Trustly

What Is Trustly?

Card payments carry a structural cost that most merchants accept without questioning: interchange fees, scheme fees, chargeback risk, and a settlement delay of days rather than seconds. For high-volume or high-risk merchants — online casinos, crypto exchanges, subscription businesses — those costs compound quickly, and card networks are often reluctant to onboard the riskiest verticals at all.

Trustly's answer, built in Stockholm since 2008, is to skip cards entirely. The platform initiates payments directly from a customer's bank account using open banking rails, moving funds account-to-account (A2A) with near-instant settlement and materially lower chargeback exposure than a card transaction carries. No card number, no card network, no multi-day settlement wait. Founded as Glue Finance before rebranding, the company has grown that idea into a network reportedly reaching around 12,000 banks across 33 countries.

The product that made Trustly's name is Pay N Play, an iGaming-specific flow that merges login, identity verification, and deposit into a single step. A player authenticates with their bank, and the deposit and KYC data arrive together, with the whole process reportedly completing in under six seconds. That speed advantage, combined with instant payouts, made Trustly the default pay-by-bank rail for European online gambling operators long before "open banking" became a mainstream commerce term.

Growth into that dominant iGaming position came with a cost the company has had to publicly reckon with. Sweden's financial regulator hit Trustly with a SEK 130 million anti-money-laundering fine in 2022, tied directly to gaps in how it screened customers in that same high-risk vertical. That history matters for anyone evaluating Trustly today, and it belongs in this review alongside the product's genuine strengths.

Key Features

How Does Pay N Play Actually Work?

A player lands on a gambling operator's site, clicks deposit, and authenticates through their own bank's login flow — the same credentials they already use for online banking. Trustly pulls verified identity data (name, date of birth, address) from that bank authentication, satisfying KYC requirements without a separate registration form, while the deposit itself moves directly from the player's account. Reported completion time is under six seconds, materially faster than typical card-and-registration flows that require a separate sign-up step before the first deposit clears.

A 2025 pilot, branded Trustly ID, adds biometric login on top of that flow, aiming to cut returning-player checkout to under 20 seconds. For operators competing on deposit friction — a meaningful driver of conversion in iGaming — that speed is a genuine product advantage, not a marketing claim.

What Happens Beyond iGaming?

Trustly's account-to-account rails extend to e-commerce checkout, instant payouts and refunds, and funding flows for crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Binance, and Bitstamp. The 2023 merger with SlimPay, a French recurring-payments specialist, extended Trustly's reach into subscription and recurring pay-by-bank billing across Southern Europe. It is a use case the original Pay N Play product was never built for.

In September 2025, Trustly became a direct participant in Swish, Sweden's dominant payment app used by roughly 8.7 million people. Direct participation, rather than routing through an intermediary, should reduce settlement friction for Swedish merchants specifically, though the practical impact outside Sweden is limited.

Does Trustly Replace a Card Processor?

Not entirely, and merchants should not treat it that way. Trustly moves money from bank accounts, not cards, so a customer without online banking access, or one who simply prefers paying by card, is not served by Trustly alone. Most merchants running Trustly do so alongside a card processor — Stripe, Adyen, or a domestic acquirer. They use pay-by-bank for the transactions where its speed and lower chargeback risk matter most, rather than as a full replacement for card acceptance.

How Broad Is Trustly's Bank Coverage?

Roughly 12,000 connected banks across 33 countries is the figure Trustly cites. That reach spans well beyond the EU into markets like the US, where the company has built a growing client base including DraftKings among others. For a European merchant evaluating Trustly specifically for SEPA-area coverage, the relevant question is depth in your target markets, not the global headline number — and that is worth confirming directly during a sales conversation.

Pricing

Trustly has no public pricing page. Merchant rates are negotiated individually based on transaction volume, vertical, and risk profile — a gambling operator processing high-frequency deposits is priced differently from an e-commerce merchant running occasional recurring bills. Unofficial third-party estimates suggest rates around 1.5% of transaction value plus a small per-transaction minimum, but Trustly has not confirmed this publicly. Prospective merchants should treat it as a rough starting point rather than a quote.

The pricing opacity mirrors most of the payment industry at this scale — Adyen and Worldline are similarly quote-based. It stands in contrast to Stripe's published percentage-plus-fixed-fee model, which lets a merchant estimate costs before contacting sales.

