Trust Payments Review
7.0/10UK and Malta regulated PSP-acquirer descended from 1997's Secure Trading, processing £1bn+ a month, with UKGC, Bulgarian, and Romanian gambling clients and card payouts typically under 30 minutes.
Our read
- Full-stack by license: a Visa and Mastercard principal member through its MFSA-licensed Malta FI (since 2012) plus a UK FCA payment-institution permission, so acquiring and gateway come in one integration.
- An EU gambling footprint: ONJN Class 2 effective January 2024 on top of Malta passporting across 30 EU/EEA countries.
- Current gambling clients: BetGoodwin since 2017 with an 8-year renewal announced July 3, 2026, Winbet Bulgaria since June 2022, Viva Games Romania, and SOFTSWISS as a gateway partner.
- Player payouts over Visa Direct and Mastercard Send push payments, 24/7/365, typically under 30 minutes.
- ProbH gambling-harm scoring runs through a sub-second API across onboarding, deposits, and monitoring.
- Method coverage is modest: about 27 methods, heavily card and European APM flavored, so a long-tail APM strategy needs additional providers.
- Gambling capability stops at the UK and EU: no US approvals, no LatAm presence, no crypto payout rails, with the US presence corporate heritage only.
Small-to-mid UK and EU licensed operators (UKGC, ONJN, Bulgarian, MGA-market) that want gateway and merchant account from one regulated counterparty, fast card payouts, and the ProbH harm score, especially in the three markets where reference clients already run. Crypto exchanges needing fiat ramps are an adjacent fit.
US-facing or LatAm-focused operators, offshore and Curacao books, and anyone who needs a 100+ method long-tail, multi-acquirer routing, or a published rate card before shortlisting a provider.
Markets & licensing
TrustUK Payments Ltd holds an FCA payment-institution permission under FRN 932557, and MFSA-licensed Trust Payments (Malta) Ltd, C56013, has been a financial institution since 2012 and a principal member of Visa and Mastercard passported across 30 EU/EEA countries. A Romanian ONJN Class 2 payment-processing license, effective January 2024, adds the gambling-specific entry.
The US presence is corporate heritage (Secure Trading once ran a US arm) rather than licensed gambling-payments capability.
The UK is where this company started. TrustUK Payments Ltd holds an FCA Authorised Payment Institution permission (FRN 932557), and UKGC operator BetGoodwin has processed through Trust Payments since 2017, announcing an 8-year renewal on July 3, 2026.
- UK (FCA) Authorised Payment InstitutionUnited Kingdom
- Payment services under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 · TrustUK Payments Ltd · FRN 932557 · Authorised Payment Institution since 2021
- Malta (MFSA) Financial InstitutionMalta / EU-EEA
- Payment services and card acquiring as a Visa and Mastercard principal member, passported to 30 EU/EEA countries · Trust Payments (Malta) Ltd · C56013 · licensed since 2012
- Romania (ONJN) Class 2Romania
- Payment processing for ONJN-licensed gambling operators · Trust Payments (Malta) Ltd · effective January 2024
Licensed gambling clients run in three markets: BetGoodwin (UKGC), Winbet (Bulgaria), and Viva Games (Romania).
EU-incorporated gaming operators only, with no offshore or Curacao acceptance and no US license.
Methods & rails
What you can reach
A2A rails
Card schemes
Flagship local methods
Payout rails
Processing features
Integrations & engineering
One contract and one API instead of a separate deal per studio, feed, or PSP. Here's what connects, how fast, and on what stack.
One contract brings the regulated pieces together: the TRU Connect gateway with a full API or a brand-customizable, multi-language hosted payment page, card acquiring through the Malta FI's own Visa and Mastercard principal membership, and TRU Fraud Check screening included as standard on gaming accounts. Payouts run as a separate product, and ProbH exposes its harm score through an API endpoint or the merchant interface. Shopping-cart plugins cover mainstream e-commerce stacks, while gambling merchants get in-house gaming specialists watching approval rates, BIN blocks, and local transaction mix.
Up and running in as little as 3 days, with underwriting decisions inside 48 hours in some cases. Both are standard-merchant figures.
Products & tools
One regulated stack carries the offer: the Malta and UK entities put acquiring and the TRU Connect gateway in a single contract, with card push payouts, fraud screening, and the ProbH gambling-harm score layered on top.
TRU Connect
A principal member of Visa and Mastercard in the EU through its MFSA-licensed Malta entity, so merchant account and gateway arrive in one integration.
- 50+ processing currencies on the gaming stack, with settlement in 14 currencies
- Full API integration or a brand-customizable, multi-language hosted payment page, plus shopping-cart plugins (BigCommerce, Magento)
- Chargeback management bundled with acquiring, and fraud management included as standard on gaming accounts
- EU PCI Compliance Certificate and Cyber Essentials, with hosted pages reducing merchant PCI scope
Payouts
Push payments to cards running 24/7/365, with gaming winnings among the supported payout use cases.
