Pay by Bank in 2024: year in review
Head of Content
Big things happened in 2024. Bitcoin (BTC) started the year with a value around $42,500. Eleven months later it’s worth more than $100,000 for the first time. Paris delivered the spectacular Summer Olympics. The U.S. solidified plans to go back to the moon for a fly-by and a walk-around in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
Exciting things happened worldwide in 2024, and we’re here for all of it.
The world of fintech and payments experienced change and innovation too. In this article, we’re recapping the progress in payments and fintech that we saw over the past 12 months.
Plus, we’ve put together a round-up of notable Trustly wins for the year! Let’s dive into our year in review, starting with three big areas in fintech that saw lots of change in 2024:
- Open Banking
- Embedded finance
- Cybersecurity and data protection
Open Banking
Open Banking had a HUGE year in 2024 thanks to the CFPB’s Final Rule 1033 publication.
What is Open Banking? It’s a secure way for consumers to share their financial info with merchants and service providers through a secure API connection. It’s consumer-permissioned access to financial data through account linking that:
- Enables consumers to pay with their bank account (Pay by Bank).
- Informs businesses to build products and services that consumers care about.
- Makes financial services smarter and safer for consumers and merchants.
The CFPB’s Final Rule is intended to give consumers greater rights, privacy, and security over their personal financial data. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said, “Too many Americans are stuck in financial products with lousy rates and service. [The Final Rule] will give people more power to get better rates and service on bank accounts, credit cards, and more.”
One particular area of interest to merchants and Pay by Bank providers like Trustly, is that the rule–ideally–will help bring greater competition to payments markets, which have long been an area of anti-competitive practices.
Just look at interchange fees. The card brands compete by … raising prices? That’s right. When card brands raise interchange prices to entice card issuers to use them, merchants pay the price. Our Founder and CEO, Alex Gonthier, made a great post about it on LinkedIn.
Pay by Bank has the potential to level the playing field for merchants who otherwise have no say in interchange costs. There’s no guarantee that consumer behavior will shift, but we have some strong research suggesting that consumers will use Pay by Bank if incentivized.
Some merchants have already bought in. Look at the Target Circle Card, a form of Pay by Bank, that rewards Target shoppers with 5% off purchases, insider perks, and conveniences like no-receipt returns. In the telco space, you have Verizon, AT&T, and T Mobile all offering monthly discounts for Pay by Bank.
It’s a story that’s played out before. Cash was king, until it wasn’t. Then cards took over.
The indicators of change seem to be all around us too. Whether you see price differences at the gas pump for a cash discount or discounts on your restaurant bill for using cash or debit, merchants are looking for better payment acceptance options that don’t eat away at their revenue.
By combining Open Banking technology with payment services, you get a smarter, safer payment in Pay by Bank. If 2024 carved the path for Pay by Bank, then 2025 will be the year that puts it on the map as a major highway.
And visionary merchants who are willing to invest in their businesses by going all in on incentives are the ones who will win the day.
Embedded finance for the win
Our very own Eric Foust, Vice President of Banking Partnerships, said it best: “Embedded finance integrates a financial service-related activity into a non-financial services platform.”
That could mean ordering and paying for your Starbucks coffee through their app before driving to the store to pick it up. Or it could mean paying for it in the Uber app and having it delivered right to your door. In either scenario, there’s a financial service (a payment) embedded into their non-financial platform (the Starbucks and/or Uber app).
It’s a game changer for everyone involved and puts the “ease of payments” front and center.
Rewind 20 years, or even 10 years, and the whole idea sounds very Back to the Future-ish. But that’s the way of tech: innovation and ease of use. Businesses are able to build incredible customer loyalty by delivering an experience that makes it easy to use and easy to pay.
But it doesn’t “just happen.” It’s one thing to embed the payment ability into an app or loyalty program, but it’s another thing to make it easy for customers to use.
It’s not hard to imagine: You had a long week and wake up to the sound of rain Saturday morning. You instantly decide not to get out of bed, not to get dressed for the day, and not to grab the umbrella, just to join the wrapped-around-the-building drive-through (all because you forgot to grab coffee at the grocery store earlier in the week).
So, you grab your phone and open the Starbucks or Dunkin app, and order your go-to drink (pumpkin spice season is over!). Then you get to the payment screen and notice that you don’t have a saved payment type. Or maybe you did, but an app update reset it and now it’s not there.
