How embedded finance is positioning J.P. Morgan Payments as a key marketplace infrastructure player

Embedded finance has become integral to platforms’ architecture and how they operate.

In the last five years, a pattern has emerged: finance is being re-coded into the DNA of software ecosystems. What began as isolated payment buttons and wallet integrations has evolved into a comprehensive financial infrastructure — including payouts, credit, underwriting, and cash flow tools — embedded directly into retail, SaaS, and marketplace platforms. 

The thought that’s now taking root among platforms, from Shopify and Uber to Walmart and Amazon, is how deeply embedded finance could be integrated and how intelligently it can adapt to user needs.

Walmart integrated J.P. Morgan Payments’ embedded finance solution into its marketplace in March 2025. This allows sellers to receive payments from consumers and handle vendor payments all within the Walmart Marketplace platform, eliminating the need to switch between systems.

The implications are wide-reaching: a global bank moves deeper into platform-based distribution, while a retail giant strengthens its control over seller liquidity, data, and operational stickiness. 

From banks as destinations to banks as infrastructure

The growing embedded finance trend represents a migration from banks as destinations to banks as infrastructure. In this model, platforms — not branches — become the primary customer interface. But does this transition challenge traditional banking models functioning in parallel, especially when it comes to attracting customers and offering financial products?

According to Jeff Lin, Head of Industry Product Solutions for Embedded Finance & Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, this isn’t a threat to the firmly rooted traditional banking. It’s an evolution in how financial services are accessed and distributed.

“Traditional channels such as community branches or banker-driven engagement continue to thrive and serve as critical and foundational growth engines for financial institutions,” said Lin. “Embedded finance specifically offers banks a unique opportunity to partner with platforms, which they can do in several ways.”

One path is to offer solutions directly to clients; another is to work with fintech partners who extend those services to platforms. Each approach has different impacts on economics, risk management, and customer experience.

J.P. Morgan Payments’ embedded suite is aimed at giving platforms like Walmart access to the bank’s global financial infrastructure and compliance-grade capabilities without sacrificing user control or platform design. It’s a reconfiguration of the bank’s role, from service provider to infrastructure partner.

“This opportunity overall has differences from traditional channels in that it requires partnering with platforms to deliver a digital experience, while also adhering to regulatory and internal control requirements,” added Lin.

Moving inside the platform stack also provides banks the opportunity to extend their infrastructure where business is already happening, instead of standing by for customers to come to them.

Going deep on infrastructure: What Walmart is building and why J.P. Morgan Payments fits the role

For Walmart, the J.P. Morgan Payments integration marks a strategic expansion of its Marketplace capabilities. Given Walmart’s scale and capacity to develop proprietary solutions, its decision to partner with a legacy financial institution over a fintech startup may seem counterintuitive at first. But that’s exactly the point. When you’re operating at Walmart’s scale, speed alone isn’t the differentiator. Stability, compliance, and control are. As platforms mature, those priorities become more critical than first-mover advantage.

With tens of thousands of sellers — from mom-and-pop shops to global brands — the company needed more than just a fintech plug-in. It needed infrastructure: liquidity, payouts, capital products, and bookkeeping-ready financial data.

And more importantly, it needed to be smooth for the sellers, many of whom are already overwhelmed by the complexity of managing logistics, marketing, fulfillment, and taxes.

J.P. Morgan Payments’ embedded solution gives Walmart that: a pre-built, enterprise-grade banking core, already compliant and extensible, that Walmart can use to simplify its seller experience without reinventing the financial wheel.

“We aim to be the engine powering platforms and fintechs, delivering growth, stickiness, stability, and scale for clients and their ecosystems,” Lin said. “We think about our suite of embedded finance capabilities as giving clients access to the bank’s global financial infrastructure to build innovative, revenue-generating tools for their end-users in a controlled, secure manner.”

Two key questions around the embedded finance suite for the marketplace ecosystem

This bank-marketplace collaboration also raises two critical considerations around embedded finance that often fly under the radar: 

Question #1: Embedded finance solutions have the potential to unlock opportunities across the marketplace, but can they equally benefit sellers of all sizes?

