The Infrastructure That Fuels Growth: Liberis on Capital, Ecosystems, and the Power of Embedded Finance

On a show floor dominated by AI demos and bold visions of retail media transformation, the infrastructure layer often gets overlooked. But in the background of Shoptalk 2025, companies like Liberis are powering the growth engines of modern commerce.

Per Dahlqvist, Business Development Director at Liberis, sees this invisibility as part of the point. Liberis doesn’t aim to dazzle. It aims to work—seamlessly, under the hood, giving merchants access to capital exactly when and where they need it.

Founded in the UK, Liberis has spent over a decade embedding white-labeled lending solutions into some of the world’s largest platforms—eBay, Klarna, Shop Circle, and others. The company’s reach now spans nearly a million merchants across Europe and North America. And yet, its role at Shoptalk is less about spectacle and more about strategy. In Dahlqvist’s view, embedded capital isn’t a financial service—it’s a growth mechanism.

Turning Capital Into Product Strategy

The core proposition is deceptively simple. Many merchants struggle with the same two problems: they don’t have enough capital to buy inventory, and they don’t have the budget to run ads. These are solvable issues, but conventional lending routes are rarely fit for purpose.

Rather than asking sellers to apply, wait, or prepare business plans, Liberis works through partners. Merchants receive funding offers directly inside the platforms they already use—based not on credit history, but on live transaction data. It’s capital, pre-approved and pre-integrated.

This changes the entire equation. Sellers move faster. Platforms see increased transaction volume. And because Liberis solutions are fully white-labeled, brands like “eBay Seller Capital” own the experience—and the loyalty that comes with it.

It’s a feedback loop, Dahlqvist suggests, that makes everyone in the ecosystem stronger. Capital is no longer an outside solution—it’s a native feature.

Infrastructure That Drives Retention

The real strength of Liberis isn’t just in delivering capital quickly—it’s in solving for the everyday realities that stall growth. When sellers can’t afford inventory or advertising, even the best products go unseen. Embedded lending removes that bottleneck without adding friction. What makes the Liberis model compelling isn’t just the speed of capital deployment. It’s the strategic value it creates for platforms competing for seller attention.

When a marketplace or vertical SaaS company embeds lending into its product stack, the impact is measurable. Sellers who take capital transact more. And because the process is frictionless, they’re more likely to stay.

For platforms, this creates what Dahlqvist calls a “stickiness multiplier.” Once sellers rely on a platform not just to sell, but to grow, the switching cost rises.

The company’s long-term bet is that embedded finance will become as essential as embedded payments. And just as invisible.

AI’s Role Isn’t What You Think

While much of Shoptalk’s conversation around AI focuses on customer experience and automation, Liberis is taking a different approach. It’s applying machine learning to reduce operational and underwriting costs—not to add features, but to offer better pricing.

Dahlqvist frames this as a second-order benefit: if AI helps the business run more efficiently, those savings are passed directly to merchants in the form of lower fees or broader eligibility. The technology may be behind the scenes—but the outcomes are highly tangible.

Quiet, Strategic, and Widely Deployed

Liberis doesn’t present itself as a disruptor. It doesn’t need to. Its model already runs inside some of the largest and most widely used commerce platforms on both sides of the Atlantic.

And at an event like Shoptalk, where big product launches dominate the narrative, that quiet presence makes a statement of its own. Not everything needs to be visible to be vital.

In Dahlqvist’s words, “The more value you embed beyond payments, the harder it is for sellers to leave. Lending just happens to be the one that drives growth fastest.”

What Liberis Highlights at Shoptalk 2025

📌 Capital isn’t just credit—it’s a feature embedded in the seller experience
📌 Merchants don’t need frictionless onboarding. They need frictionless funding
📌 Platforms offering lending see measurable uplifts in volume and loyalty
📌 White-label delivery lets partners keep the brand—and the relationship

Disclaimer: The above podcast episode was generated using AI based on an interview transcript. While the content remains true to the original conversation, the voices, tone, and delivery were synthesized and do not represent actual recordings of the speakers. This AI-generated format is intended to enhance accessibility and provide an alternative way to engage with the discussion.

Independently Created. Not affiliated with Shoptalk.

ClickZ is a Contentive publication in the Events division