Brite Payments Enters UK Market With FCA Licence, Giving Merchants One Gateway to 3,800+ European Banks
Brite Payments Enters UK Market With FCA Licence, Giving Merchants One Gateway to 3,800+ European Banks #
Swedish account-to-account payments company Brite Payments has entered the United Kingdom, following an Electronic Money Institution authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority and a commercial launch of its Pay by Bank service for UK merchants.
The FCA granted Brite Payments Limited EMI status (reference number 1033237), effective 21 April 2026, according to the regulator’s Financial Services Register. The authorisation permits the Stockholm-headquartered firm to issue e-money and safeguard customer funds in the UK, which goes beyond the permissions of a standard payment institution licence.
UK merchants can now access Brite’s network of more than 3,800 banks across 27 European markets through a single API integration, the company said. Businesses operating across multiple European countries can accept bank-initiated payments and process payouts over a unified connection rather than contracting separately with domestic providers in each market.
In the UK, Brite’s service runs over the Faster Payments network, enabling near-instant settlement between customers’ bank accounts and merchant accounts. Shoppers authenticate directly with their own bank rather than entering card details, which the company says reduces friction at checkout and cuts exposure to card fraud.
Founded in 2019 by Lena Hackelöer, a former Klarna executive, Brite has spent six years building proprietary infrastructure, branded the Brite Instant Payments Network, designed to connect fragmented banking systems across the region. The company describes its core offering as account-to-account payments that work across borders, arguing that many existing open banking and Pay by Bank providers are limited to operating within a single national market.
The UK has one of Europe’s more established open banking markets, with millions of consumers already accustomed to granting third-party access to their accounts. Brite’s entry adds an international dimension to the domestic market: a merchant based in the UK can, through the same integration, reach customers in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and dozens of other European markets.
The launch puts Brite in competition with both card networks and single-market A2A specialists, at a time when regulators and industry bodies across Europe are working to expand open banking into a mature commercial payment rail. The company is targeting merchants that sell across borders and are seeking to consolidate their payment stack under one provider.
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