Brite Payments opens UK Pay by Bank after FCA licence

Brite Payments is not introducing Pay by Bank to Britain. The United Kingdom already has more than 15 million open banking users, and the firm's survey finds 76% of British adults familiar with the method, according to its September 29, 2026 announcement. The news is the permission that was missing. After an electronic money institution licence from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Stockholm group can put UK pay-ins and payouts on the same Application Programming Interface (API) it already sells across 27 European markets and more than 3,800 banks.

That is the contrast with a single-market provider. A domestic account-to-account (A2A) firm can cover UK banks. Brite Payments says one integration also reaches the rest of that European list, including instant payouts as well as pay-ins. In a September 29 interview with Börsen-Zeitung, founder and chief executive Lena Hackelöer said a majority of inbound leads already come from the UK, which she presumed was because customers there already know Pay by Bank. The rollout is phased, not a full switch-on. The near-term test is whether those leads convert once the UK entity can take the flow, not whether merchants have heard of the method.

What the FCA permission covers

The UK operator is Brite Payments Limited, an FCA-authorised electronic money institution, FRN 1033237, registered in England and Wales as company number 15827893, at 6th Floor One London Wall, London, EC2Y 5EB, on the firm's UK business page. The group was founded in 2019 and is based in Stockholm. Its Swedish sister, Brite AB, is a licensed payment institution supervised by Finansinspektionen. Hackelöer told Börsen-Zeitung that the UK, one of the three largest e-commerce markets in wider Europe, had been missing from the portfolio, and that Brexit required a separate licence. That process, she said, took time.

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Merchants are offered one API for Pay by Bank in the UK and across the existing network, plus instant payouts. CFOtech UK reported the same shape: one integration, more than 3,800 banks, 27 markets, and a phased rollout rather than every product going live at once. The Paypers added that no timeline or scope for that phasing has been disclosed. Hackelöer also told Börsen-Zeitung that large customers usually want one provider covering all markets, and that Brite does not yet know how strong local demand will be.

A 47% figure that adds two answers

Brite's Appinio survey of 2,000 UK adults, fielded on September 1 and 2, 2026, says 47% suffered what the firm calls checkout rage. A footnote on the newsroom post says that 47% adds two answers: 31% frustrated by slow, multi-step checkouts, and 16%, which the firm also calls one in six, who had sworn or shouted at a screen. The sum is not a count of people who did both. Separately, 19% said they would blacklist a retailer over poor payment options, and 24% had avoided a purchase because of returns anxiety.

Single-market rails are already busy

Rivals have not been quoted on the licence. TrueLayer has added credit to Pay by Bank, so the method is not only a debit transfer. Sage and GoCardless have put Pay by Bank on UK small-business invoices, a domestic use that does not need a 27-market bank list. Adyen is adding pay-by-bank to GOV.UK Pay. Brite's different claim is one merchant integration for Britain plus the rest of its European connections. In the same survey, more than 60% said they would rather use a provider not exposed to disruption from another country.

Hackelöer, a former Klarna executive, told Börsen-Zeitung that card payments remain very expensive for retailers even where consumers pay little or nothing, and that Pay by Bank is cheaper for merchants in a card-heavy market such as the UK. Neither the interview nor the launch note publishes a fee, a merchant count or a volume.

The UK is one of the most mature open banking markets in the world, but it's been dominated by overseas card networks and reliance on legacy providers built for a single market.

Lena Hackelöer, founder and chief executive of Brite Payments, said that in the September 29 announcement. CFOtech reported backing of $60 million led by Dawn Capital. The newsroom names that London firm as a backer and states no total. Börsen-Zeitung records Dawn Capital among the investors and that she described the company as currently well financed. On that record, funding was not the constraint. The licence was.

If the UK-heavy lead flow converts during a phased rollout, Brite Payments will have used an e-money licence to sell cross-border coverage into a market that did not need Pay by Bank invented. If the leads stay as pipeline, the entry is a regulatory completion of a European network, not a change in who processes British checkout.