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Why Spade’s Oban MacTavish Thinks Banking AI Should Focus on Revenue, Not Cost Cutting

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 8, 2026
Categories: FinovateFall 2026, Interview

For much of the financial services industry, the conversation around AI has focused on creating efficiencies by automating processes, reducing costs, and replacing manual work. But banks may be overlooking AI’s biggest opportunity. Rather than focusing on what AI can eliminate, financial institutions may find greater value in using the technology to better understand their customers, anticipate their financial needs, and deliver personalized experiences that drive revenue.

In this conversation from FinovateFall 2026 in New York, we speak with Oban MacTavish, Co-Founder and CEO of Spade, about why the industry’s enthusiasm for AI agents may be misplaced and how better transaction data can help banks unlock AI’s potential. MacTavish explains why traditional payment data isn’t built for modern intelligence tools and how financial institutions can use AI to recreate the personalized relationships customers once had with their local bankers, but at scale.

“I think most of their customers are looking for a better experience, and it’s one of the ways that we actually see the biggest opportunity for AI in financial services is helping them turn their data into revenue,” said MacTavish.

MacTavish is Co-Founder and CEO of Spade, a New York-based financial data and AI company he co-founded in 2021. Under his leadership, Spade has expanded its platform to help financial institutions make better use of payments data for fraud prevention, customer engagement, analytics, and AI-powered applications. MacTavish also participated in a fireside chat at FinovateFall 2026 on how AI is changing offers, cross-sell, and personalization.

Founded in 2021, Spade transforms raw transaction data into structured, actionable merchant intelligence. Its platform helps banks, fintechs, and other financial services companies identify merchants, enrich transaction records, and build more personalized financial products and experiences. Spade raised $40 million in Series B funding in March 2026, led by Oak HC/FT, to expand its data and AI capabilities.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

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TrueLayer Raises $27 Million to Expand Pay-by-Bank

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 8, 2026
Categories: Daily news, Funding

UK-based open banking platform TrueLayer raised $27 million in a funding round led by CDP Venture Capital, bringing its total funding to $348.8 million.
TrueLayer is expanding beyond one-time pay-by-bank payments with recurring payment capabilities and its acquisition of BNPL provider in3, positioning itself to compete more directly with traditional card networks.
The investment reflects Europe’s push for greater financial sovereignty, supporting the development of European-owned payment infrastructure as pay-by-bank adoption grows across the region.

UK open banking platform TrueLayer has brought in $27 million in a funding round this week led by Italy-based CDP Venture Capital with additional contributions from existing and new investors. The investment adds to the $321.8 million already raised and brings TrueLayer’s total raised to $348.8 million.

“We started TrueLayer with a simple belief: Europe deserves payment infrastructure built in Europe. Having Italy back that belief means a great deal to us personally, especially to our talented team in Milan, who work hard every day to build the future of European payments,” said TrueLayer Co-Founder and CEO Francesco Simoneschi.

Founded in 2016, TrueLayer powers $150 billion each year in online pay-by-bank payments for more than 30 million consumers in 22 countries. The company provides the connectivity and commercial payment experience that make payment rails accessible to businesses. By cutting out the middlemen involved in the payments stack, TrueLayer’s pay-by-bank tools help merchants lower payment costs by up to 40%, increase average order value by 20%, and reduce fraud by eliminating the need for payment cards. Among TrueLayer’s competitors are Trustly, Visa-owned Tink, and Volt.

Earlier this year, TrueLayer announced support for recurring payments and acquired Dutch buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider in3. The move adds a financing component to an offering historically focused on immediate bank payments. These two developments show that TrueLayer is seeking to compete beyond the pay-by-bank space. The company is slowly shifting its focus to compete with card payments at ecommerce checkout, replace card-on-file for subscriptions and repeat purchases, support merchant refunds and instant disbursements, and offer purchase financing without depending on traditional card rails.

While pay-by-bank has seen limited growth in the US, its usage is growing in Europe. In July of this year, the UK’s open banking ecosystem reached two major milestones, reaching more than one billion open banking payments and 100 billion API calls recorded across the CMA9 banks since the launch of open banking started more than eight years ago.

