UniCredit to serve all of Europe from Poland (interview)

Paweł Ławecki, a member of Vodeno’s management board, insists that there is no other player in Europe today with a comparably broad offering. “We have the scale, the ambition, the expertise, and the edge that comes from technology,” he emphasizes.

Piotr Sobolewski, XYZ: One might get the impression that the BaaS (banking-as-a-service) offering of Vodeno/UniCredit NV/SA has taken a back seat to the launch of UniCredit’s universal banking offer on the Polish market.

Wojciech Sobieraj, chief executive of Vodeno and chairman of the supervisory board of UniCredit NV/SA: That is precisely the nature of this business – it is inherently less visible than other solutions. Today, our BaaS services are used by 5.5 million end customers and several dozen partners. This is the case even though we have only several thousand direct customers of our universal banking business.

Who's who

Wojciech Sobieraj and Paweł Ławecki

Wojciech Sobieraj is one of the most highly regarded bankers in the Polish market. During the 2008 financial crisis, he launched and went on to lead Alior Bank. In 2017, following a change in the bank’s main shareholder to the PZU Group, he decided not to seek another term as chief executive. At that time, together with other senior managers – including Wojciech Sass, former chief executive of Nationale-Nederlanden – he began building Aion Bank and Vodeno.

Paweł Ławecki joined Vodeno’s management board in June 2025. Prior to that, he spent four years on the management board of Operator Chmury Krajowej (OChK – a cloud infrastructure company), where he was responsible for sales. He began his professional career as a consultant in Accenture’s UK practice. He later spent more than a decade working on technology and digital transformation at the rival firm BCG, first in London and then in Warsaw.

In the BaaS model, the less the customer sees, the better

So is this a kind of shadow banking?

Wojciech Sobieraj: That is precisely what embedded finance is about – the integration of financial services into applications and platforms that offer non-financial services. No one stops to think about which bank sits behind the ability to pay quickly and conveniently on a given platform, or behind the loans it offers. What matters is the user experience and the fact that everything is available in one place. In this type of business, a simple rule often applies: the less the customer sees, the better.

Good to know

BaaS: Banking Services for Rent

BaaS is short for banking-as-a-service. It involves providing banking services to non-bank entities, which can then easily integrate them into their own processes and ecosystems. As a result, fintechs and big tech companies do not need to obtain banking licenses themselves or comply with the full set of regulations imposed on the sector; instead, they can rely on services delivered by a bank that already holds such a license.

BaaS services are offered, among others, by Germany’s Solaris, the UK’s ClearBank, and America’s Green Dot. They are also provided by Vodeno and UniCredit. In this model, the former supplies the technology platform, while the latter acts as the provider of banking services. Clients can choose from, among other things, local payment accounts, cash loans, buy-now-pay-later solutions, and fast cross-border payments. They can also issue payment cards to their customers and offer them term deposits and savings accounts. The offering is set to be expanded with additional services.

Better for whom?

Wojciech Sobieraj: For the user experience itself. In the world of technology, a BaaS payment or loan should be like electricity from a wall socket – you do not think about which power plant it comes from. You simply want the light to turn on when you flip the switch. Embedding banking services directly into a platform makes finance a natural extension of its ecosystem for the customer. It simplifies life by eliminating unnecessary steps.

BaaS could account for one-third of revenues

At the November conference outlining the plans of UniCredit NV/SA, you announced that BaaS is expected to account for one-third of target revenues.

Wojciech Sobieraj: That is what we are counting on. Another third is to come from UniCredit’s banking business in Poland, with the final component generated by the business we plan to launch in Western Europe. We can already see that, following UniCredit’s acquisition of Aion Bank and Vodeno – the transaction was completed in March 2025 – interest in the new banking model has been rising, alongside our increased capacity to finance a wide range of projects. Looking at these dynamics, I would even say that I would be very surprised if BaaS accounted for only one-third of our results. The potential is significantly greater.

Good to know

Five years of Vodeno and Aion Bank

In 2020, leveraging the license of the Belgian company Monte dei Paschi, the digital Aion Bank was launched first in Belgium and then in Poland, offering innovative subscription-based banking – similar to models familiar from services like Netflix.

