American investment giant BlackRock has announced the acquisition of minority stake in Swedish payments company Trustly.
Other institutional investors such as Aberdeen Standard Investments, funds managed by Neuberger Berman, Investment Corporation of Dubai and RSIC have also become minority shareholders in Trustly.
Nordic Capital will continue as the majority shareholder of the firm.
Founded in 2008 in Sweden, Trustly offers online payment solutions through a platform, which makes it easy for merchants to complete online transactions.
In 2018, it was acquired by Nordic Capital, with an aim to support the expansion of the business internationally.
The firm’s account-to-account network helps customers to make fast, simple and secure to merchants from their online banking accounts, without going through card networks.
Trustly now has over 600 million customers in Europe and North America
Trustly serves more than 600 million customers and is supported by more than 6,000 banks across Europe and North America.
The firm serves some of the most prominent merchants within e-commerce, financial services, gaming, media, telecom and travel, which benefit from increased customer conversion, reduced cost of operations and chargeback costs and reduced fraud.
Through the deal, the payments firm has diversified its shareholder base, bringing additional long-term capital commitment to further support it in the development of products and infrastructure, as it plans to expand globally.
Trustly CEO Oscar Berglund said: “At Trustly, we’re leveraging local bank-to-bank payment rails to build a global online banking payments network that enables people to pay directly from their bank accounts in a safe and convenient manner. We welcome BlackRock and the other investors as minority shareholders in Trustly.
“With their support, we will double-down on developing the online banking payments solution that our merchants and billers and their customers love.”
The payments firm is supported by a workforce of about 400 across Europe, the US and Latin America.
