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In 2008, a Swedish fintech company launched a new solution for making rapid, secure online payments and has since gone on to become one of the most recognisable brands in the online payment solution sector, performing millions of transactions every day. Glue Finance, later to become known as Trustly, introduced the convenient ability for people to make payments to merchants directly from their bank accounts.
That may not sound particularly revolutionary now, but at a time when online payment gateways and fintech products were still gathering popularity and trust, Trustly’s new technology introduced an alternative to making card or e-wallet payments. Switching things up by not requiring users to disclose details of bank or credit cards across the web, Trustly took a different approach of securely connecting to a user’s bank to send a payment to the merchant.
Operating their ‘open banking’ services in the UK, Sweden, Germany and other European countries, Trustly has created a strong identity as an alternative to card payments. But whether it’s safe and reliable to use is always the big question about fintech products.
Is Trustly an e-wallet?
The ‘open banking’ tech that Trustly operates on sets it apart from common e-wallets and even other payment options like PayPal and Skrill. The latter is notable because it was one of the first massively popular alternative payment options for online gambling deposits in the UK, which is a huge industry handling massive amounts of daily transactions and is highly varied when it comes to payment methods.
An advantage of using a secure Trustly casino out of the many available options is that a user doesn’t need to open an account with a different payment provider or take an extra step, such as linking a debit card to an e-wallet. Deposits from Trustly to gambling platforms are typically processed instantly.
But there’s more to the service as well, because Trustly provides not only the payment solution but a complete onboarding system for a gambling site. Because of the direct connection with a financially secure, regulated bank, Trustly provides a combination of account creation, ID verification and deposit power in one neat package, streamlining the registration process at online casinos.
The key advantage
By processing transactions directly from a bank, the Trustly method means cutting down on a lot of intermediaries for making an online payment. The money goes straight from the bank to the merchant, and as it’s not dancing around through different processing systems, this helps to cut fees and speed up the time of transactions.
When checking out on a platform with Trustly, a user is directed to a page where they perform a secure login to their bank, using their regular credentials. Importantly for users, while this allows Trustly access and provides authorisation for them to issue a payment, they don’t store any of your login data. An extra security check during the payment process comes via two-factor authentication.
Security
There will naturally be concerns by some people about logging in to their bank without them typing the bank’s URL into the browser or opening an app. A checkout redirection to a login portal page can make people hesitant, but Trustly operates high levels of encryption to make this happen.
These encryption levels are right up there with those of the best banking operations, and they are also overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK. This oversight ensures that consumers are getting sufficient protection from the Trustly product – essentially the very same protection that you get when you visit your bank’s online banking page.
The money angle
Trustly is a business and is in operation to make a profit for itself. The way the company makes money is by charging merchants for every transaction that it processes. This is a small fee assessed by them, essentially no different from the way that credit cards work.
So, if a player funds an online gambling account or checks out at an online store using Trustly, it’s the merchant that will absorb the cost, and not the consumer. How much that will be is down to the size of the transaction, as Trustly assesses its fee as a percentage of the transaction’s value.
This, in a way, further speaks to the reliability of Trustly as a trusted payment solution and why they have become such big news. The reason that merchants absorb those costs is primarily because of the high rates of conversion that they get from customers using the payment solution. Users are typically more likely to complete purchases because the process is secure and quick, as opposed to, for example, having to put complete card details into a checkout screen.
The overall picture
Trustly is a highly regarded online payment solution that can help to simplify and speed up online payment options. The fact that it is also a transaction that comes straight from a customer’s bank account means that there’s far less risk from the merchant’s perspective in terms of any chargebacks happening.
It’s become particularly coveted for use with sports betting and online casino sites in the UK, because it solves the problem for those who are wary of sharing their card details or who don’t want to go through the extra process of setting up an e-wallet account.
