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Zen.com has enabled Pay by Bank through Mastercard Open Finance for merchant payment acceptance and digital wallet top-ups in nine European markets. The companies say the service offers direct account-to-account payments alongside cards and other methods; transaction volumes, fees and consumer uptake have not been disclosed.
Zen.com has enabled Pay by Bank through Mastercard Open Finance for merchant payments and digital wallet top-ups in nine European markets, adding a direct-from-bank-account option for customers and businesses. The service covers Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Lithuania, according to a report by Finextra.
The offering supports two use cases: merchant payment acceptance and adding funds to digital wallets. Payments move account to account, or A2A, rather than being charged to a payment card. Zen.com and Mastercard described the service as an additional option alongside cards and other payment methods, not a replacement for them.
Zen.com said the rollout was delivered through a single integration with Mastercard Open Finance across the nine target markets. The companies did not publish details in the source report about which individual merchants or wallet providers have activated the service, nor how many customers can use it at launch.
Zen.com Chief Growth Officer Lukasz Neska said the integration gives merchants and customers a way to transfer money directly from bank accounts. Mastercard’s Valerie Nowak, executive vice president and head of open finance for APEMEA, said the partnership is intended to make Pay by Bank easier for businesses to deploy and scale across markets. Those statements describe the companies’ aims; the report does not provide independent performance or adoption figures for this specific rollout.
More Bank-Payment Options at Checkout
Extending Pay by Bank to both checkout payments and wallet top-ups gives merchants and consumers another way to move money without using a card for the transaction. For merchants, a single connection spanning several countries may simplify access to bank-payment services across markets. For consumers, the option may be useful where they prefer to pay from an existing bank account or add money to a wallet directly.
The practical impact will depend on availability at participating businesses and on how straightforward the payment journey is for customers. The companies have not disclosed transaction costs, settlement times, refund arrangements, or protections for disputed payments. Those details matter when consumers compare the service with cards and other payment methods, and when merchants consider adding it to checkout.
Pay by Bank is one part of a wider move toward account-to-account payments and open-finance services. The announcement adds a new deployment across multiple markets, but it does not establish that consumer use is widespread or that the service has displaced card payments.
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Open Finance and Pay by Bank
Pay by Bank generally allows a customer to authorize a payment from a bank account through a digital banking flow. In this rollout, the payments are described as account-to-account transfers. Mastercard Open Finance provides the infrastructure used by Zen.com to connect the service across the stated markets, according to the companies’ announcement as reported by Finextra.
Finextra also cited a recent annual Pay by Bank Signals & Trends survey published by Token.io and Open Banking Expo. The report says 72% of banks and 87% of payment service providers surveyed already offer or accept Pay by Bank. It also reports that 59% said recurring-payment and one-click capabilities are essential if Pay by Bank is to become a genuine alternative to cards. These are survey findings about the respondents, not usage measurements for Zen.com’s new service; the source material does not give the survey’s sample size or fieldwork dates.
“Pay-by-bank is becoming one of the fastest-growing ways to pay in Europe, and with Mastercard Open Finance we brought it live across nine markets through a single integration.”
— Lukasz Neska, chief growth officer at Zen.com
Adoption and Service Terms Remain Unspecified
The report does not identify participating merchants, the banks connected at launch, or whether the service is immediately available to all Zen.com customers in each of the nine markets. It also provides no figures for payment volumes, customer uptake, processing costs, settlement timing or failure rates.
Details of the customer authorization process, refunds, dispute handling and protections if a transfer is made in error are not set out in the source material. The companies’ statements describe the service as secure, but the report does not include technical documentation or an independent security assessment. It is also unclear whether recurring payments or one-click purchases are supported in this rollout.
Merchant Rollout and Usage Data
The next indicators will be whether Zen.com adds named merchants or wallet partners, and whether it publishes further information about bank coverage and customer eligibility. Data on transaction volumes, repeat use, payment completion and merchant costs would help show how the service performs beyond its announced market reach.
For now, the confirmed development is the expansion of the payment capability into nine named countries, covering merchant acceptance and wallet top-ups. No launch schedule for additional markets or further product features was included in the source report.
Key Questions
What has Zen.com announced?
Zen.com has enabled Pay by Bank through Mastercard Open Finance for merchant payment acceptance and digital wallet top-ups across nine European markets.
Which countries are included?
The reported markets are Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Lithuania.
How does Pay by Bank work in this offering?
It lets a customer make a payment or top up a wallet directly from a bank account using an account-to-account transfer, rather than paying by card for that transaction.
Does this replace card payments?
No. Zen.com described the service as an option alongside cards and other payment methods. The report does not say that cards will be removed.
How many people are using the new service?
The source report gives no customer or transaction figures for Zen.com’s rollout, and does not name participating merchants or wallet providers.
Source: finextra.com