- Funds transferred in real time within 30 minutes, often quicker
- The settlestatus flag is set to settled immediately
- Refunds in around 2 hours via Visa Direct, and wallet payouts (Apple Pay, Google Wallet) in the Winbet rollout
ProbH
An ML product scoring each customer's probability of gambling harm from 0 to 100%, built by the in-house data science team and sold to operators as an API.
- Probability-of-harm score from 0 to 100% per customer, returned sub-second via API endpoint or the Trust Payments interface
- Trained on 50M+ gambling transactions plus data from a dozen debt restructuring agencies
- Use cases across the lifecycle: new-account checks, wallet loads, authorization decisions, and ongoing monitoring
- Positive feedback from the Malta Gaming Authority
- Invented by Jan Vorjohann, the company's Head of Data Science
The history
Longevity in this industry usually comes with a change of owner somewhere in it.
The lineage starts in 1997, when Secure Trading launched in Bangor, North Wales, serving online gambling among its high-risk verticals. UC Group acquired it in June 1999. The Malta arm has been MFSA-licensed since 2012 and traded as acquiring.com from 2014. On May 8, 2019, a group of investment partners coordinated by CORDET Capital Partners acquired and recapitalized the Secure Trading Group, renaming it Trust Payments, with the Malta entity rebranded in 2020 and the UK entity FCA-authorized in April 2021. Laurence Booth, a 20-year American Express veteran who joined in 2021, became Group CEO in November 2024 after Daniel Holden's departure.
Brands & clients on the platform
Corporate
Leadership
Milestones
- 1997
Secure Trading launches in Bangor, North Wales, with online gambling among its early high-risk verticals.
- 2012
The Malta entity takes its MFSA financial-institution license, the foundation of today's EU acquiring, trading from 2014 as acquiring.com.
- 2019
A CORDET-coordinated investor group acquires and recapitalizes the Secure Trading Group (May 8). The business is renamed Trust Payments, with Trust Payments Holdings Ltd as the holding entity.
- 2021
TrustUK Payments Ltd is authorized by the FCA as a payment institution (FRN 932557, April).
- 2024
ONJN Class 2 payment-processing license takes effect in Romania (January). Laurence Booth moves from interim to permanent Group CEO (November 15) after Daniel Holden's exit.
- 2025
Viva Games Romania is announced as a client (October 8), with a ~93% approval rate at end-August and the ONJN Class 2 license behind the deal.
- 2026
Best Multi-Platform Payments Solution won at the Crypto Expo Europe Awards in Bucharest (March 2). The Winbet Bulgaria deposits and fast-withdrawals rollout is announced (June 26). BetGoodwin signs an 8-year renewal (July 3).
Where they're pushing next
- Romania (ONJN Class 2 effective January 2024, Viva Games live)
- Bulgaria (Winbet since 2022)
- Crypto-business fiat ramps, around 100 exchange merchants
Awards & recognition
Longevity and ownership
Switching vendors is expensive, which makes the company's staying power part of the purchase. What the contract says about your data decides how expensive an exit gets.
Trust Payments vs alternatives
Most buyers in this market shortlist three or four vendors long before they take a single sales call.
| Attribute | Trust Payments | emerchantpay | Nuvei | Paysafe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1997 | 2002 | 2003 | 1996 |
| Team | 412+ | 384+ | 2,202+ | 3,300+ |
| US market | Restricted | Restricted | Available | Available |
| Pricing | On request | On request | — | On request |
| Methods | 27+ | 50+ | 700+ | 250+ |
| Currencies | 100+ | 150+ | 150+ | 40+ |
| Coins | 0+ | 0+ | 40+ | — |
| EMI / PI licenses | UK, Malta | UK, Lithuania | Cyprus, UK, Netherlands +3 | UK, Ireland +2 |
| Settlement | Flexible, merchant-selected settlement terms | Set in the merchant contract | — | Negotiated per merchant |
| Instant payouts | Yes | — | Yes | Yes |
Settlement & commercials
Trust Payments prices per deal, so exact figures land in the contract rather than on a public rate card.
Fraud management is included as standard on gaming accounts, chargeback management is bundled with acquiring, and settlement is merchant-selected across 14 currencies.
The deal
Money movement
Onboarding path
- 1Contact the gaming sales desk for a custom quote
- 2Pass KYB and underwriting with the right entity: TrustUK Payments Ltd (FCA) for UK traffic, Trust Payments (Malta) Ltd (MFSA) for EU/EEA acquiring
- 3Contract the combined merchant account and gateway, and agree settlement currencies (14 available) and payout terms
- 4Integrate TRU Connect via the Webservices API or drop in the hosted payment page, and pick methods from the card, wallet, and European APM list
- 5Configure TRU Fraud Check rules, BIN and country blocks, and the ProbH harm score
- 6Enable payouts for player withdrawals and go live with the gaming-specialist account manager assigned
Support & account management
You can't demo service before you sign, so what a vendor puts in writing is the only floor you can hold it to.