As European policymakers and investors increasingly emphasize financial sovereignty, TrueLayer offers an opportunity to build an alternative to payment infrastructure dominated by US-based companies such as Visa and Mastercard. CDP Venture Capital’s investment underscores that ambition, positioning pay-by-bank as both a lower-cost payment option and a strategic component of Europe’s financial infrastructure.

“Europe needs payment infrastructure it owns and controls, and we are investing across the continent to help build it,” said Mario Branciforti of CDP Venture Capital. “TrueLayer is a clear example of what that looks like in practice, with a network already operating at scale in 22 countries.

Photo by Pixabay

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Gusto Helps Accountants Put AI Agents to Work with New Platform Updates

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 7, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Gusto

Gusto unveiled three updates for its 23,000+ accounting firm customers: a rebuilt Gusto Pro, a multi-client Model Context Protocol (MCP), and an expanded Gusto Partner Program.
The new tools use AI to help accountants scale their practices, automating payroll preparation and reporting while allowing accountants to retain control over approvals and focus on higher-value advisory work.
The company’s multi-client MCP brings its payroll data into accountants’ preferred LLMs, signaling a shift in which financial software can remain the underlying system of record even when an AI assistant becomes the primary interface.

Payroll, benefits, and HR management solutions company Gusto is shipping three new updates to help its more than 23,000 accounting firm customers serve their small business clients. The California-based company is adding a rebuilt Gusto Pro, a new multi-client Model Context Protocol (MCP), and an expanded Partner Program.

The new capabilities let firms put AI agents to work on payroll prep while staying in control of approvals. Gusto aims to empower its accountant clients to better serve their own customers while scaling their practices.

Gusto Pro, the company’s accountant payroll software, has been updated to include new AI-assisted workflows, an AI assistant with visibility into multiple clients, automated reporting, and a simplified dashboard built to free up accountants from manual tasks. While the updated platform is now available to eligible clients, the company is planning to make the updates generally available later this year.

“Gusto Pro provides advisory forward-thinking insights and tools,” said Wyatt Kneaper, founder and CEO of The Lighthouse Group, an accounting firm based in Eureka, California. “When a client is engaged, we can surface insights based on Gusto Pro to say, hey, let’s have a conversation. What are your goals? What direction do you want to head in the next two to five years? There’s a huge door that potentially opens.”

Additionally, the company now offers accountants a multi-client MCP that brings Gusto’s business context directly into the accountant’s preferred LLM. Because the MCP is multi-client, accountants can use their LLM to ask questions across their book of business without having to log in multiple times or set up multiple different windows for conversations.

Finally, Gusto has upgraded its Partner Program to help accountants grow their firms and receive more revenue share when they serve more clients on Gusto.

The Gusto Partner Program incentivizes firms to grow their practices by offering rewards. When accountants serve more clients on Gusto, they receive more revenue share as well as increased strategic support to invest back into their firms. Gusto offers marketing support, development funds, access to a consultant network, and the use of AI agents to help firms win new clients and deepen advisory revenue.

These updates show that fintechs are responding to their clients’ interests in leveraging AI to better serve their end customers. In Gusto’s case, the fintech is using AI agents to take over more of the preparation itself, leaving accountants to review and approve the work and spend more time on higher-value advisory services. Additionally, the multi-client MCP allows accountants to access Gusto data and prepare payroll from the LLMs where they already work.

In the broader fintech context, the MCP connection may be the most interesting piece of today’s announcement, as it shows that Gusto is acknowledging that the primary interface for financial software isn’t necessarily its own platform but rather the customer’s LLM. Gusto will remain the system where payroll data lives and transactions ultimately take place, while accountants choose to interact with that data through their AI assistant.

