Trustly Review
7.6/10The Swedish payment institution that defined pay-by-bank for gaming: inventor of Pay N Play, first FedNow payouts in sports betting, $100B+ TPV in 2025, and the segment's heaviest regulatory scar (a SEK 130M AML fine in 2022).
Our read
12,000 banks, 33 markets, and 120M users make it the only A2A product live at scale on both sides of the Atlantic, with every figure vendor-stated and dated.
The payout benchmark: RTP since September 2021, FedNow with ESPN BET as the first sportsbook (April 2024), over $25B cumulative instant payouts at roughly a tenth of the whole RTP network, and a 99.7% success claim.
A register-verified Swedish PI (556754-8655) plus an own ~36-state US MTL footprint on a public licenses page (NMLS 2463855), marked down for the 2022 FI warning and SEK 130M fine over severe AML deficiencies concentrated in gambling, where the license was kept and remediation accepted.
Public financial reporting and six Global Gaming Awards weigh against the EMEA 2025 loss to Paysafe, the FY2025 net loss of SEK 565M despite TPV above $100B with Q4 growth back, a Trustpilot of 2.7 across 3,265 reviews (57% one-star, consumer payout-in-transit noise firewalled from the merchant signal), and the 2021 IPO that was postponed and never revived.
The Pay N Play inventor keeps shipping (Azura logins under 10 seconds) and the US operator integrations run deep, held back by a Pay N Play footprint of only Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and the Netherlands.
Fully opaque, and the per-transaction figures in circulation are third-party, so nothing here can be priced without a sales call.
Methodology. Our own score, a weighted average of six dimensions, tilted toward coverage and settlement. Coverage (0.24) and settlement (0.22) lead the open-banking weighting, and those are Trustly's two best dimensions, which is why a file carrying a SEK 130M fine and blank commercials still lands at 7.6, the top of the segment. Read the full methodology
- The segment's strongest register trail: a Swedish payment institution (org no 556754-8655, verified on the FI register Jul 2026) plus roughly 36 US state money transmitter licenses printed with numbers on Trustly's own licenses page under NMLS 2463855.
- The only open-banking provider running at proven scale on both sides of the Atlantic: TPV above $100B in 2025, 120 million users by April 2026, and volume approaching 10% of the entire US RTP network.
- Payout rails nobody in the segment matches: RTP since September 2021, FedNow since 2024 with ESPN BET as the first sportsbook on the rail (April 8, 2024), same-day ACH fallback, over $25B in cumulative instant payouts, and 95%+ instant coverage across 30 European markets.
- The deepest verified US gaming roster of any A2A vendor: FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars, ESPN BET, PointsBet, and Hard Rock Bet (exclusive pay-by-bank across eight states since March 2025), plus land-based reach through Light & Wonder, Acres, and IGT.
- Invented Pay N Play in 2015 and is still iterating on it: the Azura-powered next generation shown at ICE 2025 cuts logins to under 10 seconds and adds cross-merchant player recognition.
- Rare financial transparency for a PE-owned private fintech: quarterly and annual reports published via its investors page, plus guarantee products (Trustly Pay, Guaranteed ACH, $1M VIP approvals) that take ACH return risk off the operator.
- The 2022 Finansinspektionen decision is the segment's heaviest regulatory event: a warning plus a SEK 130M fine for severe deficiencies in risk assessment, customer due diligence, and transaction monitoring, concentrated in gambling, after Trustly failed to treat end-players as AML customers. The license survived, the €9B IPO did not.
- FY2025 closed at a SEK 565M net loss with revenue down 12% in constant currency even as TPV grew 17.6% past $100B, a take-rate compression story, with growth returning only in Q4 2025.
- Pricing is fully opaque: no rate card, no fee ranges, and the per-transaction figures circulating on third-party blogs are unverifiable, so they stay out of this file.
- Pay N Play is narrower than its fame: live in four markets, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and the Netherlands (product page, Jul 2026), so the category-defining product covers a fraction of the 33 markets the payment method itself reaches.
- Trustpilot reads 2.7 across 3,265 reviews with 57% one-star, driven by consumers chasing payouts in transit between bank and merchant rather than by merchants, a pattern shared across the segment but unusually loud here at this volume.