Just as banks offer embedded finance in various ways, retailers also have several paths to integrate financial services into their products. They can either build custom solutions from the ground up or speed up time-to-market by partnering with providers that offer pre-built integrations.

Given this dynamic, embedded finance solutions from different providers exist on a spectrum to fulfill different needs. Lin believes that merchants will have to assess their business needs, goals, capabilities, and resources to choose the right approach for their current stage and strategy. 

No matter which route they take, Lin emphasized, one constant remains: every solution must be built with regulatory compliance in mind.

Question #2: Does the embedded finance suite allow for customization, or is it inherently one-size-fits-all?

A core challenge in building embedded finance solutions for platforms with large ecosystems like Walmart Marketplace is designing for different types of businesses. Walmart Marketplace caters to a diverse range of sellers, from side hustlers to supply chain-heavy brands. Some rely on it as their primary revenue channel and might need instant payouts. Another may need working capital tied to seasonal inventory. And others may use it to supplement brick-and-mortar operations or diversify their online presence. 

That range can add complexity to any embedded finance product implementation. 

Lin notes that a well-designed embedded solution reduces, not adds to, operational complexity.

“Well-built embedded financial solutions will fundamentally simplify the overall operations of sellers, regardless of their size,” he said. “These solutions will prioritize giving sellers a seamless, simple process in accessing new capabilities and meeting their internal requirements, such as integration with their financial books and records.”

For small sellers, syncing payout data with accounting software or inventory systems can be the difference between growth and burnout. For large enterprises, it’s about control and customization. A useful financial layer meets both needs without forcing either to bend too far.

In addition, Lin believes the business model of the firm, looking to embed financial tools, plays a major role in the functionality they seek. “A marketplace business will be particularly attuned to both consumer-facing offerings and the seller experience, while a billpay firm may prioritize other features,” he said.

Besides being technically solid, embedded finance solutions have to be context-aware, too. 

“What is offered by the marketplace needs to be in the context of what the seller may need based on the maturity of their business,” he added.

For example, a seller using a marketplace for passive income has fundamentally different needs than one whose sole distribution channel is the marketplace itself. The infrastructure has to be adaptable to seller maturity, platform behavior, and verticals, without forcing rigid standardization.

Platform-led finance, bank-powered infrastructure

J.P. Morgan Payments’ embedded suite integration in Walmart’s marketplace signals that embedded finance is becoming a critical infrastructure layer being embraced by some of the largest platforms.

“Embedded finance allows for a partnership between platforms and banks in co-creating experiences that drive end-user access to relevant financial services,” Lin said.

And this co-creation model — rooted in compliance, AI, and platform integration — is increasingly where the financial services economy is headed.

Retailers aren’t becoming banks. But they are becoming distribution channels for financial services. And banks like J.P. Morgan are choosing not to fight that shift but to power it and use it to their advantage, from behind the scenes.

[Sidebar]: The emergence of purpose-built financial tools aimed at supporting the marketplace economy

As embedded finance expands in retail, are more marketplace-specific tools like smart financing or advanced AI support on the horizon? 

“Absolutely,” asserted Lin. “At its core, embedded finance allows for a partnership between platforms and banks in co-creating experiences that drive end-user access to relevant financial services.”

He further explained, “We do not expect this innovation to cease as new technologies, including generative AI, flourish. However, such emerging technologies will only increase the need for businesses to ensure safe, transparent, and controlled infrastructure that ensures the integrity of the financial services delivered by the parties involved.”

Embedded systems in the future might be able to recommend financing offers based on real-time sales data, alert sellers to liquidity risks days in advance, and optimize cash flow across multiple platforms tailored based on seller needs and activity. 

That kind of tech intelligence could further restructure what financial operations look like for the small seller and multinational brand alike. But those benefits depend entirely on having a strong foundational layer: a secure, compliant infrastructure that makes such functionality trustworthy and actionable.