PRESS RELEASE
Defacto and Mambu bring embedded SME financing to one of France's leading financial institutions
AMSTERDAM, 12th August 2026
The implementation enables Defacto to automate payment disbursements and repayments while meeting the operational and regulatory requirements of institutional banking partners. Rather than building and maintaining complex, direct bank integrations in-house, Defacto uses Mambu Payments for SEPA connectivity through a single and modern REST API, giving it real-time visibility across payment flows and a reusable architecture that is already being extended to a second institutional partner.
Most notably, Mambu Payments allows Defacto to operate directly on top of its existing accounts at its institutional banking partner. Rather than rebuilding its banking setup around a third party, Defacto keeps its existing tier-1 banking relationship intact and simply automates the payment operations layer on top of it — a more elegant solution than the rigid setup of traditional Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) models, which require fintechs to open new accounts with a provider's custodian bank.
Since launching in 2021, Defacto has financed more than €1.5 billion for over 25,000 SMEs across five European markets. Working with Mambu, Defacto progressed from initial product scoping in July 2025 to beta launch in November 2025 before rolling the solution into full production in January 2026.
As embedded finance scales into regulated financial services, payment infrastructure has become a critical component of bringing new products to market. Mambu Payments removes the technical burden of building and maintaining bespoke bank integrations, enabling fintechs to focus on innovation while accelerating deployment.
“Working with institutional banking partners requires payments infrastructure that is secure, reliable and built for scale. Mambu Payments allowed us to focus our engineering efforts on delivering value for our customers rather than building and maintaining complex banking connectivity. The result is a flexible payments foundation that supports our current programmes while giving us the confidence to expand to additional partners in the future."
Jordane Giuly, CEO & Co-Founder, Defacto
"As more financial institutions embrace embedded finance, payment infrastructure becomes a real differentiator. Defacto’s implementation demonstrates how modern, API-first infrastructure enables fintechs to launch faster and scale institutional partnerships without building bespoke bank integrations. By automating the underlying payment layer, Mambu Payments provides the real-time connectivity that allows Defacto to deploy its own lending programmes directly into the infrastructure of one of France’s leading financial institutions"
Victor Mithouard, VP Payments & Strategy, Mambu
The partnership highlights Mambu's growing momentum in payments across Europe and demonstrates how regulated fintechs can modernise payment operations through composable, API-first infrastructure rather than investing in bespoke connectivity projects.
© Mambu 2026