Tier-1 and tier-2 licensed operators in Europe and regulated US states that want branded pay-by-bank deposits and sub-five-minute payouts at proven scale from a single vendor with its own license stack on both continents.
Offshore or crypto-first brands (the posture is licensed-only), small operators wanting self-serve pricing and quick onboarding, and LatAm-first buyers, since there is no Pix product behind the Brazilian engineering office.
Markets & licensing
Trustly Group AB is a Swedish payment institution (org no 556754-8655) confirmed on the Finansinspektionen register in July 2026, never an EMI, and the same register shows five foreign agents. What sets it apart from every open-banking peer is the US page: Trustly, Inc. (NMLS 2463855) publishes roughly 36 state money transmitter licenses with individual license numbers. The soft spots are recency and record: Trustly UK Limited's FCA authorization dates only to March 2024 (FRN 1005703, with Ecospend's 829713 since 2019), and the 2022 FI decision sits on the Swedish record.
Trustly, Inc. lists money transmitter licenses in roughly 36 states under NMLS ID 2463855, with sample numbers like Florida FT230000479, New Jersey 2406161, and Pennsylvania 110849 printed on its own licenses page, while Cross River Bank has provided the RTP rail access since 2021. California, Texas, New York, and Nevada are absent from the list and the operating model in those states is unstated, so a multi-state operator should ask directly how coverage works where no license appears. Gaming vendor registrations per state are never published, though the Hard Rock Bet deal alone implies them across AZ, FL, IL, IN, NJ, OH, TN, and VA.
UK coverage runs through Trustly UK Limited and Ecospend Technologies Limited, the open-banking firm Trustly closed on in January 2023 and the supplier behind HMRC's pay-by-bank program, which processed 1.3 million payments worth £4.7B in January 2025 alone. Both hold Authorised Payment Institution permissions on the FCA register: Trustly UK Limited under FRN 1005703 (since March 2024) and Ecospend Technologies under FRN 829713 (since May 2019), checked Jul 10, 2026. The Pay N Play product page does not list the UK (Jul 2026), so plan UK flows around standard pay-by-bank rather than no-registration onboarding.
- Sweden (FI) payment institutionSweden / EEA
- Payment services including payment initiation, the home authorization behind the European business · Trustly Group AB · org no 556754-8655 · register-verified 2026-07-03 · +5 foreign agents · a PI, never an EMI
- US state money transmitter licensesUnited States (state-by-state)
- Money transmission behind deposits and instant payouts in regulated states · Trustly, Inc. · NMLS 2463855 · ~36 states with numbers on the vendor's licenses page · CA, TX, NY, NV not listed, model there unstated
- UK (FCA) entitiesUnited Kingdom
- Open-banking payments via Trustly UK Limited and Ecospend Technologies Limited (HMRC's supplier) · FRN 1005703 (Trustly UK) and FRN 829713 (Ecospend) · both register-confirmed 2026-07-10
- 2022 FI decision (context)Sweden
- Warning plus SEK 130M administrative fine for AML deficiencies concentrated in the gambling business · License retained, no activity restriction · FI noted remediation underway and did not expect recurrence
Licensing tier: Top of the segment on published evidence: no direct open-banking rival prints a state-by-state US license table, and the Swedish PI is register-verified. Verification stops at partial overall because the per-state US table rests on the vendor's own licenses page, while the Swedish PI and both UK FRNs are register-confirmed (Jul 2026).
Merchant-side view. Trustly's consumer reach spans 33 vendor-stated markets across three continents, and the licensed-only operator posture dates from the post-2022 remediation.
No public restricted-markets list found (Jul 2026). Acceptance posture is licensed operators in regulated markets.
Methods & rails
What you can reach
A2A rails
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 integration covers deposits and payouts across the whole bank network. The developer docs at docs.trustly.com are public without a login, spanning API references, a deposit guide, a gaming integration guide, and an SDK overview, with a hosted checkout widget for teams that skip a custom cashier build. The legacy European API was JSON-RPC, a detail the current unified portal does not restate, so confirm the surface with your integration engineer. In the US, rail access for RTP runs through the Cross River Bank partnership (expanded to include FedNow in 2024), and Pay N Play upgrades ship without extra integration work for existing customers per the ICE 2025 announcement.