Photo by kaboompics

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Digital Adoption Platform Whatfix Partners with LKQ Europe

By David Penn Posted on October 7, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Whatfix

Automotive aftermarket parts distributor LKQ Europe announced a partnership with Digital Adoption Platform company Whatfix.
LKQ Europe will deploy the company’s platform as part of an overhaul of its LKQ Academy’s learning management system for automotive professionals.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, and Bangalore, India, Whatfix made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026.

LKQ Europe, an automotive aftermarket parts distributor, has partnered with Whatfix to deploy the company’s Digital Adoption Platform and Product Analytics across its LKQ Academy.

A training program for automotive professionals, the Academy provides hundreds of e-learning courses, instructor-led training through 15 training centers, and certifications. The partnership with Whatfix is part of an initiative by the automotive parts company to transition its training operations to a more centralized learning management system. The platform supports 70,000 registered users—including mechanics, workshop owners, automotive technicians, and internal teams—across 13 European countries. Whatfix will deliver in-platform guidance to help them navigate the new learning system, find relevant coursework, and complete training tasks. Whatfix’s analytics tools will enable LKQ Europe to see where users are encountering difficulties, allowing the Academy to make ongoing improvements to the learning experience.

“As AI and software reshape every industry, organizations need learning experiences that are embedded directly into work, personalized to every user, and continuously optimized through real-time insights. That’s the shift we’re enabling with LKQ Europe,” Whatfix Co-Founder and CEO Vara Kumar said.

Whatfix’s Digital Adoption Platform combines digital adoption, analytics, simulation training, and intelligent agents to help companies secure value from their technology investments faster. The platform is powered by AI and ScreenSense and understands user context and intent to provide real-time guidance, automate support, identify friction points, and fuel continuous process optimization. The platform helps institutions accelerate technology adoption, boost productivity, enhance regulatory compliance, and deliver greater returns from both enterprise software and AI initiatives.

LKQ Europe plans to adopt additional Whatfix capabilities over time, introducing new training programs, communicating platform updates, and creating more personalized learning experiences for customers.

“Automotive professionals are expected to master technologies that are evolving faster than ever before,” said Jason Conway, European Product Manager, Training Platforms, LKQ Academy. “Success depends on making learning as accessible and intuitive as the work itself. LKQ Academy is a strategic investment in the future of our customers, and with Whatfix we’re creating a digital learning experience that empowers every user to learn with confidence while enabling us to continuously improve that experience over time.”

Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, LKQ Europe is an automotive aftermarket parts distributor for cars, vans, and industrial vehicles across more than 18 countries in Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe, Italy, Scandinavia, the UK, and Ireland. A subsidiary of LKQ Corporation, LKQ Europe has approximately 25,000 employees and more than 900 branches. The firm supports more than 100,000 workshops through strong logistics, digital tools, and training via its LKQ Academy.

Founded in 2013, Whatfix made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. At the conference, the company demonstrated its AI-native digital adoption platform. With more than 600 enterprises around the world using its technology—including more than 80 Fortune 500 companies—Whatfix has a global presence that extends to North America, the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Australia. Whatfix is backed by investors including Warburg Pincus, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Dragoneer, Peak XV Partners, Eight Roads, and Cisco Investments.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya

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Experian Unveils New Consumer Reporting Agency for Cashflow Underwriting

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 6, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Experian

Experian launched the Cashflow Data Bureau, a new FCRA-regulated consumer reporting agency that uses consumer-permissioned cash flow data to support lending decisions.
The new bureau will serve as the foundation for Experian’s broader cash flow ecosystem, combining bank account data with existing tools such as Cashflow Attributes and Cashflow Score.
The launch puts Experian into closer competition with Plaid and other cash flow underwriting providers as lenders increasingly use banking activity alongside traditional credit data to assess borrowers.

Data analytics and consumer credit reporting company Experian is launching a new consumer reporting agency (CRA) called the Experian Cashflow Data Bureau. The new CRA’s goal is to help banks leverage consumer-permissioned cash flow insights to support underwriting decisions.

The Experian Cashflow Data Bureau, which operates under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), aims to help the nearly one-in-five consumers that lack access to credit or have damaged credit. Experian found that 60% of consumers who have either been denied credit or received less-than-favorable terms believe that the outcome of their application would have been different if the lender would have used cashflow underwriting, taking into account the borrower’s recent income and banking activity along with their credit history.

