Trustly proposes cutting around 200 roles; UK impact unclear

Trustly, the Swedish open banking payments provider that owns UK firm Ecospend, has told staff it is proposing organisational changes affecting around 200 roles globally — about a quarter of its reported workforce. The company says the move is meant to concentrate investment behind its priorities in the open banking market. It has not said which countries, teams or customers will be affected, and it has not confirmed or denied any impact on its UK business, which includes two firms authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the technology behind HM Revenue & Customs' (HMRC) open banking tax payments.

At completion of that acquisition in January 2023, Trustly said the combined Ecospend business connected with more than 80 UK banks — a company-supplied figure that is now more than three years old and does not describe Trustly's current UK footprint.

What Trustly has said

According to trade title Tech.eu, which published its report on 17 September 2026, Trustly chief executive Johan Tjärnberg told employees by email on 16 September 2026 that the company was proposing organisational changes affecting around 200 roles. Tech.eu reported that this represented roughly one quarter of a workforce it put at more than 800 people, though that headcount figure comes from Tech.eu's reporting rather than a Trustly filing.

A Trustly spokesperson, quoted by Tech.eu, described the changes as intended to sharpen the company's focus and concentrate investment behind the priorities it believes will help it lead the open banking market. That is narrower than saying Trustly is targeting "profitable markets": the statement reproduced by Tech.eu refers to priorities and focus, not to market-by-market profitability, and no such profitability breakdown has been published. Readers should treat the "profitable markets" framing as an interpretation rather than Trustly's own wording.

Tech.eu also reported, without naming its sources, that the reductions were expected to fall mainly on teams in Brazil. That claim has not been confirmed in Trustly's own statement and should be read as an unverified Tech.eu report based on unnamed sources, rather than an established fact.

Why this matters to the UK

Trustly has an established UK presence, built through its ownership of Ecospend and its FCA-authorised entities. It completed its acquisition of London-based open banking provider Ecospend on 27 January 2023, following FCA approval, describing the combined business at the time as connecting with more than 80 UK banks and reaching a potential audience of around 50 million UK consumers, having processed more than £7.5bn of UK payment volume during 2022. Those figures come from Trustly's own acquisition announcement and describe the position in 2022 and early 2023 — they are historical company claims, not current, independently verified market-share data, and should not be read as a live snapshot of Trustly's position today or as evidence of its present market significance.

Two UK entities sit behind that business, both authorised as payment institutions by the FCA under the Payment Services Regulations 2017:

Companies House recorded Trustly UK Limited as an active private company with a London registered office as of 26 September 2026. Ecospend's significance goes beyond its own customer base: HMRC's privacy notice confirms it uses Ecospend as the FCA-regulated third-party provider for open banking payments and certain refunds. Trustly said in September 2024 that Ecospend had retained its HMRC contract and had processed £30bn of tax payments since the service launched in 2021 — again, a company-reported figure rather than an HMRC-published one, though HMRC's own materials independently confirm the underlying relationship.

What is, and is not, known about UK impact

Nothing in Trustly's reported statement, its investor materials or its public filings identifies UK jobs, the London office, Trustly UK Limited, Ecospend, HMRC's contract, bank connectivity or customer service as affected by the proposed changes. Equally, nothing rules them out. Tech.eu's report gives a global headline figure and an unattributed steer toward Brazil, but no country-by-country or entity-by-entity breakdown has been published.

It is also unclear from the available reporting whether the "proposed organisational changes" were final as of 26 September 2026 or remained subject to consultation and local employment processes, which can differ significantly between jurisdictions. Until Trustly discloses more, any statement that UK roles, the HMRC contract or UK merchant connectivity will change — or will not change — goes beyond what the record supports.

What this could mean for competition in pay-by-bank

Pay-by-bank, more formally known as account-to-account payment, lets a customer authorise a payment directly from their bank account rather than using a card. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) says such payments have the potential to compete with card systems such as Visa and Mastercard, but identifies functional capability, dispute-handling processes, access and reliability, and competitive pricing as barriers to wider retail adoption in the UK. Those dispute-handling and reliability gaps matter to anyone weighing up a pay-by-bank option against a card: a reader considering how a payment method handles a problem transaction should check the specific provider's terms rather than assume card-equivalent protections apply.

The FCA's open banking progress update, first published on 16 December 2025, reported more than 16 million UK open banking users and 53% year-on-year growth in open banking payments, with variable recurring payments — a mechanism that lets a customer authorise a series of future payments from their account — accounting for 16% of open banking transactions. The regulator did not specify the exact measurement window behind either figure on that page.

Whether Trustly's restructuring changes this competitive picture depends entirely on facts not yet public: whether UK product development, merchant support, sales or investment capacity is reduced, and how rivals and bank-backed initiatives respond. No evidence of UK customer losses, contract changes or reduced UK investment tied to this restructuring appears in Trustly's statements, regulatory filings or the other public materials reviewed for this article, and no current market-share data for UK pay-by-bank providers is available from those sources. A reduction in one provider's capacity could in principle affect merchant choice or strengthen rivals, but that remains a conditional scenario, not a documented outcome.

The wider regulatory backdrop

Separately from the Trustly restructuring, UK regulators have been shaping the commercial terms under which variable recurring payments operate. On 20 January 2026, the FCA and PSR said they would not initially prioritise a Competition Act 1998 investigation into a proposed centralised access-fee model for commercial variable recurring payments put forward by UK Payments Initiative. That is a temporary position, lasting until an anticipated long-term legislative framework takes effect or July 2027, whichever comes first, and it may be revisited. It sits alongside the FCA's broader account of a growing open banking market, underlining that policymakers want account-to-account payments to become a viable alternative to cards even as individual providers restructure.

What to watch next

The material facts still missing are whether Trustly's consultation process, wherever it takes place, produces any country-level disclosure; whether Trustly UK Limited or Ecospend Technologies Limited make any staffing, investment or contract announcement; and whether HMRC's arrangement with Ecospend is affected. Readers wanting the primary record as it develops should watch Trustly's own investor and press pages, Companies House filings for Trustly UK Limited, and the FCA's public register for any change to the firms' authorisation status, rather than relying on secondary reporting alone.