Trustly Review

Trustly is a Swedish open-banking payments company, launched in Stockholm in 2008, that moves money directly from a shopper's bank account to a merchant's — bypassing the card networks entirely. It is the largest pay-by-bank provider in the world by volume: its full year 2025 results report processed volume up 17.6% to SEK 1,059.0 billion, the first year it has carried more than $100 billion in total payment value, and it passed 120 million users in April 2026. Revenue, however, fell 12% on a constant-currency basis to SEK 2,427.7 million and it made a SEK 565.0 million loss after tax, a year into a 24-month transformation programme. It is regulated in Sweden and the UK, and in February 2022 the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority issued it a warning and a SEK 130 million fine for serious anti-money-laundering failings. It publishes no merchant pricing.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Trustly’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

The pitch, stated honestly

Every argument for pay by bank is an argument about interchange. A card payment carries a fee set by the card networks that no merchant, however large, can negotiate to zero. A bank-to-bank payment does not carry it at all. That is not a discount a salesperson can withdraw; it is a different set of rails. Trustly's whole business is persuading merchants that the friction of asking a shopper to log in to their bank is worth less than the interchange it removes.

On a $12 basket it is not. On a $600 booking, a monthly utility bill or a repeat subscription with a customer who already trusts you, it very often is. That is the entire decision, and the rest of this review is about what it costs and what you give up.

The company

Trustly was launched in Stockholm in 2008 and remains headquartered there, with US operations run from San Carlos, California and offices across Europe and in Canada and Brazil. Its own about page lists more than 900 staff and shareholders including Nordic Capital, which has owned since 2018, Alfvén & Didrikson since 2011 and BlackRock since 2020. Its US presence came largely from the merger with PayWithMyBank; it has since acquired Ecospend in the UK and SlimPay in France.

The scale numbers are large and worth reading precisely. Trustly's full year 2025 results, published on 30 April 2026, report processed transaction volume up 17.6% to SEK 1,059.0 billion — in the company's own words the first time it has processed more than $100 billion in total payment value — and in April 2026 it announced passing 120 million users worldwide, with about 15 million in the UK, roughly 64 million across Europe and at least 100 million US consumers having granted data access. We have seen a considerably larger volume figure circulating in secondary write-ups; it does not match anything Trustly itself has published and we have disregarded it.

Volume up, revenue down

The full year 2025 results are the part of the Trustly story a merchant should read before the marketing. Processed volume rose 17.6% to SEK 1,059.0 billion, the first year above $100 billion of total payment value. Revenue went the other way: SEK 2,427.7 million for the year, a 12% decline on a constant-currency basis, with adjusted EBITDA of SEK 353.0 million and a loss after tax of SEK 565.0 million. The fourth quarter was better — revenue of SEK 650.0 million, up 5% on constant currency — and the company frames 2025 as year one of a 24-month transformation programme, during which it merged its previously separate Americas and Europe organisations into a single global operating model. It also issued a EUR 375 million corporate bond in October 2025.

Moving more money for less revenue is what repricing looks like, and it can be a deliberate share grab rather than a warning sign. But it is worth knowing when you are being quoted: a business that is losing money while restructuring has an incentive to write volume now and revisit pricing later. Ask what happens to your rate at renewal, and get the answer in the contract.

The regulatory record

On 22 February 2022 the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority issued Trustly Group AB a warning and a SEK 130 million administrative fine. The investigation, opened in October 2020, covered January to August 2020 and found that Trustly had not complied with central parts of the anti-money-laundering framework: deficiencies in its general risk assessment, its risk assessment of individual customers, its customer due diligence procedures and guidelines, the due diligence measures themselves and its ongoing monitoring, with a large portion of customers left outside those measures entirely. The regulator called the deficiencies severe and located them in Trustly's then-largest business area, the gambling sector.

Four years on, Trustly remains authorised and supervised in Sweden and the UK, and we found no record of the decision being overturned on appeal. A merchant does not need to treat a 2022 AML finding as disqualifying — most large payments institutions have something on their file — but a compliance team approving the vendor will find it, and it is better found here than in a due-diligence questionnaire.

What you buy instead of a chargeback

This is the part merchants get wrong. Removing the card removes the card's dispute machinery, and that cuts both ways: no 120-day chargeback window hanging over settled revenue, but also no automatic protection when a payment goes bad. Bank rails have their own failure modes — insufficient funds, administrative returns, stopped payments, unauthorised claims, frozen accounts — and Trustly's answer is to sell cover for them.

The Full Guarantee covers all return codes and costs more. The Partial Guarantee tiers cost less and cover NSF and administrative returns only, explicitly excluding unauthorised transactions, stopped payments and frozen accounts. Those three exclusions are precisely the categories that correlate with fraud and with disputes, so the cheaper tier is cheaper for a reason. Read the excluded return codes before you read the rate; the exclusion list is the product.

Pricing, or the absence of it

Trustly publishes no merchant rates in any market. Its US content makes the case for pay by bank at length against the cost of cards, and never states its own price. Its guarantee documentation is explicit that pricing questions go to a sales representative or merchant success manager. Figures around 1.5% of transaction value with a per-transaction minimum circulate for Europe; we could not corroborate them for the United States and would not put weight on them.

Practically, this means you cannot evaluate Trustly on paper. Go into the conversation with the numbers that decide it: your current effective card cost, your average order value, and the return rate you would expect on bank debits from your customer base. Then price the guarantee tiers against that return rate. A quote that beats interchange but leaves unauthorised returns uncovered is not necessarily a saving.

The consumer-facing gap

Trustly's Trustpilot score is 2.8 out of 5 across 3,361 reviews. That sample is tiny for a company handling this much volume, and the population is self-selecting: a consumer usually only learns Trustly's name when a payment has already failed, frequently on a gambling withdrawal. It is not a fair scorecard for merchant service.

It is still a real warning. The recurring complaint is that money appeared to be stuck somewhere between the bank and the merchant and there was no way to reach anyone — Trustly runs no consumer phone line. That call comes to you. Before enabling pay by bank, agree with Trustly how a stuck payment is escalated and how fast, and make sure your own support team has that path written down.

Our take

Trustly earns a B-. The technology is real, the cost argument is structural rather than promotional, the company is large, regulated and well owned, and pay by bank is plainly becoming a mainstream US option rather than a European curiosity. It is marked down for a serious 2022 anti-money-laundering sanction, for publishing no pricing at all, for a guarantee model whose cheaper tiers exclude exactly the risks that hurt, for a consumer support record that will surface on your own helpdesk, and for financials that are moving the wrong way while the business restructures. Treat it as a way to move a slice of high-value volume off the card networks, negotiate the guarantee tier as carefully as the rate, and keep cards on for everyone else.