Swedish payments unicorn Trustly says it's unlikely to IPO in the next 24 months, despite yesterday appointing a CFO who oversaw Deliveroo’s listing in the UK.
Trustly, which leverages open banking technology to allow its customers to pay directly from their bank account without needing to use a card or app, has long been touted as an IPO prospect.
Johan Tjärnberg, CEO, Trustly, admitted the Stockholm-headquartered fintech had searched for more than a year to find a “top tier” CFO.
It has now appointed finance bigwig Adam Miller, who presided over Deliveroo's listing on the LSE in 2021, as its new CFO.
Referencing Miller’s IPO experience, Tjärnberg said:
"It is always good, I think, to have that experience from a CFO who has been through it."
He said an IPO remained an option for Trustly, last valued at $1.35bn, but a listing was not around the corner.
Trustly works with over 12,000 banks across Europe and North America and is used by more than 9,000 merchants, including Facebook and Alibaba.
Tjärnberg also flagged up that Trustly, whose account-to-account payments mean lower transaction fees for merchants compared to card transaction fees, was about to hit $100bn in annual payment processing.
He said:
“We might hit that mark towards the end of the year. If not, we should be able to do it early next year on an annual basis.”
The fintech, founded in 2008, has been making a big play in the US, its biggest market by revenue, where it launched around four years ago.
Despite it being a card-centric country, Trustly is enjoying a “phenomenal ride” in the US, where it has “tapped into the sports betting space” and is now making inroads into the retail space.
Recurring payments have proved a hit with the likes of T Mobile and AT&T, the CEO says.
In 2022, Trustly snapped up UK open banking vendor Ecospend, giving it a foothold in the UK market and a marquee client in HRMC, the UK government tax department.
The CEO says public sector clients, like HRMC, are a good use case fit, and that, as well, Trustly was looking to beef up its subscription business in the UK.
Last year, Trustly launched an AI-powered data engine, called Trusly Azura, which instantly recognises users across websites and devices, thereby reducing the time spent at the checkout.
Tjärnberg says:
“We are building up consumer profiles. Everybody that is using the Trustly service, we build up a consumer profile based on consent from the users.”
Tjärnberg likens Trustly Azura to an Apple Pay experience and says that around 12m of Trustly’s 40m users are onboarded on the platform.
In 2022, Trustly was hit with €12.3m fine over AML deficiencies by Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority.
Tjärnberg said in hindsight the fine was “important” and a “good thing”.
He said:
“I think we have learned a lot from this and been driving a lot of quality innovation as a consequence of this. All in all, I think was actually a good thing.”
Tjärnberg says that currently Trustly is putting a significant effort into the recurring payment space, including bill and subscription payments.
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