Summary

• TrueLayer announced a $27 million investment led by CDP Venture Capital on 8 October.
• The company reports operations in 22 countries and more than 30 million European consumers using its network.
• It reports about 70 Italy-based employees and plans further hiring in Milan through 2027.

London-founded payments company TrueLayer has announced a $27 million investment led by Italy’s CDP Venture Capital, bringing new backing to its existing European Pay by Bank network. The announcement, dated 8 October, also highlights the company’s engineering presence in Milan and its intention to recruit further staff there through 2027.

TrueLayer was founded in London in 2016 by Francesco Simoneschi and Luca Martinetti. Its core service enables consumers to initiate payments directly from bank accounts using open banking infrastructure rather than entering card credentials. The company reports that it is live in 22 European countries and processes payments for businesses including Ryanair and Just Eat.

The financing should be distinguished from the launch of a new payment network. TrueLayer already provides a commercial service, while the new investment supports its further development. The company describes more than 30 million European consumers as using its network, but that is a company-reported reach figure rather than a newly verified number of active monthly users.

Pay by Bank uses regulated connections to banking systems to initiate account-to-account transfers. Instead of supplying card details at checkout, a customer typically moves through a bank authentication process to approve the transaction. Payment service providers then need to inform merchants of transaction outcomes and support operational activities such as reconciliation.

The business case for merchants depends on more than the mechanics of moving funds. Payment acceptance, transaction pricing, failed-payment handling, refunds and customer support all affect the cost of introducing an alternative method. Card networks already offer mature infrastructure and consumer protections, which account-to-account providers have to compete with in practical terms.

Country coverage is also distinct from uniform bank and merchant support. Open banking interfaces, authentication experiences and customer preferences differ across national markets. A merchant considering Pay by Bank must determine where the relevant customer banks are supported and how the payment method performs within its own checkout and back-office processes.

The Italian investment has a geographic dimension. CDP Venture Capital is backed by the Italian public investment system and presents the transaction as support for European payments infrastructure. TrueLayer says around 70 employees, approximately one-quarter of its workforce, are based in Italy, with Milan among its principal engineering hubs.

Those employees already contribute to products used beyond Italy, according to the company. Its plan to continue hiring through 2027 is prospective; the announcement does not give an independently confirmed number of future roles or identify positions already filled as a consequence of the round.

The investors frame Europe’s payments capacity partly in terms of strategic autonomy. Reducing dependence on existing international networks is a policy argument, but it does not by itself establish better service, lower merchant costs or stronger resilience. Those outcomes need to be evaluated using service availability, customer conversion, fraud performance and the economics of real transactions.

The company also says the Italian workforce represents roughly one quarter of its total staffing. This is a useful indication of Milan’s existing importance to product engineering, although it is not evidence that the new financing has already increased employment. CDP Venture Capital is the lead investor alongside an unnamed consortium of new and existing investors; the announcement does not disclose an investment breakdown or attach a specific spending allocation to each proposed activity.

TrueLayer presents its payment rail as a European alternative to international card networks, but payment methods can coexist within the same merchant rather than replacing each other outright. Their comparative costs and risk allocation depend on contractual terms and transaction types. The announcement does not establish a measured reduction in merchant fees or a new market-share figure attributable to the funding. Those claims would require customer-level performance data beyond the published investor statement.

For TrueLayer, a measurable next stage involves extending merchant acceptance while maintaining the operational reliability of a network handling live financial transactions. The announced $27 million provides additional capital and a strong Italian investor connection; it is not evidence that future transaction growth or engineering recruitment has already occurred.