However, the model proved more demanding than the managers had anticipated. As a result, in 2023 the decision was made to focus on developing Vodeno, the sister company specializing in providing banking services to non-bank entities through the BaaS model. In this arrangement, Aion primarily served as the licensing entity, enabling the provision of such services.

In July 2024, Italy’s UniCredit announced the acquisition of both companies for EUR 376 million. The transaction was completed in March 2025.

Paweł Ławecki, member of Vodeno’s management board: I agree. While the global traditional banking market grows by 2–3 percent annually, BaaS – though obviously much smaller – is expanding at around 30 percent. In 2024, the BaaS market in Europe was valued at EUR 80–100 billion, and forecasts suggest it could reach nearly EUR 300–400 billion by 2030.

We are seeing enormous interest in solutions that allow non-bank institutions to expand their offerings with financial services. Even before we became part of UniCredit, we were already active in this segment across the European market. Interest comes from big tech companies, non-bank financial institutions, and service firms alike. All of them are looking at BaaS and weighing whether it is worth entering.

For some, it represents a direct revenue opportunity from distributing our products; for others, it offers a way to enhance the user experience. That, in turn, can translate into higher sales of their core products and services.

Banks are not at the center of the ecosystem – time for a change

So is it a good thing that banking is moving in this direction?

Paweł Ławecki: It’s a bit like asking whether it’s good that artificial intelligence (AI) exists. This is the market trend – we can either be part of the revolution or remain on the sidelines. Banking is certainly changing. It started with China’s Alipay, and today this trend affects most non-bank players operating globally, who want to offer payments to their users within their own ecosystems.

Recently, the platform Shopify reported that by providing banking products to merchants on its platform, it can boost sales within the ecosystem by 36 percent. Whether we like it or not, such players are going to offer banking services on their platforms. Our goal is to ensure that traditional banks also have a seat at that table.

Wojciech Sobieraj: When retail banking was taking shape in the 1960s and 1970s, only a dozen or so percent of society had any contact with a bank at all. There were mortgages and private banking – and that was essentially it. Later came an era in which some believed that banks had to sit at the center of every ecosystem and control every customer interaction. That way of thinking is now fading into history.

BaaS is not a technological novelty but a return to the proper role of banks – as institutions that do not impose themselves, but effectively support everyday life by operating in the background.

Customers want fast and convenient services. They want to use platforms and complete all steps – including payments – in one place. And they do not necessarily need to go to a bank to do so. Is that good or bad? With market growth at this scale and the embedded-finance “pie” expanding, it seems there will be more than enough room for all those willing to enter into partnerships with platforms. Such players can draw on our banking licenses and expertise to make their own ecosystems more attractive.

BaaS makes it easier to build engaging ecosystems

Let’s talk about those platforms. Today, as UniCredit/Vodeno, you serve both other financial institutions – such as Revolut or Zen.com – and players from outside the sector, including InPost, Allegro, and in Germany, Expatrio. Which of these entities today have the strongest need for “banking for rent”?

Wojciech Sobieraj: Large commerce platforms will certainly account for a significant share of demand, because that is where a large portion of customer activity is concentrated. They will not be the only ones, however. I believe that as digitalization progresses and electronic identification continues to develop, it will become natural to add payment or credit functions to an ever-growing range of services.

Paweł Ławecki: Anyone who has any kind of interaction with a user is competing for their attention. The winners will be those who build the most engaging ecosystems, where users spend as much time as possible. If a banking service is a natural extension of an existing offering and increases customer engagement, BaaS becomes the obvious answer.

One-click financial services mean higher conversion

But such integration also means additional costs and risks. Is it always worth it? Does it really matter to users that all processes are completed within a single ecosystem?

Wojciech Sobieraj: The numbers speak for themselves. Conversion rates for “one-click” purchases are 20 percent higher than when users have to leave the ecosystem. This is confirmed by research from the Baymard Institute, which shows that a complicated checkout process accounts for nearly 20 percent of cart abandonment. What is more, conversion is 30 percent higher when customers are directed, from the very first interaction, to a page with a fully integrated financial process. From the user’s perspective, the difference is enormous – poor processes are simply frustrating and are quickly reflected in the results.

