Open payments platform Spreedly is working with Trustly to give merchants pay-by-bank access.The collaboration, announced Thursday (Feb. 6), gives businesses using Spreedly access to Trustly’s pay-by-bank capabilities, thus increasing Trustly’s U.S. market reach.“Our collaboration with Spreedly represents a significant step towards a unified payments experience becoming the industry standard,” Trustly Vice President of Enterprise Growth Ross McFerrin said in a news release.“By integrating Trustly’s pay by bank offerings with Spreedly’s orchestration platform, we’re providing merchants an all-in-one solution that allows them to choose the best payment methods to offer their customers while simplifying the complexity of payment integrations.”According to the release, the integration of Trustly’s pay-by-bank and account authentication capabilities is designed to support merchant growth at scale while allowing for secure and compliant payment processing.“Trustly’s proprietary bank connectors and patented risk engine, combined with Spreedly’s dynamic transaction routing, will provide merchants with reduced operational risk and improved authorization success,” the companies added.Real-time pay by bank data and intelligent routing, the release said, will streamline the payment experience for consumers, leading to higher conversion rates.The partnership comes during an “exciting time” to be in the open banking and pay-by-bank space, as Trustly Chief Product Officer Adam D’arcy told PYMNTS earlier this year.As that report notes, open banking has been around for years, growing in popularity in the U.K. and Hong Kong. The U.S., however, has only just started to embrace its potential.Pay by bank is poised to complement — and not compete with — existing payment methods such as digital wallets. D’arcy argued that wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay could someday incorporate pay-by-bank functionality, in the same way that they’ve integrated buy now, pay later (BNPL) solutions.“It’s still very nascent, particularly in the U.S.,” he said, citing the need for standardization and broader consumer education before such integrations become widespread.This adoption depends on dual participation by merchants and consumers

Payment failures are a major challenge for merchants, especially as they expand globally. Consumers expect seamless transactions, and payment declines can lead to abandoned purchases, lost sales and damaged loyalty. According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “How Open Payments Boost Performance,” in collaboration with Spreedly, open payments platforms help merchants improve conversion rates, track key performance metrics, and reduce involuntary churn, particularly for subscription businesses. Increasing Customer ConversionFalse declines — when a payment is incorrectly rejected — are a costly problem for merchants. According to the report, $157 billion in U.S. eCommerce sales were at risk due to false declines in 2023