No vendor claim published (Jul 2026). Onboarding is enterprise sales-led, so KYB and per-market activation set the calendar rather than the build.
Products & tools
One method, built out in every direction: pay-by-bank deposits across 12,000 banks, an instant-payout engine spanning RTP, FedNow, and SEPA rails, the Pay N Play flow Trustly invented in 2015, and newer layers like Trustly ID and Scan & Pay for land-based casinos.
Pay by Bank Deposits
The core account-to-account product: players pay straight from their bank account across a vendor-stated 12,000 banks and 33 markets, with deposits landing in under six seconds and conversion claims up to 98.8% in European gaming.
- 12,000 connected banks, 650M consumer reach, and 120M+ users globally (vendor-stated, 2026)
- Access to 99%+ of US bank accounts via direct bank APIs (vendor-stated, Jul 2026)
- Deposits in under 6 seconds with up to 98.8% deposit conversion in European gaming (vendor-stated, Jul 2026)
- 13 currencies in the European gaming product
- Name/IBAN verification, affordability checks, and PEP plus sanctions screening built into the flow
- No cards, wallets, or crypto anywhere in the stack, by design
Instant Payouts
The payout benchmark of the segment: RTP since 2021, FedNow since 2024 (ESPN BET was the first sportsbook on the rail), same-day ACH as fallback, and more than $25B in cumulative instant payouts with money moving in under five minutes.
- US rails: RTP (via Cross River Bank since Sep 2021), FedNow (since 2024), and same-day ACH
- Over $25B in cumulative instant payouts, more than $17B of it through RTP (vendor-stated, 2025)
- Payout funds move in less than five minutes (vendor-stated, Jul 2026)
- Europe: over 95% of payouts instant across 30 markets with a 99.7% payout success rate (vendor-stated, Jul 2026)
- Smart Routing engine picks the rail per transaction
- Guaranteed ACH and Available Funds Guidance shift US return risk onto Trustly, with VIP deposit approvals up to $1M
Pay N Play
Trustly's 2015 invention and still its most famous product: deposit, registration, and KYC collapse into one flow because player identity data rides in over the bank connection, so the account exists the moment the first deposit clears.
- Live in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and the Netherlands (product page, Jul 2026)
- Pay N Play logins under 8 seconds and conversion up to 96% (vendor-stated, Jul 2026)
- Next-gen version unveiled at ICE 2025 on the Azura data engine: logins cut from 48 to under 10 seconds, login plus deposit under 20 seconds
- Cross-merchant recognition: a player opts in once and is recognized across all Trustly-enabled sites
- Vendor claims average transaction value up 10% on the next-gen flow
- No extra integration work for existing customers on the upgrade (vendor-stated, Jan 2025)
Trustly ID & Scan & Pay
The 2025 additions around the core method: Trustly ID brings AI and biometric identification to European gaming logins, while Scan & Pay (Scan N Play) takes cashless pay-by-bank onto US casino floors through Light & Wonder and Acres.
- Trustly ID launched 2025 in Europe for faster gaming logins
- Scan & Pay cashless product launched in the US in 2025 for land-based casinos
- Light & Wonder partnership for cashless casino payments, also referenced in L&W SEC filings
- Acres partnership for plug-and-play cashless gaming
- IGT named among 2024 partners in the North American business
On the record
The history that matters: the milestones, the scale, the awards, and who runs it.
Trustly was founded in Stockholm in 2008 and grew up with the Nordic licensed casino market, inventing Pay N Play in 2015. Bridgepoint sold it to Nordic Capital for around $800M in March 2018 (roughly 70%, with Alfvén & Didrikson holding a minority since 2011), and the 2019 merger with Silicon Valley's PayWithMyBank created the transatlantic network that became the entire US business. A BlackRock-led consortium took a minority stake in 2020 at a reported valuation above $1B, and a Nasdaq Stockholm IPO at up to €9B was postponed indefinitely on May 3, 2021 after Finansinspektionen's preliminary AML assessment, which hardened into a 2022 warning and SEK 130M fine. Ecospend (UK, closed January 2023) and SlimPay (France, announced August 2023 at €70M) extended the footprint, and FY2025 brought the first year above $100B in TPV alongside a SEK 565M net loss.