With the new Cashflow Data Bureau, Experian is creating an FCRA-regulated foundation for its broader cash flow decisioning ecosystem. The new platform leverages consumer-permissioned bank account data aggregation and report generation to help financial institutions bring cashflow insights into their existing decision-making process.

“We’ve spent decades building the trusted data, analytics, technology, and expertise financial institutions depend on every day,” said Experian North America CEO Jeff Softley. “With Experian Cashflow Data Bureau, we’re applying that experience to cash flow and making it easier for our clients to adopt these insights with confidence and at scale. By helping lenders understand a more complete picture of consumers’ financial lives, we can power more-informed decisions and ultimately help more consumers access the financial products and services they need, when they need them.”

The new Cashflow Data Bureau will serve as the foundation for Experian’s broader cash flow ecosystem, bringing together existing cash flow products such as Cashflow Attributes and Cashflow Score with capabilities for consumer consent, data aggregation, standardized reporting, analytics, and decisioning. The launch essentially brings cash flow data into a bureau-like framework, allowing lenders to incorporate consumer-permissioned banking activity into underwriting alongside traditional credit bureau data.

Cashflow underwriting is becoming increasingly popular in the lending sphere as it can help lenders better understand applicants’ day-to-day finances instead of just offering a snapshot in time. Experian’s analysis shows that the insights can help lenders increase approvals by up to 25% without adjusting their risk tolerance.

Today’s launch puts Experian into closer competition with open banking providers such as Plaid, which has expanded beyond account connectivity into FCRA-compliant consumer reports, cash flow analytics, and underwriting scores through its Plaid Check subsidiary. Interestingly, Experian also partners with Plaid to access consumer-permissioned cash flow data, making the two companies both partners and competitors in the space. Other competitors include Prism Data, Mastercard (Finicity), and Nova Credit.

Photo by kaboompics.com

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Darwinium Brings Intent Intelligence to GBG

By David Penn Posted on October 6, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Darwinium

Identity and location intelligence firm GBG has teamed up with behavioral and intent intelligence specialist Darwinium.
The partnership will enable businesses to know if the actions of a verified individual or AI agent are consistent with the legitimate intent of the customer.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Darwinium most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2026.

A newly announced partnership between identity and location intelligence firm GBG and behavioral and intent intelligence specialist Darwinium will help businesses determine whether the actions of a verified person or AI agent remain consistent with legitimate intent during the customer journey.

Effective fraud prevention requires more than verifying identity or assessing risk at a specific moment. Even when identities are determined to be legitimate, the activity itself may still present a fraud risk. This includes instances in which scammers manipulate verified customers into acting on the fraudster’s behalf—a phenomenon that is likely to become worse as AI agents become more involved in conducting tasks and making transactions on behalf of customers. Darwinium’s technology continuously monitors and evaluates behavioral, device, and journey-level signals to identify when behavior is not consistent with either the customer’s intent or an authorized agent’s mandate. Combined with Darwinium’s intent intelligence, GBG will enable its more than 20,000 customers worldwide to spot changes in fraud risk across both human and agent activity throughout the customer journey.

“GBG has built an incredibly strong foundation of global identity and local intelligence. Darwinium complements that by adding the behavioral context around an identity,” Darwinium Chief Operating Officer Michael Rodriguez explained. “That combination becomes particularly powerful in the agentic era. Businesses need to distinguish a trusted customer using a trusted agent from fraudsters and malicious automation without simply blocking AI-driven traffic. Together, GBG and Darwinium create a much richer picture of trust and give businesses the confidence to embrace new forms of digital interaction without compromising security or customer experience.”

Publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, GBG combines global identity data and location technology to help companies and their customers defend themselves against fraud and digital crime. GBG’s technology provides identity data verification, document authentication, biometric verification, and more, helping bolster business resilience and supporting responsible growth at scale for more than 20,000 customers around the world. Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Chester, GBG also announced this month a referral partnership with geolocation compliance platform GeoLocs, which will introduce its operator clients to GBG’s identity verification and fraud prevention capabilities.