Paweł Ławecki: For users, it does not matter which ecosystem they are in. What matters is that things are easier, faster, and more intuitive. A good example is Expatrio – a portal that advised students on how to obtain a visa or find student housing. It targeted people coming to Germany, among others, from India and Vietnam.

To obtain a visa, they had to open an account with a German bank – one they could not fully use. The account had to hold EUR 10,000 to prove they had sufficient means to support themselves locally.

Vodeno/UniCredit Serves Revolut, InPost, and Zen

And how did you change that?

Paweł Ławecki: Previously, users of the platform had to fly to Germany to open an account in person. That meant additional costs and a great deal of inconvenience. Thanks to integration with our solutions, Expatrio now offers remote verification using a passport, and students do not have to travel to Germany in advance at all. They open an account with a German bank entirely remotely and transfer the funds there.

And what about the implementations at Revolut, InPost, and Zen.com? What do you provide them with?

Paweł Ławecki: They are interesting, though very different, examples. For Revolut, we primarily provide transaction processing and deposit infrastructure. Put simply, thanks to our license and technology, Revolut can offer customers account numbers and deposits in PLN, covered by the deposit guarantee scheme, as well as payments via the Elixir and BLIK systems. We take on the regulatory layer and the banking “engine,” while they focus on the user interface.

In InPost’s case, the cooperation is mainly based on credit solutions such as BNPL – buy now, pay later – and purchase financing. Zen.com, in turn, can, thanks to our BaaS model, offer users additional funds for shopping without having to go through the multi-year process of building a bank from scratch. In both cases, we deliver what fintechs need most: scalability, a banking license, and advanced technology.

BaaS does not require millions of customers

These are all large companies. Is there a threshold below which BaaS no longer makes economic sense?

Paweł Ławecki: The entry threshold is not high. It is enough to have 5,000–10,000 business customers or 50,000–75,000 retail customers. At that scale, embedded finance can already be commercialized. There are more and more such ecosystems in Poland.

And what costs does such a company incur?

Paweł Ławecki: That depends on the model. Typically, the company pays a fixed fee for access to the platform and, in return, receives lower rates for transaction volume processing. The condition is achieving sufficient scale to build a margin that exceeds fixed costs. With the customer numbers I mentioned, one can assume the model has a chance to break even.

What is the cost of getting started?

Wojciech Sobieraj: From several dozen euros per integration.

How long does implementation take?

Wojciech Sobieraj: At the shortest, a week; at the longest, a year. On average, a few months.

Vodeno provides the API, and companies integrate with it. What determines the pace?

Paweł Ławecki: It depends on whether the client knows what it wants and how technologically advanced it is. Usually, the first two to three months are spent on alignment, followed by another two to three months on the integration itself. We expose the API; the client builds the user journey, embeds it in its ecosystem, and tests it across different device configurations.

And which services do such companies typically use?

Paweł Ławecki: These include local IBAN/vIBAN account numbers, loans, savings products, payments, accounts, and cards. Put simply: payments, financing, and other products – investments, cards, and savings. All of it delivered in a white-label model, under the partner’s brand.

Services built on Google Cloud

Will there be more such products?

Wojciech Sobieraj: Yes. Services such as customer identification and digital onboarding will be added, for example. As e-invoicing becomes more widespread, e-factoring and solutions streamlining B2B payments will follow.

Do companies not ask about the security risks of relying on an external provider and the cloud?

Paweł Ławecki: We design our systems with high resilience in mind. We use Google Cloud in a multi-region replication model – three regions in Europe, each with three data centers. A great many things would have to fail simultaneously for the service to go down.

Wojciech Sobieraj: For years, there were concerns about the cloud. When the war in Ukraine broke out, the National Bank of Ukraine recommended that banks migrate to the cloud within a matter of weeks. That illustrates well how cloud security is perceived today.

A new owner serving thousands of potential BaaS clients

How many partners do you have today? When we spoke in April, you said the days of onboarding every fintech just to grow the number of clients were over.

Wojciech Sobieraj: In a weaker month, we add three clients; in better months, five.

Paweł Ławecki: We will likely announce several more – perhaps even a dozen – partners soon, not only from Poland but from across Europe. Things are going very well. Some of these companies approach us directly; in other cases, we proactively propose our model to players with broad ecosystems. Sometimes we actively advise them on how their business could be transformed; at other times, new partners come to us through referrals from existing clients or partner funds.

