Adyen to power Flatpay's payment infrastructure in the UK

Adyen and Flatpay announced a strategic payments-infrastructure partnership on 23 September 2026. Under the arrangement, the Danish payments company Flatpay will keep its direct relationships with the small businesses that use its card terminals, while Adyen becomes its financial-infrastructure partner, supplying acquiring capabilities and what the companies describe as a unified global architecture underneath Flatpay's brand.

The announcement is European in scope rather than UK-specific, but the UK is one of the seven markets Flatpay names as active: Denmark, Germany, Finland, the UK, France, the Netherlands and Italy. For the small businesses that already use Flatpay's terminals, mobile point-of-sale devices and point-of-sale systems in the UK, the immediate significance is operational rather than commercial. No pricing change, rebranding, hardware replacement or migration schedule was announced alongside the partnership.

Who does what: acquiring explained

An acquirer handles the back-end functions of card-payment acceptance, working with the card schemes to authorise and settle each transaction. The announcement does not disclose which entity holds the specific regulatory permissions for payment services to Flatpay's UK merchants, or how liability and other regulated functions are allocated between the two companies. Flatpay has been the merchant-facing brand that UK small businesses deal with directly, using its hardware and contacting it for support. Under the new arrangement, Adyen supplies the acquiring and payments architecture behind that relationship, while Flatpay retains the local merchant relationship, local support and its merchant-facing commercial model, according to both the Adyen announcement and trade-press coverage from The Paypers.

Adyen has previously said it holds direct connections to the Bank of England and to Faster Payments Services, positioning itself to support embedded financial products in the UK. The Flatpay announcement suggests this kind of infrastructure could improve authorisation rates and reliability for Flatpay's merchants, but it does not publish a baseline, a target or a measured result, so no quantified improvement can be reported.

What changes for Flatpay's UK merchants now

The announcement disclosed no immediate change to who Flatpay's UK merchants contact, what they pay, Flatpay's branding or their existing hardware. Flatpay's UK website continues to advertise 24/7 support, daily payouts and a flat per-transaction rate as its current customer offer. The technical detail of when UK transactions actually begin running over Adyen's infrastructure, and whether any merchants will need new hardware or onboarding, was not disclosed in the announcement.

Flatpay's current UK pricing

Flatpay's public UK pricing page, accessed on 26 September 2026, sets out flat rates for businesses below £200,000 of annual card turnover:

The same pages state that businesses processing more than £200,000 a year receive custom pricing, but they also display a 0.99% rate and a €0 setup price in several sections aimed at UK customers, with pricing shown in euros rather than sterling. This is an internal inconsistency in Flatpay's published materials, not a confirmed UK rate, and readers should treat the 0.99% figure as unverified rather than as Flatpay's actual above-threshold price for UK businesses. Flatpay's separate UK price list also discloses a £995 minimum monthly turnover requirement, assessed annually, and a £39 fee if that minimum is not met, with prices stated as excluding VAT. Flatpay's marketing language of "no hidden fees" and no subscriptions should not be read as meaning no charges beyond the transaction rate can apply.

Embedded finance is an option, not an announced launch

Adyen said the partnership gives Flatpay the option to integrate its Embedded Finance suite in future, potentially supporting instant settlement, cash advances, business accounts and card issuing. Neither company gave a launch timetable, a launch decision, UK pricing or an eligibility framework for any of these. Capability is not the same as a product: Adyen's documentation shows what its technology can do for a partner, not what Flatpay has chosen to build.

Two of the four areas already have some public detail from Adyen's own documentation, though none of it confirms a Flatpay product:

• Business accounts. Adyen's documentation describes a business-account feature for eligible platform users and lists mainland United Kingdom among supported markets, but explicitly states the feature remains in development.
• Cash advances. Adyen's Capital documentation lists UK organisations as an eligible entity type, subject to at least 90 consecutive days of card processing and at least £1,000 of processing volume in each of those months, alongside other risk criteria. It excludes UK sole proprietors and unincorporated partnerships, and meeting the minimum conditions does not guarantee an offer. There is no evidence that Flatpay has selected Adyen Capital as the mechanism for any future cash-advance product, and these criteria may not apply to whatever Flatpay eventually offers.

Instant settlement is also worth separating from what Flatpay already offers: its UK site currently advertises daily payouts, which is a different speed of settlement to the "instant" capability mentioned in the partnership announcement, and the two should not be treated as the same service.

Questions still open for UK customers

Several points that would matter to a UK small business considering any future Flatpay-branded financial product are not settled by the announcement or by Adyen's general documentation:

• Which legal entity would be the regulated provider of any future product, and what that means for authorisation.
• Whether a future business account would be a bank account, an e-money account or another type of balance account, and whether Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection would apply.
• Whether a future cash advance would be structured as regulated lending, what it would cost and how it would affect a business's credit standing or cash flow if repaid from card takings.
• Chargeback allocation, reserve policies and outage protections between Flatpay and Adyen.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) advises that a firm's permissions should be checked for the specific regulated service in question, and that being authorised for one activity does not automatically mean FSCS or Financial Ombudsman Service cover applies to every product a firm offers. UK businesses weighing up any future Flatpay financial product would need to check the specific provider and permissions once, and if, one is launched, rather than assume cover from the current terminal-and-payments relationship.

Company context

Adyen's announcement gives Flatpay's scale in its own terms: more than 100,000 merchants across its seven markets, with thousands more added month on month, more than 2,000 employees, and a reported €1.5bn valuation reached in 2025. These are company-supplied figures without a UK-specific breakdown or independent verification in the sources reviewed for this article. Flatpay ApS opened a UK establishment, UK establishment number BR027644, on 1 May 2025, and Companies House currently records its status as open, though Companies House notes that it does not verify the accuracy of information firms file with it.

What to watch next

The details that would tell UK merchants what actually changes have not yet been published: a technical go-live date for UK transactions on Adyen's infrastructure, any revised merchant terms, a corrected or confirmed UK rate for businesses above £200,000 in annual turnover, and any firm-specific regulatory disclosure identifying which entity provides payment services to Flatpay's UK customers. Businesses that want to check a firm's current authorisation can use the FCA's public register directly rather than relying on a commercial intermediary's summary of it.