The licence is the new moat — and BaaS providers are about to lose their best customers to it

Opinion · Finlane Editorial · Deals & Market Moves

Kraken's parent is buying a bank. A day after raising $1.85bn, Ramp asked a US regulator for a charter of its own.

These are two very different companies on two continents, making the same decision: they would rather own the licence than rent it. We think that's the most important pattern of the week for anyone selling infrastructure to large platforms.

What happened

Payward agreed to buy Saldo Bank, a small digital bank with a Lithuanian licence, SEPA access and an embedded-lending business. The plan is to pay interest on deposits, lend to SMEs and issue cards across the EU from its own balance sheet. Ramp filed for a national trust bank charter to hold digital assets and manage money as a fiduciary. It was careful to say it won't take deposits and will keep its partner banks. But the direction is clear.

Why now

Scale is the first reason. Ramp says annualised revenue has passed $2bn. At that size, the share of interchange, float and lending margin that goes to a partner bank stops being a line item and becomes a board discussion. Then there's control. Anyone who lived through the BaaS shake-out of recent years knows a partner's compliance problem can quickly become your customers' frozen account. Owning the licence means owning that risk, and for a big platform that can be the safer choice. And licences are available. Small European banks with clean licences are for sale, and in the US the ICBA counts 21 trust charters approved or conditionally approved since the current administration took office. That's not a trickle.

The case against

A licence is expensive to fill. It brings capital, examiners, a much heavier compliance function and slower product cycles. Plenty of fintechs in the last cycle spent years building a bank and forgot to build a product. The US route is also contested: the ICBA is suing the OCC over exactly the kind of charter Ramp wants, and a bad ruling could freeze the whole category. So we'd put it this way. For most B2B platforms below a few billion in volume, a good BaaS partner is still cheaper, faster and safer. The licence is a moat only once you're big enough to fill it.

What we'd do

• If you run a BaaS or e-money business, look hard at your top ten clients. The fastest-growing ones are the likeliest to leave, and they'll still need processing, cards, safeguarding and FX after they do. Make sure you can sell them those pieces without the licence wrapper.
• If you sell core banking or ledgers, treat licensed platforms as a buyer segment of their own. They need a bank-grade ledger and regulatory reporting fast, and they buy like a fintech, not like a bank.
• If you own a small licensed EU bank, your licence has a price again. Get the compliance, IT and data room ready before the first call comes.
• If you're investing, ask for the regulatory roadmap, the capital plan and a realistic date for the first licensed product before paying up for it.

What we're watching

• How long EU supervisors take to approve Payward and Saldo. Closing is pencilled in for 2027, and it will tell us how the EU feels about crypto-owned banks.
• The ICBA lawsuit, and whether Ramp's charter gets decided before the court does.
• More small licensed lenders in the Baltics and the Nordics changing hands.

If you're on either side of this, comparing BaaS, card issuing or core banking providers, Finlane lists them here.

Sources: IT Finanzmagazin · Banking Dive · Fintech Brainfood