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A few years ago, you couldn\u2019t go to a fintech meetup without ending up in a conversation about embedded finance. In 2020, we even wrote that embedded finance might represent fintech\u2019s future<\/a>. <\/p>\n The distribution strategy lets fintech companies integrate their services into other products and services, which in turn gives users access to new features without having to sign up to a new service. It\u2019s proven an especially attractive approach for fintechs as it gives them a new layer of products to offer to bigger banks and financial services providers.<\/p>\n Ember<\/a>, a British startup working on an embedded tax offering, is proving that the strategy is still a valid one in 2024. The small company has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank\u2019s business customers can access Ember\u2019s services from their online accounts. Ember could potentially gain 400,000 customers with a single partnership.<\/p>\n Ember\u2019s service fetches companies\u2019 recent banking transactions and automatically categorizes them. After that, customers can track expenses, add receipts, create invoices and do basic accounting. <\/p>\n Ember then provides an overview of your company\u2019s revenue and expenditure, estimates how much you\u2019re going to pay in taxes, and tells you how much money is available to withdraw as dividends for the owners.<\/p>\n Bigger companies will likely work with chartered accountants directly or even hire in-house accountants. But freelancers and small companies with less than 10 employees could at least simplify their accounting processes with Ember\u2019s self-serve product.<\/p>\n \u201cThe likes of Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent are all built for accountants and not end business owners. And we saw a huge opportunity to build a transformative experience for an end business owner to look after their entire suite of tax obligations,\u201d Ember\u2019s co-founder and COO, Daniel Hogan, told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n However, the issue is that this market is extremely fragmented. There are hundreds of thousands of small companies in the U.K. alone, meaning that it\u2019s hard to get customers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were going up against the likes of Xero and QuickBooks on advertising spend, and that was tricky to acquire customers directly because of that exact reason \u2014 it was expensive,\u201d Hogan said.<\/p>\n