Does the UniCredit Group help?

Paweł Ławecki: Yes – and increasingly so. For UniCredit, embedded finance is one of the key areas of rapid growth. The group serves millions of business customers, among them thousands of potential partners for whom expanding their offering with financial services would deliver tangible value.

Competition in Europe is still limited

In a previous interview, you said that with backing from the Italians you can already compete with the largest players in the sector.

Wojciech Sobieraj: We are already competing with them. There is no major tender today in which we do not take part. Nor is there a major player we would hesitate to approach – either because we would be too small or because we would be insufficiently advanced technologically.

In Europe, competition is, frankly, still not very developed. Everyone talks about BaaS, but the actual offering is limited, because the technological challenges involved are enormous. It is hard to speak of such a model when the provider does not even hold a banking license.

Paweł Ławecki: Today, there is no player in Europe with an offering as broad as ours. That applies both to product coverage and to geographic reach – across the entire European Union. We also provide the full BaaS value chain: most licensed banking products, running on one of the most advanced technology platforms available. In addition, in every credit process we are able to provide funding. Americans would call this a “one-stop shop” – a comprehensive service delivered within a single business relationship.

Importantly, this is not a side business. UniCredit already uses Vodeno’s solutions itself. As a result, every product available within our organization can also be offered to partners under the BaaS model.

No one offers everything to everyone

Is this still a phase of building scale, or is it already time to push harder on increasing the number of products per client?

Wojciech Sobieraj: We are still building scale, and the time for full “productization” of clients will come later. First, we need to get to know them well – that is a process that takes several to a dozen or so months. We do not want our partners to be familiar with just one fragment of the offering. We want to show them the full range of possibilities.

Paweł Ławecki: Often, our clients already have their own product road maps for what they want to offer users. So it is not only us building scale – the client is doing so as well, by launching successive projects, which we actively help them deliver.

Is it easy to build a global BaaS player?

Paweł Ławecki: These services are built on a banking license and deep knowledge of local markets. That is why there is no global BaaS player today that offers everything to everyone in every market. Technology platforms without a license can sell software in a SaaS model and scale it globally. BaaS requires regulation, licenses, local expertise, and very mature technology.

Wojciech Sobieraj: It is also worth remembering that Europe is one of the most challenging markets. Take the cap on interchange fees, for example – the commission charged to merchants on card transactions. In the United States or Asia, margins on card issuing are much higher. In Europe, making money on cards in a BaaS model is simply far more difficult.

Offering BaaS is a major technological challenge

If BaaS is so promising, why are other banks reluctant to enter this space?

Wojciech Sobieraj: For two reasons. First, technology. We are talking about integrating with a partner at the transactional level. A bank has to become part of another company’s codebase, which requires a completely different architecture from what most institutions have today.

Second, scale. The BaaS model only makes economic sense if you operate across multiple markets at the same time. There is one H&M in Sweden and one Zara in Spain. If a bank can serve such a company only locally, it is not a credible partner. This is a game for pan-European players that combine technological flexibility with a presence in many markets.

But Europe does have large banking groups operating in multiple countries.

Wojciech Sobieraj: It does, but we need to remember that platforms and fintechs operate 24/7. This is not a business for banks that “shut down” after 6 p.m. Every weekend is a working weekend. If people or systems are unavailable, no one will want to work with you. On top of that, there is the cloud – if a bank is not cloud-based, it has no place in this model.

Paweł Ławecki: It is also a matter of courage. Many fear that by offering such services they are supporting the competition. In reality, the world is multi-layered. In one area we compete with Revolut; in another we cooperate, sharing infrastructure and networks. Customers remain with their respective institutions. This is a situation well known, for example, from the telecommunications industry.

Banks will fit in better, but they will not disappear

Could on-demand banking become more popular than customer-facing banking?

Wojciech Sobieraj: The youngest generation does not need to go to banks. Does that mean the sector is losing importance? No – banks will simply fit more seamlessly into various systems. They will retain their key roles: lending and payments.