“Identity remains fundamental to digital trust. As AI agents become an increasingly important part of the customer experience, businesses also need the context to understand what is happening after identity has been established,” GBG Chief Product & Technology Officer Gus Tomlinson said. “By bringing Darwinium’s behavioral and intent intelligence together with GBG’s identity and location capabilities, we can give customers a more complete view of trust across the journey. It allows us to combine what we know about an identity with how a human or agent is actually behaving, helping our customers make more informed fraud decisions while continuing to deliver fast, low-friction digital experiences.”

Founded in 2021 in San Francisco, California, Darwinium most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2026. At the conference, the company showed how its platform reveals undeclared AI agents operating through the browser, which are often missed by point-in-time device, behavioral biometrics, and bot solutions. Darwinium’s technology probabilistically distinguishes humans from AI agents via agent-to-browser interaction signals that are hard for agents to suppress. This helps banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions determine when agents are fraudulently posing as customers while enabling genuine users to act unhindered.

Photo by Cody Beale

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FinovateSpring 2027 is Live: New Venue, Same Finovate Experience

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 6, 2026
Categories: FinovateSpring 2027, Marketing

FinovateSpring is returning May 3 through 5, 2027. And while we’re still months away from the spotlight shining on the demo stage, FinovateSpring 2027 is officially live. Registration is open, demo applications are being accepted, hotel bookings are available, and we’re already gearing up for three days of fintech innovation in Southern California.

New venue

New this year, we’ll be hosting FinovateSpring at the new Gaylord Pacific Resort & Convention Center in Chula Vista. The waterfront resort gives us more room to grow, along with plenty of outdoor space to take advantage of the Southern California weather.

The new location may be bigger and brighter, but the things that make FinovateSpring worth attending aren’t changing.

Who will be there

Finovate consistently brings together decision-makers from across the financial services ecosystem. More than 1,200 attendees joined us at FinovateSpring this year, including:

800+ senior decision-makers
50% from banks and other financial institutions
150+ community banks and credit unions
Representatives from all top 10 U.S. banks

That mix brings together the people building new technology with the financial institutions looking to put it to work.

The Finovate experience, amplified

The new venue will host the same core Finovate experience: on-stage keynotes and panel discussions, high-impact networking, and, of course, Finovate’s signature fintech demos.

More than 50 companies will take the stage for seven-minute, live demonstrations of their latest technology. Rather than hearing a pitch or clicking through product slides, attendees get to see the technology at work and quickly assess how emerging solutions could fit into their own organizations.

Beyond the demo stage, FinovateSpring will bring together financial services leaders and fintech innovators to explore what’s next for banking, payments, AI, fraud prevention, financial infrastructure, and more.

We’re just getting started

The FinovateSpring speaker lineup, demo companies, and agenda are still taking shape, and we’ll have much more to share in the coming months.

Registration is now open, with the lowest-priced tickets currently available. Groups of three or more can also take advantage of additional savings with our group rate.

We’ll see you at FinovateSpring next May!

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Inbenta’s Melissa Solis on Strategies for Effective AI Implementation in Financial Services

By David Penn Posted on October 5, 2026
Categories: Podcasting

What do banks and other financial institutions need to do in order to ensure that their investments in AI deliver as promised? Why has asking the hard questions and conducting thorough due diligence before implementation become critical to a successful AI deployment? What should banks expect from AI vendors and, importantly, what should banks expect from themselves to make these high-risk, high-reward partnerships work?

In this Finovate Podcast conversation, host Greg Palmer talks with Melissa Solis, CEO of Inbenta, to discuss how the conversation around AI adoption in financial services is evolving. Solis underscores how the focus has grown from pilot projects and explorations of “what’s possible” to demands for AI-powered solutions and services that are “real and effective.” Solis also candidly talks about the struggles many organizations have faced with failed deployments and vendors that did not meet expectations and shares her firm’s partnership experience with Scious, whose founder spent years looking for an AI solution that would meet their requirements for governance, transparency, and performance.

