Payment Expert names 5 EU fintechs

Payment Expert on April 27 picked out five companies it says are shaping European open banking: GoCardless, Token.io, TrueLayer, Tink and Yapily. (paymentexpert.com) Open banking lets licensed firms plug into bank accounts through application programming interfaces, or software connections, to pull data or start payments with a customer’s consent. Europe’s rules under the second Payment Services Directive, known as PSD2, forced banks to open those rails to third parties. (paymentexpert.com) (visa.com) Payment Expert said the market now reaches 63.8 million users across Europe, a fivefold increase since 2020, and the UK logged 29.9 million open-banking payments in July 2025. (paymentexpert.com) (openbanking.org.uk) GoCardless led the list with the strongest financial detail. Payment Expert said the London company posted £160.9 million in FY25 revenue, up 22% year over year, and doubled payment volume to £79.2 billion after buying Nuapay in September 2024. (paymentexpert.com) The article said GoCardless now combines direct debit, instant bank pay, variable recurring payments and outbound payments, giving it a broader bank-to-bank stack. It also said Mollie’s pending acquisition, announced in December 2025, is expected to create a group serving more than 350,000 European merchants. (paymentexpert.com 1) (paymentexpert.com 2) TrueLayer made the list as the biggest pure pay-by-bank name in the UK. The company said in February 2025 that it had reached 10 million consumers, was adding a new user every three seconds, and processed more than 40% of UK pay-by-bank payments. (truelayer.com) (paymentexpert.com) By December 2025, TrueLayer said its network had reached 20 million users across Europe. Payment Expert also reported in February 2026 that eBay invested in TrueLayer and added Pay by Bank at checkout in the UK. (truelayer.com) (paymentexpert.com) Tink’s place on the list shows how much of the market has moved from startup insurgents to infrastructure owned by bigger payments groups. Visa completed its acquisition of Stockholm-based Tink in March 2022 for €1.8 billion. (visa.com 1) (visa.com 2) Payment Expert’s ranking also included Token.io and Yapily, two companies built around white-label bank-payment rails and data access for other firms. Yapily’s recent partnerships have included Adyen in February 2025 and RiseUp in April 2025. (paymentexpert.com 1) (paymentexpert.com 2) (paymentexpert.com 3) The common thread is that these firms are trying to move payments away from card networks and toward direct bank transfers that settle faster and carry lower merchant fees. TrueLayer says merchants can cut payment costs by more than 40% and that returning-customer conversion can reach 90% on its network. (truelayer.com) (truelayer.com) Payment Expert’s list is less a scorecard than a snapshot of where Europe’s payments market is heading: fewer card details at checkout, more bank authentication in apps, and more infrastructure controlled by a handful of scaled fintech platforms. (paymentexpert.com)