EU Compliance & Privacy

Trustly Group AB is licensed as a payment institution under PSD2 by Finansinspektionen, Sweden's financial supervisory authority, and holds FCA authorisation in the UK. It also carries ISO 27001 certification. The company is headquartered in Stockholm and majority-owned by Nordic Capital, a Stockholm-headquartered European private equity firm that acquired its stake from Bridgepoint Capital in 2018. That means there is no non-European parent company anywhere in Trustly's ownership structure.

This compliance picture carries real history worth stating plainly. In February 2022, Finansinspektionen fined Trustly SEK 130 million and issued a formal warning. The regulator found the company had misidentified who legally counted as a "customer" under Swedish anti-money-laundering law, a gap that excluded a large share of actual customers from AML monitoring entirely. This failure was concentrated in Trustly's largest business line at the time — gambling — a sector regulators treat as inherently higher-risk for money laundering. Trustly says it corrected its interpretation of "customer" and established a dedicated AML governance function following the fine, and Finansinspektionen judged the warning and fine sufficient rather than pursuing licence revocation. No further sanction against Trustly has been reported since, but the concentration in iGaming that caused the original gap has not gone away — it remains Trustly's largest vertical.

Who It's Best For

iGaming and gambling operators wanting fast, KYC-embedded deposits and instant payouts, where Pay N Play's speed genuinely outperforms card-and-registration flows. This remains Trustly's core strength and largest customer base.

E-commerce and subscription merchants looking to add account-to-account payments alongside existing card acceptance, particularly for high-value purchases or recurring billing where chargeback exposure or card decline rates are a persistent problem.

Crypto exchanges and fintechs needing instant funding and withdrawal rails that connect directly to customer bank accounts rather than routing through card networks.

If your business needs straightforward, low-risk card acceptance with fully transparent published pricing, a card-first processor like Stripe is the simpler starting point. Where instant bank-to-bank settlement, lower chargeback risk, or KYC-embedded onboarding matters more than pricing transparency, Trustly is worth the sales conversation — with eyes open about its regulatory history.

The Verdict

Trustly built and still leads the pay-by-bank category that most of the payments industry is now trying to catch up to. Pay N Play remains a genuinely well-designed product for the iGaming use case it was built around. The 2022 AML fine is not ancient history that can be waved away — it exposed a real gap in how Trustly classified customers in its highest-risk vertical, and that vertical concentration persists today. Weighed against a Stockholm HQ, European PE ownership, no published pricing, and a since-remediated compliance failure with no repeat sanctions, Trustly earns a cautious recommendation. It is strong for the use cases it specialises in, but worth extra diligence given its regulatory history and gambling-sector concentration.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Trustly regulated and does it keep data in the EU?

Yes. Trustly Group AB is licensed as a payment institution under PSD2 by Finansinspektionen, the Swedish financial supervisory authority, and is headquartered in Stockholm. It also holds FCA authorisation in the UK. The company is majority-owned by Nordic Capital, a Stockholm-headquartered European private equity firm, with no non-European parent company in its ownership structure.

How does Trustly compare to Stripe for accepting payments?

Stripe is primarily a card-and-wallet processor with a self-serve dashboard and published pricing. Trustly is a pay-by-bank specialist: it moves money directly from a customer's bank account via open banking, with instant settlement and lower chargeback risk, but pricing is quote-based rather than published. Many merchants run Trustly alongside a card processor like Stripe rather than as a full replacement. Pay-by-bank suits use cases such as iGaming deposits or recurring collection, where card fees and chargeback exposure are a concern.

How much does Trustly charge merchants?

Trustly does not publish a standard rate card. Pricing is negotiated per merchant based on transaction volume, vertical, and risk profile, and prospective merchants need to request a quote. Unofficial third-party estimates put typical rates around 1.5% of transaction value plus a small per-transaction minimum, but this is not an officially confirmed figure.

Who is Trustly best suited for?

Trustly is strongest for iGaming and gambling operators needing fast, KYC-embedded deposits through Pay N Play, and for e-commerce, crypto exchange, or subscription businesses wanting to accept account-to-account payments alongside cards. It is less relevant for merchants who only need simple card acceptance with fully transparent, self-serve published pricing.

What happened with Trustly's 2022 AML fine?

In February 2022, Finansinspektionen fined Trustly SEK 130 million (about EUR 12 million) and issued a formal warning for anti-money-laundering deficiencies. The regulator found Trustly had misidentified who legally counted as a "customer" under Swedish AML law. That gap excluded a large share of actual customers from AML monitoring, concentrated in its largest business area at the time, gambling. Trustly said it had already begun remediation, including a new AML governance function and additional compliance resources, and Finansinspektionen judged the warning and fine sufficient rather than pursuing licence revocation. No further AML sanction against Trustly has been reported since.