Brands & clients on the platform
Corporate
- PayWithMyBank (merger announced Jun 2019)
- Ecospend Technologies (announced May 2022, closed Jan 2023)
- SlimPay (announced Aug 2023, €70M)
Leadership
Milestones
- 2008
Founded in Stockholm as a bank-transfer payment company for the Nordic online market.
- 2015
Invents Pay N Play, collapsing registration, KYC, and deposit into one bank-authenticated flow and creating the no-account casino category.
- 2018-2019
Nordic Capital buys control from Bridgepoint for ~$800M (March 2018). The PayWithMyBank merger (June 2019) creates the first transatlantic online banking payments network.
- 2020-2021
BlackRock-led consortium takes a minority stake at a $1B+ valuation (June 2020). US instant payouts launch on RTP with Cross River Bank (September 2021). The ~€9B Nasdaq Stockholm IPO is postponed indefinitely (May 3, 2021) after the FSA's preliminary AML assessment.
- 2022-2023
Finansinspektionen issues a warning and a SEK 130M fine for AML deficiencies concentrated in gambling, keeping the license in place. The Ecospend acquisition closes (January 2023) and SlimPay is announced at €70M (August 2023).
- 2024
ESPN BET becomes the first sportsbook with FedNow instant payouts (April 8). A sixth Global Gaming Awards payments win (February, KPMG-adjudicated). FY2024 lands at $87B TPV, +54%, with net revenue of $239M.
- 2025
Next-gen Pay N Play with Azura debuts at ICE (January). Hard Rock Bet signs Trustly as exclusive pay-by-bank across eight states (March). Trustly ID and Scan & Pay launch. The Global Gaming Awards EMEA payments title goes to Paysafe, ending the run of six wins.
- 2026
The Q4-25 report shows the return to growth (revenue +5% cc, TPV +31% cc, active users +26%) after a FY2025 of SEK 565M net loss on $100B+ TPV. The user base passes 120 million (April 7).
Where they're pushing next
- Regulated US states (own MTLs, RTP and FedNow payouts, land-based cashless)
- UK (Ecospend rails, HMRC-scale volume)
- France and recurring payments (SlimPay, announced 2023)
Awards & recognition
Trust signals
The checks an operator runs before signing: incidents, enforcement, ownership, and longevity, from our research.
- Regulatory actions on record: Fines
Trustly vs alternatives
The same attributes, side by side, from our normalized provider set, useful for seeing where this vendor fits against its peers.
| Attribute | Trustly | Zimpler | Brite Payments | Volt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2008 | 2012 | 2019 | 2019 |
| Team | 900+ | 120+ | 160+ | 202+ |
| US market | Available | Restricted | Restricted | Restricted |
| Pricing | On request | On request | On request | On request |
| Methods | 1+ | — | 1+ | — |
| Currencies | 13+ | — | — | — |
| EMI / PI licenses | Sweden, UK | Sweden, Brazil | Sweden | UK, UK, Poland |
| Settlement | Merchant settlement terms not published (Jul 2026) | Not published | Under 60 seconds median, 24/7/365 including weekends (vendor-stated) | Instant over domestic instant rails, with balances visible in Volt Accounts since Feb 2026 |
| Instant payouts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The take: Zimpler and Brite are the Swedish challengers: Zimpler pairs Nordic depth with a direct Brazil Pix build and a cleaner path through its own regulatory episode, Brite wins on raw settlement mechanics with its instant-payments network, and both stop at Europe's edge. Volt brings multi-rail breadth (UK, SEPA, Australia) with none of Trustly's gaming roster. Pick Trustly when you need one A2A vendor across Europe and regulated US states and can absorb enterprise onboarding, blank pricing, and the 2022 fine history in your vendor review.
Settlement & commercials
Trustly prices per deal, so exact figures only arrive at the contract stage. Here's what's on the record about the model and terms.
Quote-based per merchant with no rate card, fee ranges, setup fees, or minimums public (Jul 2026). Per-transaction figures circulate on third-party blogs and a competitor's site, and none of them is verifiable, so they are excluded from this file.
