Reuters | By: Eric Auchard | Fri Jun 23, 2017 | 1:13pm EDT:
Adyen, one of Europe’s biggest fintech companies, has taken a pan-European banking licence that allows it to bypass banks and process cross-border payments directly for its merchant customers, including many of the world’s top ecommerce firms.
Chief Executive Pieter van der Does said on Friday that his Amsterdam-based company was awarded a European regional banking licence in late April by the Dutch Central Bank on behalf of the European Central Bank.
Swedish payments processing rival Klarna said last week that it also had been granted a European banking licence by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, as more fintech players seek to level the regulatory playing field versus banks.
The European banking license gives Adyen the status of an acquiring bank, clearing the way for it to process merchant payments nearly instantly, rather than relying on banking partners to handle settlements over several days.
“We are displacing the banks because we have our own banking licence,” van der Does said in an interview on the sidelines of the NOAH venture capital conference in Berlin.
Adyen itself has no plans to become a deposit-taking, full-service bank, but looks for the licence to give it control over the payments process to assure merchants of faster settlements.
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