- Fidelity International is partnering with Visa-owned Tink to offer pay by bank account top-ups, giving investors a faster, more seamless way to fund ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts.
- Tink’s pay by bank enables real-time, secure bank-to-bank transfers, settling in under 40 seconds and reducing friction, fraud risk, and costs associated with manual transfers or card-based payments.
- Pay by bank adoption is accelerating across Europe, driven by lower fees, faster settlement, and open banking growth.
Global asset manager and retirement savings firm Fidelity International has teamed up with Visa’s open banking platform Tink. Fidelity will leverage Tink’s pay by bank tool to enable account top-ups for its personal investing customers and advised clients.
Adding the account top-up capability will allow Fidelity International users to quickly add funds to their ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts. With Tink’s pay by bank, users can send funds directly from their bank accounts using their secure bank log-in details. The funds are sent on fast rails that settle the transaction in less than 40 seconds on average and offer real-time payment confirmation.
“Fidelity’s focus is always on making investing as accessible and straightforward as possible. Partnering with Tink to offer pay by bank gives both our personal investors and our advised clients a fast, convenient way to fund accounts—reducing friction and improving the overall customer experience,” said Fidelity International Chief Digital Officer, Global Platform Solutions, Ian Hood. “By integrating pay by bank, we’re expanding our digital payments infrastructure to offer a modern, secure alternative to traditional methods like manual bank transfers, helping users move money quickly and safely.”
Founded in 2012, Tink was an early player in Europe’s open banking ecosystem. The Sweden-based company was acquired by Visa in 2022 for $2 billion and today offers a wide variety of products ranging from payments to account data to risk decisioning and finance management. With 3,000+ connections to all major banks across Europe, Tink processes 10 billion transactions per year across 19 geographical markets.
Pay by bank is one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment methods, driven by lower transaction costs, faster settlement times, and a shift toward open banking–powered digital payments. For merchants, direct bank-to-bank transfers eliminate interchange fees and reduce chargeback risk, making the payment experience both cheaper and less prone to fraud. Consumers benefit from a smoother checkout flow, fewer authentication steps, and greater security due to strong customer authentication.
According to Juniper Research, there are currently 183 million open banking users worldwide, a number expected to surpass 645 million by 2029. The combination of cost efficiency, real-time settlement, higher authorization rates, and improved fraud controls positions it as one of the most strategically important payment innovations in the market today and offers the potential for it to become a mainstream payment option.
For Tink, Fidelity’s rollout is another signal that pay by bank is moving from early adoption into mainstream financial services. As Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin noted, “Pay by bank represents the next evolution of open banking payments, delivering a fast, secure way to pay directly from your bank account. As adoption accelerates, we’re thrilled to see leading institutions like Fidelity put open banking at the heart of their payments experiences to make topping up investment accounts more seamless.”
