Trustly UK Transaction Value Hits $16 Billion for H1 2024

Open banking payments firm Trustly says it has seen a surge in transaction value.

The company announced Tuesday (Aug. 13) that it processed 13.1 billion pounds ($16 billion) in payments in the U.K. between January to June of this year. That’s compared to the 13.6 billion pounds Trustly handled over the entirety of 2023.

“Trustly’s strong performance highlights the growing adoption of open banking more broadly, with one in nine people in the UK reportedly using open banking services as of October 2023,” the company said in a news release.

Also Tuesday, the company announced it had named Mitchell Powers as its senior vice president for the U.K. He joins Trustly from online payments processor GoCardless, where he had served as vice president and general manager.

“The company has gone from strength to strength over the past 12 months,” Powers said. “I’m excited to be joining Trustly for its vision, its clear differentiators and — most importantly — its potential to completely revolutionize the way people pay for things in the United Kingdom.”

PYMNTS spoke in June with Trustly CEO Alex Gonthier about the challenge of introducing open banking/pay-by-bank into the eCommerce space.

“The thing that’s interesting is that no one has cracked the code yet on eCommerce,” Gonthier told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “No one has cracked the code because we’re fighting against credit cards that have extremely rich rewards programs.”

To compete, he said, pay-by-bank providers must offer their customers incentives like cashback or rewards programs, without erasing the cost savings for merchants. Trustly has found some eCommerce success from the travel sector, and with payments that traditionally have been done with debit cards, such as healthcare and vet bills.

“You can think of us as the ‘next-gen’ paper check,” Gonthier said, adding that despite its challenges, he is optimistic about the future of pay by bank and open banking.

“In open banking, you have the absolute unique advantage over debit cards, the absolute unique advantage of seeing a consumer’s transactions in real time,” Gonthier said. “And with that, we actually see them on debit cards, on Venmo, on PayPal, on Zelle, on paper checks, wire transfer, we see everything.”

In a separate interview, PYMNTS spoke with Christina Potter, head of eCommerce at Trustly, about the benefits of open banking in the retail space.

For consumers, she said, paying via bank “allows them to leverage other payment methods beyond credit cards,” which she pointed out can be an expensive option, considering the current interchange rate environment.