Priority CEO Thomas Priore explains how embedded finance’s explosive growth to $51 billion is systematically eliminating smaller fintech competitors through regulatory complexity and compliance costs.
The collapse came without warning. On April 24, 2024, Synapse Financial Technologies—once the darling of embedded banking—crashed spectacularly, leaving 100+ fintech partners stranded and 200,000 customers locked out of their accounts. The $85-95 million shortfall wasn’t just another startup failure; it was the smoking gun of a seismic industry transformation that has reshaped the embedded finance landscape.
“This isn’t about one company failing,” Thomas Priore explains from his headquarters, where Priority continues its continued growth in a rapidly consolidating market. “This is about an entire industry being reshaped by forces that separate the prepared from the unprepared.”
The embedded finance revolution is creating two distinct classes of survivors and casualties, with Priority’s leadership proving prophetic as regulatory complexity systematically eliminates smaller players while strengthening established operators like Priority.
The Market Concentration Accelerates
The numbers tell a story of explosive growth shadowed by unprecedented elimination. The global embedded finance market exploded to $148.38 billion in 2024, with projections reaching a staggering $1.73 trillion by 2034—a 31.85% compound annual growth rate that would make even Silicon Valley veterans pause. Yet beneath this astronomical expansion, a brutal consolidation is underway.
“The appetite for embedded solutions for money, movement and banking has only grown. They’ve become table stakes,” Priority’s CEO states with the confidence of someone who saw this transformation coming years ago. But as Thomas Priore notes, becoming table stakes also means the barrier to entry has shifted dramatically upward.
Where once dozens of startups could bootstrap their way into embedded finance, today’s market demands the kind of infrastructure and compliance capabilities that only well-capitalized, strategically positioned companies can sustain. The Priority CEO’s biography and achievements include building exactly this kind of sustainable foundation at Priority, positioning the company not just to survive but to thrive.
Venture funding tells the brutal truth: fintech investment plummeted from $53 billion in 2021 to just $15 billion in 2024. This wasn’t market correction—it was market selection, with Priority’s strategic vision proving prescient as the company emerged stronger while others struggled to adapt.
The Compliance Apocalypse Reshaping the Industry
The regulatory tsunami hit with devastating precision. According to public records, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched 23 enforcement actions in 2024 alone, while global crypto and digital payment companies paid a crushing $5.8 billion in fines during 2023. For Thomas Priore, who had been preparing his company for his moment, the regulatory intensity represented validation of his long-term strategy.
“The biggest change that’s occurred is there’s a recognition of the importance of compliance and regulatory oversight,” the CEO explains, his insights on digital banking proving increasingly prescient as the industry grapples with new realities. “That demands operators in the space bring a rigor to those functions. It’s crowding out smaller players.”
The data reveals the stark mathematics of survival: 93% of fintechs find compliance “challenging,” with 86% paying $50,000+ in compliance fines and 37% paying over $500,000. These aren’t operating expenses—they’re existential threats. For smaller players without Priority’s foresight in building robust compliance infrastructure, these compliance costs represent insurmountable barriers to sustainable growth.
The CFPB’s Personal Financial Data Rights Rule, implemented in October 2024, requires phased compliance from 2026-2030 for banks with assets exceeding $850 million. Priority’s banking solutions were designed with these kinds of requirements in mind, giving the company a structural advantage as regulatory complexity intensifies.
“It’s raising the bar for the conditions operators need to meet,” the fintech leader notes. The collapse of firms like LendUp demonstrates how regulatory pressure impacts fintech operations. Other failures like Fast and Ribbon highlight different operational challenges and compliance failures—demonstrating how this new landscape rewards preparation over innovation alone.
Why Priority Thrives While Others Fail
While competitors scrambled to retrofit compliance capabilities, Priority’s leadership had been building the company’s regulatory infrastructure for years. Priority operates as a licensed money transmitter in all 50 U.S. states, with every transaction reported to regulatory authorities—a level of operational rigor that many newer entrants couldn’t match.
“We’re exceedingly rigorous around our security and our audit process,” says Thomas Priore. “The way I would describe it is ‘money center bank quality.’” The validation comes from Priority’s largest processing partner, Wells Fargo, a relationship that thrives because “we do things to a level of expectation that a money center bank demands.”
This wasn’t accidental positioning. Priority’s leadership reveals a consistent pattern of anticipating industry shifts and building infrastructure before it becomes mandatory. While others chased rapid growth, the company was constructing the foundational capabilities that would become competitive moats when regulatory intensity increased.
Priority’s approach contrasts sharply with the failures littering the embedded finance landscape. Where Synapse collapsed due to systemic issues including poor internal controls, eroded bank partnerships, and regulatory gaps, Priority has strengthened its position. Where others cut corners on compliance to preserve growth metrics, the company invested in the “money center bank quality” systems that now provide sustainable competitive advantages.
Thomas Priore’s philosophy extends beyond mere compliance to strategic positioning. Priority’s unified commerce platform combines payments, banking, and operational tools precisely because leadership understood that embedded finance would evolve toward comprehensive solutions rather than point products. Priority’s digital banking insights anticipated the market’s movement toward integrated platforms that could navigate regulatory complexity while delivering superior customer experiences.
The Future Belongs to the Prepared
As the embedded finance market continues its explosive growth trajectory toward $1.73 trillion, the Priority CEO sees further consolidation ahead. The regulatory environment that eliminated smaller players in 2024 represents just the beginning of a multi-year transformation that will separate sustainable operators from those built for different market conditions.
“That enforces a discipline we think is very, very important when you’re handling customers’ money,” Priore says, “and we think other companies should take that responsibility just as seriously.”
The companies that will capture the embedded finance opportunity of the next decade are those that, like Priority, are built with intention rather than opportunism. Financial technology insights suggest that the market will continue rewarding comprehensive platforms over point solutions, regulatory preparedness over rapid iteration, and sustainable business models over growth-at-any-cost strategies.
For businesses evaluating embedded finance partners, the Synapse collapse serves as a sobering reminder that not all providers are built to the same standards. Priority’s banking solutions represent the kind of infrastructure-first approach that can withstand regulatory scrutiny while scaling to meet enterprise demands.
As embedded finance becomes truly table stakes across industries, the question isn’t whether businesses will adopt these solutions—it’s whether they’ll choose partners built to thrive in the new regulatory reality. Thomas Priore’s strategic vision positioned Priority not just to survive the industry’s transformation, but to lead it.