Everything merchant-side is negotiated: no published rates, reserves, contract terms, or SLAs as of Jul 2026. The public fee record is consumer-facing only, including US help-center pages on usage fees and NSF fees, which means a failed-ACH fee can land on the player in some US flows. The commercially meaningful public intel is the guarantee stack: Trustly Pay and Guaranteed ACH shift ACH return risk to Trustly, Available Funds Guidance reduces failed payouts, and the VIP risk engine approves deposits up to $1M, all terms to price into the deal instead of accepting as defaults.
The deal
Money movement
Onboarding path
- 1Contact Trustly's enterprise sales team, since pricing, tiers, and SLAs exist only inside the deal and the ICP is licensed tier-1/tier-2 operators
- 2Clear merchant KYB under the post-2022 compliance regime, with your operator licenses per market as the entry ticket
- 3Map your markets against the actual product footprint: Pay N Play in SE/FI/EE/NL (UK per one vendor page), payouts across 30 European markets, and the ~36-state US MTL list with CA/TX/NY/NV coverage confirmed directly
- 4Scope the build against the public docs at docs.trustly.com, choosing the hosted checkout widget or a direct API integration
- 5For US payouts, enroll on the instant rails (RTP and FedNow via the Cross River partnership) and negotiate Guaranteed ACH and Available Funds Guidance if you want return risk off your book
- 6Test in the referenced sandbox environment, go live per market, and revisit terms as volume scales
Support & account management
The service layer operators inherit: availability, the channels support runs on, and language coverage.
Frequently asked
The things operators actually ask before signing.
Is Trustly a bank, an EMI, or something else?+
Neither a bank nor an EMI. Trustly Group AB is a Swedish payment institution (org no 556754-8655) authorized by Finansinspektionen, confirmed on the FI register in July 2026, and money never sits in a Trustly consumer wallet because the model is account-to-account by design. In the US, Trustly, Inc. holds its own money transmitter licenses in roughly 36 states under NMLS ID 2463855, published with license numbers on its own site, with Cross River Bank providing access to the RTP rail.
What was the Swedish FSA fine about, and is it resolved?+
In 2022 Finansinspektionen issued Trustly a warning and a SEK 130M administrative fine for what it called severe deficiencies in risk assessment, customer due diligence, and transaction monitoring, concentrated in what the regulator described as Trustly's largest business area, the gambling industry. The root failure was treating only merchants as customers, which excluded end-players from AML measures. The same review had already forced Trustly to postpone its roughly €9B Nasdaq Stockholm IPO on May 3, 2021. The license was kept with no activity restriction, FI noted remediation was underway and said it did not expect the violations to recur, and Trustly Group AB remained on the FI register as of July 2026. Resolved, but it is the defining regulatory event of the open-banking segment and the reason the company is still private.
Where does Pay N Play actually work?+
Fewer places than its reputation suggests. The product page lists four markets: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and the Netherlands (July 2026). Inside those markets it remains the category product: bank-authenticated deposit, registration, and KYC in one flow, with the next-gen Azura version shown at ICE 2025 cutting logins to under 10 seconds and adding opt-in recognition across all Trustly-enabled sites.
How fast are Trustly payouts for US players, really?+
On the instant rails, under five minutes by the vendor's own claim (July 2026). Trustly launched US instant payouts on RTP with Cross River Bank in September 2021, made ESPN BET the first sportsbook on FedNow on April 8, 2024, and falls back to same-day ACH where neither rail reaches. Cumulative instant payouts passed $25B, more than $17B of it through RTP, and Trustly's volume was described in 2025 as approaching 10% of the entire RTP network. Where a receiving bank sits on neither instant rail, same-day ACH sets the real-world ceiling.
Why is Trustly's Trustpilot score so bad if tier-1 operators rely on it?+
Because the two audiences never meet. The 2.7 TrustScore across 3,265 reviews (57% one-star, read July 2026) is written by end consumers whose payout or refund sat in transit between a merchant and their bank, gambling withdrawals included, on a profile where Trustly pays for a subscription and answers 85% of negative reviews. Merchants are not the ones complaining, and no meaningful B2B review base exists for any vendor in this segment. Treat the score as a signal about consumer-support friction during transfers rather than about processing reliability, where the vendor claims 99.7% payout success and a 0.008% gaming fraud rate.