“This year (at FinovateFall) what I heard a lot of was ‘what’s real?’ People had gone out and signed up for PoCs, signed agreements, and deployed solutions, but they were coming back with really hard questions because, in many situations, it did not live up to what people had told them. So what I’ve started to hear people say is, ‘Hey, it didn’t work. We were told this and it wasn’t real. So what do you do?’ I feel this is a great place to be because, at first, people weren’t asking the hard questions. They just assumed what everybody said was true. And I think by having some hard knocks and going through some of those failed deployments or failed PoCs, it’s really pushed people to ask the hard questions.”

As Chief Executive Officer at Inbenta, Solis helps drive strategic growth, foster innovation, and empower teams to deliver impactful solutions. She leverages her expertise in executive management and new business development to collaborate with stakeholders to advance Inbenta’s mission and bolster its position in the market.

Inbenta is a global AI orchestration platform that allows banks and other financial institutions to deploy trusted, self-service AI solutions in days rather than months. Headquartered in Allen, Texas, and founded in 2005, Inbenta offers an enterprise AI platform, Encore, that provides financial services, e-commerce, and healthcare companies with 98%+ accuracy, near-zero hallucinations, full auditability, and more than 850 integrations to prevent vendor lock-in. Inbenta made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2026.

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Stripe to Power Constructor’s Agentic Checkout

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 5, 2026
Categories: Daily news

Constructor partnered with Stripe to launch Agentic Checkout, enabling shoppers and AI agents to move from product discovery to purchase within a single AI-powered shopping experience.
The tool integrates Stripe’s payments infrastructure with Constructor’s AI Shopping Agent, allowing customers to pay via Link by Stripe or other payment methods without leaving the agent experience.
The launch helps close a key gap in agentic commerce by bringing discovery and checkout together, allowing AI to support more of the shopping journey from product search and recommendations through payment.

Product discovery platform Constructor has partnered with Stripe to launch Agentic Checkout, an agentic commerce tool available to retailers that enables both human and agent shoppers to find and buy products via the Link by Stripe digital wallet or other payment methods all within a single location.

Constructor’s Agentic Checkout is available to retailers within Constructor’s AI Shopping Agent, a tool that helps shoppers interact with a shopping agent using natural language. The company uses two of its existing tools, Commerce Reasoning Engine and AI Product Insights Agent, to power the new platform. The former helps agents learn from the shopper’s behavior across channels to provide more relevant product recommendations, while the latter answers product-specific questions directly on product detail pages.

“The promise of agentic commerce is that a shopper can express what they need and AI can help them every step of the way, making every part of the journey easier, more helpful, and more enjoyable,” said Constructor CEO and Co-founder Eli Finkelshteyn. “Delivering on that promise requires best-in-class discovery and then best-in-class checkout. Constructor has spent years focused on improving the discovery experience and helping shoppers find the right products, while Stripe has built world-class payments infrastructure that helps shoppers buy those products easily and securely. Together, we’re making agentic shopping more complete for consumers and more valuable for retailers.”

Founded in 2015, Constructor helps retailers deliver the right product to the right person in the right context at the right time for brands including Sephora, Petco, The Very Group, home24, Grove Collaborative, and Fisheries Supply. Constructor reports that, over the past year, the number of companies deploying the company’s AI agents has increased by tenfold.

Constructor likely chose Stripe because it is already used by many businesses and consumers. More than five million businesses run on Stripe, while more than 250 million end customers have set up Stripe’s digital wallet, Link by Stripe, to make payments. Connecting Constructor and Stripe also offers a relatively low-friction path for retailers already using both platforms. Existing Constructor customers can add Stripe-powered checkout by updating Constructor’s UI library and adding their Stripe credentials, while retailers that don’t currently use Stripe can enable Agentic Checkout without changing their existing payment setup elsewhere.