These discussions have been going on for many years. As far back as I can remember, there has been a lot of talk about bank disintermediation – the process in which banks cease to be direct intermediaries in customer relationships and their services are delivered in the background. This is indeed happening, but very gradually, not overnight. Bankers like to see themselves as the vanguard of change, but in reality, the world and lifestyles are evolving far faster than banking. Today, the sector has to catch up, rather than dictate the pace of consumer change.

Expansion into new markets within months

Let’s turn to UniCredit itself. The bank in Poland operates on Vodeno’s technology platform. At the conference, however, you also announced plans to enter additional markets where the bank does not yet have a physical presence. When will this happen?

Wojciech Sobieraj: It’s a matter of a few months. We are witnessing a clear acceleration in the building of a pan-European bank. Someone has to be first. Today, we talk about presence in multiple markets not because it looks good on slides, but because clients demand it. Revolut, with 65 million customers across 30 markets, is the best example. I would be surprised if UniCredit were to enter new markets without leveraging the latest technology – which is exactly what Vodeno provides.

Alongside launching UniCredit in new markets, will you also accelerate customer acquisition there for BaaS services?

Paweł Ławecki: We are already looking at the entire European Union, everywhere we can leverage our banking license. With our BaaS offering, we are already present in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Croatia. We have all these countries covered.

How exactly?

Paweł Ławecki: On each of the key markets, we have one or two representatives.

Wojciech Sobieraj: Today, only 20 percent of partners using embedded finance come from Poland.

Poland as a hub, but foreign share will grow

Will this proportion be maintained?

Wojciech Sobieraj: The imbalance will increase – but in a positive sense. Our goal is not to be the leader in Polish BaaS, but to create a European champion in this segment. Poland is a fantastic testing ground and a technology hub for us, but it is the Western European markets – Germany, Italy, and Spain – that have the critical mass to fully leverage UniCredit’s financing potential.

We want Poland to be the operational heart, but revenues must come from across Europe. If we are to serve global brands, we need to be where the heart of their business beats. That is why, in the long run, the share of foreign markets in our portfolio will grow. It is a natural stage in scaling a business based on a pan-European license.

How many more people does Vodeno need today?

Wojciech Sobieraj: As we scale, the need will certainly arise. We have ambitious plans in AI and in building centers of competence for the entire group. In that context, I would be very surprised if we did not soon double our workforce.

Sobieraj: If rivals emerge, we are ready to take them on

Will AI significantly reshape this business?

Wojciech Sobieraj: Hundreds, if not thousands, of new opportunities will emerge. We are not talking only about cost reductions, but also about changes on the consumer side – about how purchasing habits will evolve. We recently conducted a study and found that AI is now being tested virtually everywhere. There is no functionality where it could not find an application.

Where do you see yourselves in embedded finance in three years’ time?

Wojciech Sobieraj: We will certainly be one of the leading BaaS players in Europe and, most likely, the fastest-growing part of UniCredit, as the youngest business within the group. I assume we will be expanding at a pace of around one hundred BaaS clients per year.

Paweł Ławecki: We will be the natural partner for any entity that wants to offer comprehensive banking services across Europe. We have the scale, the ambition, the know-how, and a technological edge.

Wojciech Sobieraj: And if new players emerge, we are ready to take them on.

Key Takeaways

1. The interviewees are confident that Vodeno and UniCredit offer the broadest BaaS proposition in Europe. They plan to acquire around one hundred clients per year and, over the longer term, expect BaaS to account for at least one-third of UniCredit NV/SA’s operations. “Poland is a fantastic testing ground and a technology hub for us, but it is the Western European markets – Germany, Italy, and Spain – that have the critical mass to fully leverage UniCredit’s financing potential,” Wojciech Sobieraj concludes.
2. Vodeno, led by Wojciech Sobieraj, already serves several dozen partners, reaching 5.5 million end customers through them. These include users of Allegro, Revolut, InPost, Zen.com, and Expatrio. These companies operate under a BaaS model, integrating into their processes and ecosystems services that until now were reserved for licensed banks. The formal provider of banking services is UniCredit NV/SA, formerly operating as Aion Bank.
3. The BaaS market is growing much faster than traditional banking. “We see enormous interest in solutions that allow nonbank institutions to expand their offerings with financial services,” emphasizes Paweł Ławecki. For some companies, this is a direct source of revenue; for others, it is a way to improve user experience, which in turn boosts sales of core products and services.