Adding financial services into your product offerings has multiple benefits, like reaching new customers and expanding that customer base — which also increases revenue. Companies now embed financial services in weeks instead of going through lengthy and complex processes. With a healthy supply of Banking as a Service (BaaS) platforms offering APIs and SDKs coming online, choosing the right BaaS platform partner will be essential.

Here are five critical areas to dive into before making that decision and selecting your partner.

Are you a full stack BaaS solution or a “matchmaker” for fintechs and sponsor banks?

Embedded finance solutions available today typically fall into two categories — tech platforms that are fully integrated with a spectrum of banking and tech partners or those that will match customers to banks and other third party vendors, leaving much of the technical work up to you. Bond is a comprehensive, enterprise-grade embedded finance platform that provides a robust integration layer to make the process of building and launching your own finance program simple. Avoid extra contracts or worrying about headcount for technical integrations, because Bond handles that for you.

Bond also offers versioned APIs for all customers so that you can build, launch, and scale your program without outgrowing your BaaS partner.

How quickly can I get an account and begin testing out a new card?

Your developer resources are limited so you need to minimize wasting their time and maximize their impact. Too many APIs and SDKs can bloat your tech stack, making it more difficult and complex to maintain. Bond offers a full-function sandbox that enables you to build your entire application — complete with accounts, cards, and transactions — in less than 20 minutes.

Do you have live customers that run on both debit and credit?

Most brands looking to offer financial products often start with a single product like a bank account with money movement capabilities. However, they soon realize that offering additional products has multiplicative benefits, such as attaching a debit card or offering a credit card.

Choosing a BaaS partner that can support you beyond the initial product launch is important. BaaS providers that offer multiple products are able to slash time for additional product launches while also making it easier to program manage and gather high-quality customer data.

Live customers are imperative so you can really understand how other brands are using the BaaS platform with case studies or customer testimonials. Bond has multiple live customers across different industries — both on debit and credit.

How many banks are you integrated with?  

Many BaaS providers are single threaded on one bank or technology stack. These point solutions may solve a discrete problem in the short term, but they ultimately set your company up for more work (and countless hours of implementation) as you expand your services.

While each product is generally launched on a single bank, options are important to ensure quality, choice, and control. Banks and tech vendors have different capabilities and strengths (for example, some may be deposit-focused while others are low FICO credit focused) and maintaining your optionality and choice is essential. In addition, some companies might want to change or diversify their underlying banking partner, and options can provide greater negotiation leverage on commercial terms and pricing.

Who will we work with to manage our product offerings and how robust are your compliance tools?

One of the toughest challenges a company faces when implementing financial solutions is to adhere to complex compliance and regulatory requirements. Making a mistake can be costly, both from a financial perspective and from a reputational one. Without a program manager, legal compliance might mean hiring a new internal team dedicated specifically to compliance support. Bond is our customer’s program manager and we provide the technical tools, deep compliance knowledge, and ongoing support to help manage all requirements without needing to take on any unnecessary risks.

Bond’s compliance team has decades of experience at fintechs, banks, and regulators which is a unique combination of skill sets that provides customers with the most holistic view of their programs.

It's really important to look under the hood of a platform to determine whether it’s “future-proof.” The ideal BaaS platform will be comprehensive, meaning that it’s not only multi-bank and multi-product, but is positioned to grow with you over time. Bond’s platform is both bank and technology agnostic while also having the largest network of pre-integrated sponsor banks and technology vendors. Whether it’s creating a virtual credit card for teammates that need to purchase recurring software, providing instant wage access for employees, or helping customers build their credit scores by paying down debt, you can build your own fintech with Bond.

If you’re ready to learn more, contact Bond or jump into our sandbox!