TrueLayer

TrueLayer is a UK-based company offering an open banking platform to connect developers to banks’ application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing them to access customer banking details and integrate banking features within apps or websites. The platform was available in the UK, Europe, and Australia, with more than half of the UK’s open banking traffic directed through its platform as of September 2020. 

In 2018, TrueLayer emerged as one of the first UK companies to be authorized and registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide account information and payment initiation services under Open Banking and PSD2 (European regulation for electronic payments).

TrueLayer offers a payments API (including payment links for email, text messages and QR codes), data API, identity verification, and a direct pay solution for apps.  TrueLayer’s verification API, launched in June 2021, combined open banking with machine learning, to improve the customer onboarding process. It claims its verification API is faster and more effective (success rate of over 20% higher than credit bureaus) than traditional verification processes.   

Key customers and partnerships

The company reportedly doubled its customer base year-to-date September 2021, with payment volumes growing 400% and payments up 800%. 

In January 2024, TrueLayer integrated its product suite including Payments, Payouts and Signup+ with Worldline Payment Orchestration, to expand product reach across enterprise merchants in the UK and across Europe including key markets such as Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands.

In June 2022, cross-border payment infrastructure provider Thunes partnered with TrueLayer , to integrate TrueLayer onto its platform and allow British and European customers to enable cross-border open banking payments. It also partnered with Airwallex in May 2023 to mutually improve cross-border, multi-currency open banking payments, by leveraging Airwallex’s localized infrastructure for global payments. 

Bybit, a crypto derivatives trading platform, partnered with TrueLayer in September 2022, to enable fiat deposits across Europe.

Funding and financials

The company raised USD 130 in funding led by Tiger Global Management in September 2021, at a valuation of over USD 1 billion. The funding comes just five months after TrueLayer raised USD 70 million in Series D funding in April, and will be used to expand TrueLayer’s payments network and customer base. Meanwhile, the company’s revenue for 2020 reportedly totaled less than GBP 5 million (USD 7.1 million).