Brite launches Pay by Bank in the UK after FCA licence

Brite Payments has begun bringing its Pay by Bank service to the UK, after its UK entity secured authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate as an electronic money institution. Brite announced the move on 29 September 2026, saying the product would be introduced through a phased rollout. It has not published a timetable for that rollout, named any launch merchants, or said how many UK banks currently support the service.

The launch matters to anyone building or running UK online checkouts, and to shoppers who increasingly pay by transferring money directly from their bank account rather than entering card details. Account-to-account payment, usually marketed as "Pay by Bank", lets a customer authorise a payment from their current account during checkout, using the same bank login and authentication they already trust. It sits inside the UK's open banking framework, the system that lets regulated third parties move money or retrieve account data with a customer's consent, via banks' own technical interfaces.

Brite's entry adds a new, FCA-authorised provider to a UK open banking payments market that is already large and growing quickly. But the practical details that would let a UK merchant or shopper actually use the service — which banks it covers, which retailers have signed up, and when later phases will arrive — are not yet public.

What Brite is offering

Brite's pitch to merchants is a single application programming interface (API) integration that covers both UK domestic Pay by Bank payments and payments across its wider European network. Brite describes that network as connecting more than 3,800 banks across 27 European markets. These are figures the company supplies itself; the research reviewed for this article found no independently audited list of the banks involved.

For a shopper, Brite says the flow is simple: select Brite at checkout, choose a bank and account, and authenticate through that bank's own app or login. Brite says no separate Brite account or app download is required. The company also says it does not charge consumers for its payment-initiation service. It has not disclosed what it charges merchants, nor any transaction limits or settlement terms.

What the FCA licence does, and doesn't, mean

Brite's UK entity, Brite Payments Limited, states that it is authorised by the FCA as an electronic money institution, under firm reference number 1033237. A secondary licensing report puts the effective date of that authorisation at 21 April 2026, though this figure comes from a third-party source rather than from Brite's own announcement, and the firm-specific entry on the FCA's Financial Services Register was not directly accessible during research for this article. Readers who want to confirm the authorisation should search the register themselves, using FRN 1033237.

Separately, Companies House records show Brite Payments Limited as an active private limited company, company number 15827893, incorporated in England and Wales on 9 July 2024.

FCA authorisation is a statement that a firm meets the regulator's requirements to carry out specified regulated activities. It is not an endorsement of the firm's product and does not guarantee outcomes for users.

This distinction matters for how customer money is protected. An electronic money institution is not a bank. Under rules that apply to firms of this type, Brite must safeguard relevant customer funds — broadly, by keeping them separate from its own business money. The FCA's revised safeguarding rules for payment and e-money firms took effect on 7 May 2026. But safeguarding is not the same as deposit protection. The FCA is clear that money held with a non-bank payment provider is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the way a bank deposit is. If a non-bank payment provider were to fail, safeguarding arrangements are designed to return customer funds, but this process can involve delay, and does not carry the same compensation guarantee as an FSCS-protected bank deposit.

Where this fits in the UK market

Open Banking Limited, which monitors activity across the CMA9 — the banks and building society covered by the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) open banking remedies — recorded 40.16 million open banking payments in June 2026. Of those, 32.43 million were single domestic payments and 7.73 million were sweeping variable recurring payments, a type of automated bank-to-bank transfer. Cumulative payments across the CMA9 passed 1 billion, and cumulative API calls passed 100 billion, in the same month. Open Banking Limited separately reported that payment volume across its monitored ecosystem grew 45% year on year over the twelve months to July 2026.

Brite is entering that market as one more licensed provider rather than as a first mover. Its stated differentiator is the single integration spanning UK and European payments, rather than any claim about UK transaction volume, UK bank coverage, or market share, none of which the company has disclosed.

Brite has also published findings from a survey it commissioned from research firm Appinio, covering 2,000 UK adults. The company reported that 47% of respondents experienced what it called "checkout rage", 24% had avoided a purchase over concern about returns, and 58% said they would choose a UK or European payment provider over an overseas alternative. Brite did not disclose the survey's fieldwork dates or enough methodological detail — such as weighting or exact question wording — for the figures to be treated as independent market evidence. They should be read as the company's own commissioned research, not as an FCA, Office for National Statistics or trade-body data point.

What Brite hasn't said

Several practical details remain outstanding. Brite has not disclosed:

• Dates or a sequence for the phases of its UK rollout, or when it expects the rollout to be complete.
• The names of any UK launch merchants, or how many are live, contracted, or still in testing.
• A list or proportion of UK banks and building societies that currently support Brite at checkout.
• Merchant pricing, transaction limits, or settlement terms.
• Which product features — such as refunds, payouts, foreign exchange or variable recurring payments — will be available in the UK, and in which phase.

Until Brite publishes this detail, UK merchants evaluating the service, and shoppers encountering it at checkout, are working from the company's stated proposition rather than a verified picture of its UK coverage.

What to watch next

Readers wanting to verify Brite's regulatory status directly can search the FCA's Financial Services Register using firm reference number 1033237, or check Brite Payments Limited's filings on Companies House under company number 15827893. For the product itself, the detail to watch for is a published rollout timetable, named UK merchants, and confirmed UK bank coverage — none of which Brite has yet released.