- If the card details in your digital wallet don’t autopopulate in the fields, you now have to roll out of bed, get your wallet, type in the card number, expiration date, and the three-digit code. And let’s be honest–that’s asking a LOT to start the day. Not easy.
- You see an option on the payment screen to Pay by Bank by simply signing into your online banking, funding your favorite coffee shop app, and clicking Pay now. And you never even had to get up. Easy.
And that’s the power of embedded finance with Open Banking. Make transactions easy for customers and you’ll win more customers.
One of our highlights in 2024 was our partnership with NewlineTM by Fifth Third, a leading embedded payments platform, to drive innovation across the money movement landscape and deliver payment experiences that delight customers.
We’re looking forward to accomplishing big things with them in 2025 on the embedded finance + Open Banking front!
Cybersecurity and data protection
Payments have become more and more digital, and that trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The ease of use that digital payments deliver needs to happen with security in mind. This is especially true when consumers link their bank accounts with non-financial services.
All eyes were on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2024, anticipating how consumers would have greater control over their financial data and what would be required of the businesses who provide and/or use that data.
We started the year by providing feedback to the CFPB regarding their proposed rule for Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act and looking forward to the final rule.
And then it happened in mid-October 2024: the final Rule 1033 was published. Our experts jumped right in and delivered a live analysis of the final Open Banking rule.
It’s no small achievement to get to a final rule. A consumer’s financial data is highly sensitive and there’s a lot at stake when it comes to data protection and cybersecurity.
So, what would be the safest way for a data provider or a data consumer to protect consumer banking information? Is it cloud storage? Or tokenized account numbers? Or something else?
This brings us to a 2024 Trustly highlight: we were issued a new patent for our focus on information security through split-token authentication technology.
As our Founder and CEO, Alex Gonthier said, “We’ve been obsessive about information security and consumer safety, and we never store consumers’ online banking usernames and passwords thanks to our proprietary technology.”
Here’s what that means.
Our customers–enterprise businesses who partner with us–don’t have to worry about making the headlines because hackers exposed their customers’ bank information. Why? Because we don’t store or share that information.
According to a Statista survey, 70% of consumer respondents prefer using a payment method that doesn’t share their data with merchants.
Data security matters. A lot. And we’re proud to stand alone as the only Pay by Bank provider who doesn’t store or share consumer banking information.
Trustly wrapped - 2024
Yes, the fintech and payments industry experienced change this year, and so did Trustly! From new partnerships to record volume, we helped push Pay by Bank forward. Here’s a recap and round-up of some of our proudest moments of the year.
By the numbers
Our customers helped us underscore a substantial shift in the payments industry exploring card alternatives. As a result, we’re tracking towards processing $100 billion in Total Payments Value (TPV) in 2024! More than 112 million consumers have used our products globally.
Trustly has processed more than $17 billion in instant Pay by Bank payments on the Real-time Payments (RTP) network.
Trustly, Inc., the Americas division of Trustly AB, is projected to process record TPV amounts in 2024, representing a 33% year-over-year growth rate.
Read more about our record growth!
Top fintech company
CNBC listed us as a Top 250 Fintech Company for the second year in a row.
This acknowledgment validates our leadership in the space and underscores the remarkable value we bring to both consumers and merchants.
Partnerships galore
If we’re only as good as the company we keep, consider us happy.
In 2024, we fortified our partnerships with announcements with Light & Wonder, Socure, Cross River Bank, PayNearMe, and NewlineTM by Fifth Third.
Resources for visionaries
With 50+ new downloadable and on-demand webinars, reports, podcasts, eBooks, and articles, we leaned into our position as the global leader for Pay by Bank across different topics that matter most to our customers and future customers
Driving Growth and Revenue with ACH Autopay
The Fintech-Bank Fusion: Elevating Embedded Financial Services
What Consumers Need for Pay by Bank to Catch On
Decoding 1033: Live Unboxing and Analysis
Thanks for a great year
While 2024 winds down, we’re gearing up to make next year the best one for Pay by Bank.
Join us by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on LinkedIn. You do not want to miss what we’re building in 2025.
And to close out our year in review, consider adding Pay by Bank to your payment stack. Be the visionary that disrupts the status quo.
Here’s the promise.
You’ll be joining other enterprise, Fortune 500 companies who have saved millions of dollars in interchange costs, won autopay subscribers with Pay by Bank, and approved more good transactions with our guaranteed payments.
