eBay Ventures has made a strategic investment in TrueLayer, the company that’s providing the back end for eBay’s Pay By Bank account to account banking solution that’s now available at checkout for millions of UK buyers.
With Pay by Bank, eBay’s UK buyers can pay directly from their bank accounts, authorising the transaction through their own bank app in seconds. The experience is fast, secure, and frictionless, no cards or manual entry of account details required.
Our partnership with eBay brings Pay by Bank into the everyday shopping journey of millions of UK customers,. By integrating directly into eBay’s checkout, we’re enabling instant, bank-authenticated payments at scale, while merchants benefit from faster settlement and a more streamlined payment experience. This is another step towards a real-time payments ecosystem that aligns with modern consumer expectations.
– Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and Co-founder, TrueLayer
We’re constantly evolving eBay’s checkout experience to expand choice and make paying on our platform safer, faster and more seamless. Pay by Bank represents an important step in diversifying our payment mix with a secure, real-time way for buyers to pay directly from their bank accounts. Through our partnership with TrueLayer, we’re bringing this innovation to millions of UK customers while continuing to build a more modern, efficient payments experience.
– Avritti Khandurie Mittal, Vice President of Product, eBay Services
The reason that this is an important investment is Pay By Bank is an entirely different way of paying to those we’re accustomed to, those that rely on cards of which 95% of UK payments are controlled by Mastercard and Visa.
Both US owned payment giants, Pay By Bank cuts them out of the payment flow entirely, meaning that it’s also cheaper for the merchant, reducing the cost of interchange fees, Plus payments are settled at lightning speed thanks to Open Banking.
Apart from fees and speed, Pay By Bank has another unique advantage – it never expires like a credit or debit card – so long as you keep the same bank account your Pay By Bank credentials will remain in place. As soon as you tap the pay button on a supported checkout, you’re redirected to your bank to complete the transaction with no cards needed.
Of course Mastercard and Visa, both US owned payment giants, aren’t ignoring Pay By Bank, which has the capability over time to significantly reduce the number of transactions they process. They are both attended a meeting last week to discuss to establishing a national alternative to card payments – they are both likely to build Pay By Bank solutions to retain their share of UK payments.
As well as eBay, Amazon have also implemented TrueLayer for their Pay By Bank solution and with the two biggest marketplaces on board, it’s a massive step forward in educating consumers of the ease of this payment option. Expect to see ever more retailers offering Pay By Bank and it becoming as integral part of the checkout flow for ecommerce sites as offering the choice of cards, PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay have been in the past.
