Trustly gets US$40m in binding commitments for AI expansion

Trustly Holding AB said on 2 October 2026 that its parent company, Trustly AB (publ), had received irrevocable and legally binding equity commitment letters worth more than US$40m from two investors: Nordic Capital, Trustly's principal shareholder since 2018 through its Fund IX, and Alfvén & Didrikson. The commitments are not the same as a completed funding round. Trustly said it expects the broader capital raise to conclude in November 2026, after giving other existing shareholders the chance to take part, which means the final amount raised could exceed US$40m. In the UK, the deal's main relevance is Trustly-owned Ecospend Technologies Limited, an FCA-authorised payment institution that provides payment-initiation and account-information services to UK merchants and consumers.

That distinction matters for anyone tracking the deal: as at 4 October 2026, Trustly has binding equity commitments rather than a completed capital raise, and the available evidence does not confirm whether any funds have transferred. No exact completion date has been disclosed, though Trustly has said it expects the raise to conclude in November 2026; the final proceeds figure, valuation, share price and resulting ownership structure are also undisclosed. Trustly said it will announce the final amount once the raise completes.

What the money is for

Trustly said the proceeds would accelerate products that use artificial intelligence to turn payment activity into what it calls intelligence, intended to help businesses acquire and retain customers and manage risk. The company describes this as a real-time intelligence platform built on top of its existing open-banking payment network across the US, Canada and Europe.

That last point is worth being precise about. The available material describes an additional layer sitting on Trustly's current Pay by Bank infrastructure, not a withdrawal from it. Trustly has not announced named products, a launch date, pricing, a UK-specific spending commitment or any independently verified result. The stated benefits — better acquisition, retention and risk management — are intentions, not outcomes.

Trustly's chief executive, Johan Tjärnberg, said the network serves more than 50m consumers and handles more than US$120bn in transactions a year, though the announcement does not state the measurement period or offer independent assurance for those figures. Separately, the same announcement's standard company description says Trustly processed more than US$100bn in payments during calendar year 2025 and connects more than 9,000 merchants with over 650m consumers through 12,000 banks in more than 30 markets. Nordic Capital's portfolio page records Trustly revenue of €220m for 2025 and 910 employees, without an audited breakdown by country.

None of these figures say how much of Trustly's business, revenue or user base sits in the UK.

The UK link: Ecospend

Trustly's UK presence runs through Ecospend Technologies Limited, which it acquired in January 2023 following approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Companies House records Trustly UK Limited as Ecospend's person with significant control, holding at least 75% of its shares and voting rights, a position recorded from 27 January 2023. Ecospend's published terms identify it as an FCA-authorised payment institution, firm reference number 829713, permitted to provide payment-initiation and account-information services.

That authorisation covers payment initiation and account information. It is not established in the available material whether Trustly's planned intelligence products would themselves need separate FCA permissions, sit outside regulated payment services as an analytics layer, or some mixture of both — that depends on product design that has not yet been disclosed.

UK open banking, the broader system Ecospend operates within, continues to grow. Open Banking Limited recorded 40.16m UK open-banking payments in June 2026 — 32.43m single domestic payments and 7.73m sweeping variable recurring payments — alongside 18.81m user connections and 2.81bn API calls across the banks required to offer open banking (the CMA9). API calls rose 4.4% month on month while user connections fell 4.2%. The CMA9 banks had passed 1bn cumulative payments and 100bn cumulative API calls by June 2026, with weighted availability of 99.80% and an average response time of 349 milliseconds that month.

HM Treasury describes open banking as an overlay for accessing account data and initiating account-to-account payments, which chiefly run over the Faster Payments System; open banking is not itself a designated payment system. The FCA describes it as a secure, regulated means for people and businesses to share bank-account payment data with trusted apps and services. HM Treasury has also flagged sustainable commercial incentives, consumer protection and dispute resolution as unresolved elements of the UK open-banking framework.

What this could mean for merchants and rivals

The commercial question for UK merchants and for other open-banking payment providers is whether data drawn from payment activity can be turned into something that genuinely improves acquisition, retention, reconciliation or fraud and risk controls — enough to set Trustly's offering apart within a crowded field of open-banking payment providers. A larger transaction dataset is a plausible starting point for that kind of product. It is not, on its own, evidence that the product will work, that merchants will pay for it, or that it will outperform what competitors already offer.

Nothing in the available record shows Trustly's UK market share, merchant count, transaction volumes or pricing relative to named competitors, so no comparative claim about competitive advantage can be verified at this stage. Whether richer data tools raise switching costs for merchants already using Trustly, or whether other open-banking providers in the UK respond with comparable products, is not something the current evidence settles.

The data-protection question

If any of Trustly's planned intelligence products process UK personal payment data — rather than purely aggregated or anonymised information — the organisation responsible would need to meet UK data-protection requirements. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance, updated 23 March 2026 to reflect the Data (Use and Access) Act, requires organisations to specify why they process personal information, identify a lawful basis, and only reuse data for a purpose compatible with the original one. The ICO's artificial intelligence guidance separately requires that personal data used in AI systems be limited to what is necessary for the stated purpose.

It is not yet known whether Trustly's intelligence products would use identifiable customer transaction data, aggregated merchant-level patterns, anonymised information, or some combination, nor which Trustly entity would act as controller or processor for UK customers. Those design choices, rather than the existence of the AI strategy itself, will determine what data-protection obligations apply.

What to watch next

The clearest next milestone is the completion of the capital raise, which Trustly expects in November 2026. At that point the company said it would disclose the final amount raised. Readers who want to track this should look for: the final proceeds figure and which shareholders participated; any disclosure of valuation or dilution; whether Trustly specifies a UK allocation or product timetable for Ecospend customers; and whether any future announcement includes measurable, independently checkable results rather than stated ambitions. Official detail on the transaction will come from Trustly's own announcements; detail on UK open-banking authorisation sits with the FCA, and data-protection obligations are set out in ICO guidance.