the charging station. This kind of frictionless experience is what we’re building on with our prototype video.

Mobile Phones

The question arises – could this kind of experience be replicated on a mobile phone? To some extent, the answer is yes. However, the current app-store models don’t allow for in-context apps or webapps to appear on your phone as soon as you walk into a fast food restaurant. As far as I know, the closest we’ve come to this kind of experience is Scott Jensen’s work on “The Physical Web” at Google.

We believe that connected cars, particularly those with proprietary software like Tesla, are in a unique position to change the game. While there are certainly business deals to be made for this vision to become a reality, the technology is already here, and it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. On the other hand, mobile phones still have a way to go in terms of providing a completely frictionless experiences like this, download another app, sign up and sign in for another service? – it’s getting a bit exhausting.

In conclusion, Embedded Finance is coming, and it’s set to bring a new level of convenience and effortlessness to our lives. We’re loving exploring this exciting new frontier and can’t wait to see the impact it’ll have on the future of finance and technology.