Why Onboarding is the Missing Link in Embedded Finance

What Is Embedded Finance? 

Embedded finance is everywhere. You just might not realize it.

At Transact 2025, our Co-founder and CEO Sal Rehmetullah pointed out that most of us already interact with embedded finance daily whether it’s ordering an Uber or buying something on Instagram without ever reaching for a wallet. That level of seamless, in-platform experience is the standard for consumers and it’s exactly what small business onboarding is still missing.

Embedded finance is the integration of financial services (like payments, lending and insurance) directly into non-financial platforms. Instead of going to a bank to apply for a loan or process a payment, users can access those services instantly within the apps and tools they already use. Think ride-sharing apps that handle payments in-app or e-commerce platforms that offer financing at checkout.

On a panel alongside leaders from Mastercard, Pipe, and Enable, Sal dug into the evolution of embedded finance and why B2B payments still lag behind in user experience. The biggest gap is onboarding.

Today, if you run a small business, signing up for a financial product means hunting down your EIN, uploading bank statements, submitting tax returns, listing every partner, providing a personal guarantee and manually filling out fields most consumers haven’t thought about in a decade. It’s clunky, fragmented and deeply inefficient.

The Consumer vs. SMB Payments Gap

Why is it that consumers can have a streamlined experience with just a credit score and W-2, but businesses can’t? This is a question we think about constantly at Worth.

At Worth, we’ve reimagined onboarding for SMBs. If a business owner can provide just three fields: name, address, and EIN or SSN, our platform can complete the entire financial application. Whether it’s for a business bank account, credit card, loan or payfac enrollment, we leverage AI and pre-fill tech to eliminate friction and reduce abandonment.

But the challenge in B2B onboarding isn’t just collecting data, it’s also making sense of it. As Sal said on stage, a business like Sally’s Shoe Store or Joe’s Pizza Shop may both need financing, but their P&Ls look nothing alike. One holds $10,000 in Jordans, the other in pizza dough. AI can process these differences in real-time without human bias.

SMBs are a complex and diverse group. No two are exactly alike, which makes manual underwriting especially burdensome. Traditional financial institutions have spent years building underwriting processes around paper-heavy documentation and manual reviews. But those systems were never built for the speed and scale today’s market demands.

Embedded Finance Starts with Better Infrastructure

As embedded finance gains traction, so does the expectation for instant, in-context approvals. That expectation isn’t limited to consumers. SMBs want the same: to be verified and onboarded inside the tools they already use, without friction and without a stack of forms.

Worth built the infrastructure to make that a reality. Our platform pulls from a database of more than 242+ Million SMBs and 1,100+ traditional and non-traditional data sources to verify business identity, financial health and compliance risk all in real time. Using our proprietary Crosswalking technology, we match data from sources like the Secretary of State, IRS, DoD, Google and more to reduce friction and improve match accuracy. This allows businesses to start onboarding with just a few inputs, and lets our AI-driven platform handle the rest. It’s the kind of experience most SMBs have never had before.

But our focus doesn’t stop at onboarding. The real transformation is what comes after: faster underwriting, smarter risk decisions and better customer experiences across the board. SMBs are often overlooked or underserved by traditional institutions. Their needs are harder to model. Their risk is harder to assess. But that complexity is exactly why they need modern tools and why embedded finance is such a powerful opportunity.

If anybody walks down this hall today and said we’re “cloud-based,” you’ll roll your eyes. That’s like a hotel saying we have clean sheets. You expect that to be there. And so that’s how we look at AI [in embedded finance].

Sal Rehmetullah, Co-Founder & CEO, Worth

The panel also talked about the role AI is playing in accelerating this shift. Sal made the point that AI today is like what “the cloud” was ten years ago: “If anybody walks down this hall today and said we’re ‘cloud-based,’ you’ll roll your eyes. That’s like a hotel saying we have clean sheets. You expect that to be there. And so that’s how we look at AI [in embedded finance].”  

If someone said they were “cloud-based” in 2014, it was impressive. Today, it’s expected. Saying you’re using AI will be the same. It will become table stakes. The real question isn’t whether you use AI but how. And for Worth, that answer is clear: we use AI to automate both onboarding and underwriting, cutting out manual reviews, removing bias and accelerating approvals from days to minutes.

Beyond Onboarding: Better Underwriting and Risk Management

“If you have $10 million and an 800 credit score and you walk into a car dealership, they’re not gonna make you fill everything out. They’re like: Go ahead, jump in the car,” Sal said on stage. “But if you have $10 and a 400 credit score, they probably don’t want you to take that test drive. So how can you make that experience that much quicker all the way at the front end, so you’re not going through this manual review process and all the back-and-forth that usually happens in underwriting?”

Our platform brings that energy to SMB onboarding. With Worth, a merchant applying through an ISV or payfac can complete their application in minutes, not days. Underwriters aren’t stuck chasing documents or manually rebuilding financials. Our system does the heavy lifting. And businesses aren’t left wondering where they stand. It’s faster for everyone, and smarter for institutions.

This is the path forward. Not just for Worth, but for every company building embedded financial products. The onboarding experience is the front door to your ecosystem. If it’s slow, clunky or confusing, customers won’t get through it and you’ll never see their lifetime value.

We believe embedded finance has the power to change how businesses access capital, process payments and grow. But it has to start with infrastructure that’s built for speed, trust and simplicity.

That’s what we’re building at Worth. A platform that doesn’t just verify identity, but also unlocks possibility. A system that understands the nuance of SMBs without asking them to explain themselves. And a better way to onboard, underwrite and manage risk that puts experience and efficiency at the core.