What Is Trustly?

Trustly is a Swedish fintech company and licensed payment institution that provides open banking-based payment solutions across Europe. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Stockholm, Trustly enables merchants to accept instant bank transfers from consumers without requiring cards, separate app downloads, or wallet registrations. Trustly connects directly to over 6,300 banks in 30 European countries, making it one of the broadest open banking payment networks in Europe.

## What Is Trustly?

Trustly is an account-to-account (A2A) payment method powered by open banking. When a consumer selects Trustly at checkout, they choose their bank, log in to their online banking through Trustly's secure interface, and authorize the payment. Trustly uses open banking APIs (and screen scraping where APIs are not yet available) to initiate the transfer from the consumer's bank account to the merchant. The merchant receives instant payment confirmation.

Unlike payment aggregators that simply redirect to bank portals, Trustly provides a unified, consistent payment experience across all supported banks. The consumer interacts with Trustly's interface throughout, which is optimized for conversion and embeds directly into the merchant's checkout flow.

## How Trustly Works

The payment flow begins at checkout. The consumer selects Trustly, chooses their bank from a list (or Trustly auto-detects based on the consumer's location), and enters their online banking credentials in Trustly's secure widget. Trustly communicates with the bank via open banking APIs to authenticate the user and initiate a payment. For banks requiring Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) under PSD2, the consumer may need to approve the transaction via their banking app or SMS code. Once authorized, Trustly confirms the payment to the merchant instantly.

Settlement to the merchant depends on the agreement with Trustly or the PSP. Trustly can offer next-day settlement in most markets, and in some cases same-day settlement.

## Open Banking and PSD2

Trustly's business model is built on open banking — the principle that consumers should be able to share their financial data and initiate payments through regulated third-party providers. The European Union's PSD2 directive (Payment Services Directive 2) provides the legal framework for this, requiring banks to open their APIs to licensed payment initiation service providers (PISPs) like Trustly. This regulatory backing ensures Trustly can connect to banks reliably and securely.

## Fees

Trustly's fees for merchants vary by market, volume, and use case but are generally competitive with card processing — typically 0.5-2% per transaction. For high-volume merchants, especially in industries like iGaming and financial services, Trustly fees can be significantly lower than card processing because there are no interchange or scheme fees. The absence of chargebacks also reduces overall payment costs.

## Use Cases

Trustly has found strong adoption in several verticals:

**iGaming**: Online gambling operators use Trustly for deposits and withdrawals. Instant bank transfers are preferred by players, and the absence of chargebacks is valuable for an industry with high fraud risk.

**Financial services**: Loan providers, investment platforms, and insurance companies use Trustly for account funding and premium payments.

**E-commerce**: Online retailers offer Trustly as an alternative to cards, particularly in Scandinavian and German markets where bank transfer preferences are strong.

**Travel**: Airlines, hotels, and travel agencies accept Trustly for bookings, benefiting from lower fees and no chargebacks on high-value transactions.

## Trustly Pay Later

Trustly has expanded into deferred payments with Trustly Pay Later, allowing consumers to pay for purchases within 14 days. This adds buy-now-pay-later functionality to Trustly's bank transfer infrastructure without requiring a separate BNPL provider.

## Trustly for International Merchants

International merchants can integrate Trustly through Trustly's direct API or through PSPs like Adyen and Checkout.com. The integration provides access to consumers in 30 European countries, covering major markets like Germany, the Nordics, the UK, Spain, Poland, and the Netherlands.