The launch also addresses one of the remaining gaps in agentic commerce. While AI shopping agents have become increasingly capable of helping consumers discover and evaluate products, shoppers have generally had to leave the agent experience to complete a purchase. Bringing checkout into the same platform moves agentic shopping one step closer to an experience in which AI can support the entire purchasing journey, from product discovery to payment.

Later this year, Constructor plans to expand Agentic Checkout beyond the AI Shopping Agent to other parts of retailers’ digital shopping experiences.

Photo by Jan van der Wolf

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Trustly Raises New Capital to Power the Next Era in Open Banking

By David Penn Posted on October 5, 2026
Categories: Funding, Trustly

Trustly has secured equity commitment letters of more than $40 million from its principal shareholder, Nordic Capital, and Alfvén & Didrikson. The capital raise is expected to conclude in November.
Trustly will use the capital to fund the next stage of its growth strategy, which includes accelerating the development of new products that use AI to bring real-time intelligence to payments.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Trustly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013.

Trustly Holding AB announced that its parent company, Trustly, has received signed equity commitment letters of more than $40 million from Nordic Capital, Trustly’s principal shareholder, and Alfvén & Didrikson, to fund a capital raise in the firm. The company will use the capital to fund the next stage of its growth strategy, accelerating the development of new products that will use AI to transform payments into intelligence that helps businesses win new customers, keep those customers longer, and manage risk better.

“Trustly is the payments network behind more than 50 million consumers and over $120 billion in transactions a year,” Trustly Group CEO Johan Tjärnberg said. “This puts Trustly in a strong position to take a leading role in shaping the new era of financial services by bringing together payment and data services and using AI to embed real-time financial intelligence. This commitment from Nordic Capital and Alfvén & Didrikson is a vote of confidence in Trustly and where we’re headed.”

In a statement, the company said that the signed commitment letters from Nordic Capital and Alfvén & Didrikson are a strong endorsement of Trustly’s strategy to build on its open banking payments network—currently spanning the US, Canada, and Europe—to create a real-time intelligence platform. Trustly sees this as the next evolution in open banking: using AI-powered real-time intelligence to move beyond merely moving money inexpensively toward a world in which each interaction is smarter than the last. This strategy also underscores the company’s determination to defend itself against competition from traditional card networks and account-to-account (A2A) payment providers by providing insights at the point of sale.

The investment is expected to conclude in November 2026, at which point the final amount of the capital raise will be announced. Trustly’s other current shareholders will also be offered the opportunity to participate in the funding.

“Nordic Capital has backed Trustly since 2018, supporting its development of the largest open banking payments networks in Europe and North America,” said Fredrik Näslund, Partner and Head of Technology & Payments for Nordic Capital Advisors. “This commitment reflects a strong confidence in the business and its strategy.”

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Trustly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013. Today, the company is an open banking payment solutions provider offering a platform that helps ensure that transactions are processed quickly, securely, and in real time. With partners including PayPal, eBay, T-Mobile, and Coinbase, Trustly enhances the payment experience for more than 9,000 merchants in more than 30 markets, connecting them to 650+ million consumers through 12,000 banks. The company’s Pay by Bank offering helps companies boost customer lifetime value via better conversions, higher approvals, deeper consumer insights, and lower costs compared to cards.

Photo by Hakan Tas from Pexels

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 5, 2026
Categories: Fintech Rundown

It’s the first full week of October, which means it is officially Spooky Season. However, while there’s lots of fintech news to catch up on this week, none of it is too scary. So take a peek at what fintechs are up to in this week’s list of the top fintech news. We’ll continue to update this post with news throughout the week.

Business financial management

Basware completes acquisition of Trustpair.

Agentic commerce

Constructor launches agentic checkout powered by Stripe.

Payments

Verifone launches new Commander products designed to help partners across convenience stores and gas stations grow.

Payments Canada welcomes six new members, including Nium.

Digital banking

Engine by Starling powers Tangerine Bank’s new business client offering.

Fraud and identity

Trulioo strengthens identity verification for Fiserv clients across global markets.

Photo by Mario Rodriguez

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