Banks that once treated deposits as a product line are now rebuilding them as a capability that can be embedded anywhere customers transact, and that shift is rewriting the playbook for balance growth, digital experience, and cost control by moving deposit manufacturing into modular, cloud-ready services that plug into apps, merchants, and partner ecosystems with enterprise-grade security and regulatory rigor. In practice, deposits-as-a-service (DaaS) marries core modernization with embedded finance, letting institutions launch new savings, wallets, and settlement accounts faster while trimming complexity across the money lifecycle.
Market momentum and adoption landscape
Data and growth signals
DaaS sits at the intersection of Banking-as-a-Service and embedded finance, abstracting deposit products behind APIs and orchestration while keeping bank licenses, controls, and balance sheets central. Adoption is rising as cost-to-serve pressures intensify, time-to-market shrinks, and composable architectures become the norm; notably, FIS’s Harmony Gap research found 54% of organizations cite operational efficiency as the biggest internal friction. In Germany and the EU, PSD2/PSD3, instant payments, and robust digital identity standards are accelerating cloud-ready cores and digital onboarding as banks seek resilience and regulatory clarity.
Real-world applications and case snapshots
Retail and auto captive banks use DaaS to spin up savings tied to loyalty, while fintechs and merchants embed accounts and wallets natively in apps and marketplaces to keep funds in flow. Corporates and SMEs extend this to sweep and settlement accounts, consolidating cash management within unified portals. The shared benefit is speed—faster product launches, unified servicing, and materially lower operational complexity.
Case study deep dive — FIS and BMW Bank GmbH
Objectives and scope
BMW Bank set out to accelerate deposit growth, modernize digital experience, and streamline operations by aligning deposits with lending on a scalable platform. The program migrated more than 300,000 deposit accounts and went live in Q2 2025 in Germany, targeting higher service levels and future-ready growth.
Technology stack — K-CORE24 and K-e-Banking
The solution centers on FIS K-CORE24, a core tuned for German regulation and market needs, and a renewed K-e-Banking platform delivering secure UX with two-factor authentication. Merchant capabilities enable direct bank–merchant transaction processing, with APIs and orchestration providing cloud-ready integration end to end.
Outcomes and early indicators
Early signals show efficiency gains from reduced lifecycle complexity and higher operational throughput, with momentum in deposit acquisition and faster product iteration. Security and usability improved, matching rising expectations in a digital-first market and creating an edge through integrated platforms and quicker change cycles.
Lessons learned and replicability
A clear migration scope, staged cutover, and compliance-by-design underpinned success, reinforced by shared SLAs and continuous optimization between bank and vendor. The approach offered a blueprint for EU banks seeking embedded finance and unified platforms without sacrificing control.
Expert perspectives and stakeholder views
Banking executives
Leaders highlight cost-to-serve, growth, risk controls, and time-to-value as the core rationale, noting that governance and change management determine whether modular cores deliver promised outcomes. Clarity on ownership and decision rights proved decisive.
Technology providers and integrators
Providers stress open APIs, event-driven patterns, and robust migration tooling, with reliability, observability, and resilience as nonnegotiable. Clean interfaces and repeatable runbooks reduce risk during cutover and scale.
Regulators and risk leaders
Supervisors emphasize data protection, DORA-grade operational resilience, AML/KYC, and third-party risk, expecting transparent controls, audit trails, and strong customer authentication such as 2FA/SCA. Continuous evidence gathering is now standard.
Strategic implications and operating models
Operating efficiency and the harmony gap
Closing the harmony gap requires mapping complexity hotspots and aligning processes, platforms, and KPIs to standardization and automation. Banks that codify this alignment sustain efficiency rather than chase it.
Embedded finance plays and partner ecosystems
DaaS enables bank–merchant–fintech triads that distribute deposit functionality through digital channels and loyalty ecosystems. Revenue mixes span interchange, float, subscription, and compliant data-enabled cross-sell.
Security, compliance, and trust by design
Trust scales when SCA, privacy controls, and fraud analytics are embedded into every journey, paired with continuous compliance and resilience testing. This reduces friction while preserving defense-in-depth.
Customer experience and merchant integration
Seamless onboarding, instant account issuance, and integrated servicing make deposits feel native to the channel. Clear merchant flows and simplified settlement increase stickiness and reduce support load.
Future outlook — where deposits as a service is headed
Near-term roadmap (12–24 months)
Expect expanded DaaS bundles spanning savings, term deposits, and cash management, wider instant payments, and richer identity orchestration. KPI-driven migration waves will guide experience modernization.
Medium-term shifts (2–5 years)
Ecosystem integration will deepen across marketplaces, mobility platforms, and OEM finance, while configurable product factories and policy-as-code improve agility. Interoperability standards will enhance portability and vendor flexibility.
Risks, trade-offs, and mitigations
Vendor lock-in, data residency, and concentration risk require exit plans, data portability, and regional deployment options. Operational continuity hinges on chaos testing, redundancy, and outcome-based SLAs, alongside ethical data use and explicit consent.
Metrics, KPIs, and evaluation framework
Growth and adoption metrics
Track deposit growth rate, acquisition cost, activation, and product velocity to quantify scale and relevance.
Efficiency and reliability metrics
Monitor cost-to-serve, straight-through processing, uptime, and incident MTTR to verify operational gains.
Experience and security metrics
Measure NPS/CSAT, digital task completion, fraud rates, SCA success, and dispute cycle times to balance delight and defense.
Conclusion and call to action
DaaS proved to be a pragmatic path to growth and efficiency, as shown by the FIS–BMW Bank rollout that unified core modernization with secure digital channels and merchant enablement. The next steps centered on setting value targets, selecting modular stacks, sequencing migration waves by KPI impact, and operationalizing resilience so that deposits could flow wherever customers choose to engage.
