Trustly, the international payments platform for digital Account-to-Account transactions (A2A), has announced the acquisition of the UK-headquartered Open Banking Payments platform Ecospend.
Ecospend’s UK A2A product and full bank connectivity will complement and “enable Trustly to deliver a … product in the UK, and further accelerate its UK roll-out – one of Europe’s most rapidly growing A2A regions and a core growth market for Trustly.”
Four years after PSD2 made Open Banking a regulatory requirement in the UK, the market presents “a dynamic ecosystem, with rapidly accelerating consumer adoption, and strong transaction volume growth.”
As previously announced, the UK is “one of Trustly’s core growth markets.”
Having set an ambitious target to be the game-changing market leader in the UK, “the acquisition of Ecospend now accelerates Trustly’s journey towards that target.”
Ecospend, founded in 2017, is “a FCA UK regulated A2A payments provider powering the next generation of open banking based payments and financial data services.”
Ecospend serves clients in “a range of industries, including Public Sector where the company has a key contract with the tax authority of the UK government, HMRC, which went live in March 2021.”
In the past year, Ecospend has “processed over £5bn in A2A payments to over 2 million consumers.”
Ecospend’s strong UK Payment Initiation and Account Information Services (PIS & AIS), as well as connectivity with 80+ UK banks “makes it a strong fit with Trustly’s collection capabilities and wider European footprint.”
Johan Tjärnberg, Group CEO of Trustly, comments:
“I am delighted to welcome Ecospend to Trustly. This is a perfect strategic fit and I am convinced that it will enable us to deliver a market-leading product in the UK, allowing us to capture opportunities and accelerate our current UK expansion.”
Metin Erkman, Founder of Ecospend, states:
“Together with Trustly we will be able to further accelerate our expansion in the UK and continue to raise the bar for service excellence to our customers. We will continue to leverage our market-leading technology and bank connectivity in the UK and, together with Trustly, broaden our capabilities to stretch across Europe and further markets. We are really excited to join the Trustly family.”
The transaction is “subject to customary regulatory approvals.”
The parties, Trustly AB and Ecospend Technologies Ltd, “have agreed to not disclose any financial details.”
Founded in 2008, Trustly claims to be “a global leader in Open Banking Payments. Our digital account-to-account platform redefines the speed, simplicity and security of payments, linking some of the world’s most prominent merchants with consumers directly from their online banking accounts.”
Trustly can “handle the entire payment journey, setting us apart from the competition and enabling us to offer an attractive alternative to the traditional card networks at a lower cost. Today we serve 8,100 merchants, connecting them with 525 million consumers and 6,300 banks in over 30 countries; and in 2021 we processed over $28 billion in transaction volume in our global network.”
They are “a licensed Payment Institution under the second payment services directive (PSD2) and operate under the supervision of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority in Europe.”
In the US, they “are state regulated as required to serve our target markets.”
Founded in 2017, Ecospend “is an Open Finance Technology platform.”
In 2021 Ecospend “won one of the largest ever Open Banking contracts, with HMRC.”
In the past year Ecospend “has processed over £5bn in transaction volume from its client portfolio which, in addition to the UK Government, includes several blue chip private sector clients such as ITV, Toolstation, Anglian Water and London Mutual Credit Union.”
Ecospend operates “under the supervision of the UK FCA.”
