Trustly Takes $40 Million From Owners After 205 Job Cuts

Trustly has taken irrevocable pledges for more than $40 million from Nordic Capital and Alfvén & Didrikson, its two largest owners. The Swedish pay-by-bank group says it will close the raise in November 2026 and use the cash to speed up new AI products.

The pledges landed after Trustly cut 205 jobs in mid-September, following a year when sales fell 16.8% and cash left the business. Group CEO Johan Tjärnberg called the new money a vote of confidence.

Shareholders Lock In More Than $40 Million

On 2 October 2026 Trustly said it had signed irrevocable, legally binding commitment letters for more than $40 million of fresh equity. Nordic Capital, the majority owner, is putting up the bulk with Alfvén & Didrikson, the Stockholm firm that first backed the company in 2011. Other existing holders will be offered a chance to join before the raise is due to close in November 2026.

The company said the money will fund the next step of its growth plan by speeding up new products. The aim, in its own words, is to use AI to turn payments into insights that help merchants win customers, keep them longer, and stay ahead of risk. Tjärnberg put a network number on the pitch.

This commitment from Nordic Capital and Alfvén & Didrikson is a vote of confidence in Trustly and where we’re headed.

Johan Tjärnberg, Group CEO, Trustly statement, 2 October 2026

He also said Trustly is the payment network behind more than 50 million consumers and more than $120 billion of transactions a year. That is a different count from the 19.9 million Trustly Network users in the group’s own second-quarter slides, and both figures can sit side by side. The company has raised over $400 million since it started in 2008 and sells account-to-account checkout as a cheaper path than cards.

The 205 Jobs Cut in Mid-September

Tjärnberg told staff on 16 September 2026 that 205 people would leave, about a quarter of the group. The public line was that proposed changes would hit around 200 roles worldwide and concentrate spend on open banking. People who saw the same round said Brazil took most of the roles, and that some U.S. legal and compliance jobs went too.

The email did not blame AI. It blamed the way the company was built. Tjärnberg wrote that Trustly was not meeting the chance in front of it with the execution the market demanded.

FOUR FAULTS IN THE CEO EMAIL

• The structure: He said the setup had become too complex to deliver.
• The overlap: He said work was being done twice.
• The owners of tasks: He said it was unclear who owned what.
• The spend: He said investment was not lined up with the group’s priorities.

Those are management problems, and they sat with the people who had run the place. He also wrote that the news had real consequences for people and teams. Names from the Brazil cut later circulated on a hiring sheet, which is what a quarter-of-the-company round looks like on the ground.

The cuts followed the weakest year Trustly has filed in some time. The annual report for the year to 31 December 2025 put the hole in kronor, not in a slogan about focus.

THE 2025 ACCOUNTS BEFORE THE CUTS

Sales of SEK 2,427.7 million ($247 million) were down 16.8%. The group said long talks with two large merchants at the end of 2024 drove the drop, and that both contracts later came back. In the second-quarter slides it said those two are growing faster than the group, though revenue and volume are still short of the old peak.

A Second Quarter of Cash Out the Door

By the time the owners pledged new equity, volume was already rising again. That did not stop cash going out. Trustly Holding AB, which has bonds listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, told holders in a deck dated 27 August 2026 that it was seeing growth in leading indicators that had not yet turned into profit.

Revenue grew 9% in the second quarter and 11% in the first half on a constant-currency basis, reversing the year-ago decline. Users rose 37% to 19.9 million. Total payment volume rose 29% to SEK 296 billion. Reported adjusted EBITDA still fell from SEK 85 million to SEK 42 million, a 50% drop, and the margin went from 14% to 7%.

Q2 2026 AGAINST Q2 2025, AS REPORTED

The reported sales rise is 6%. The 9% figure above is constant currency, which is how Trustly frames the turnaround. On the cash line there is no such split. The same slides recorded a cash outflow of SEK 261.7 million for the first half, the second straight quarter in the red. “Management are very focused on liquidity, with multiple levers available,” the deck said.

One of those levers is now visible: more than $40 million of owner equity, larger than the kronor that left the business in the first half. Another lever already sits on the balance sheet. In October 2025 Trustly raised a €375 million bond to refinance a bank loan. The coupon is about 8.75%, and finance costs were about SEK 450 million in 2025, enough to swallow a year of operating profit even before the staff round.

America Grew While Europe Did Not

The geographic split is why a volume boom can still look like a squeeze. Americas revenue grew 24% in constant currency in the second quarter. Europe contracted 9%. Gross profit in the Americas rose 3% while the margin there fell from 59% to 49%. Europe’s gross profit fell 23% and the margin from 81% to 69%.

Trustly told bondholders it had widened U.S. risk-approval rules on purpose. New pay-in users in the United States rose about 40% in the quarter, and losses rose with them. The slides say that shortfall in EBITDA was driven first by those higher U.S. loss rates, then by a decision to cut prices to protect merchant volume. Repricing took SEK 59 million out of the quarter.

Pay-by-bank can make checkout cheaper for a merchant. Someone still has to price the risk of saying yes, and that cost does not vanish when the card networks are taken out of the middle. It shows up as expected loss and guarantee pricing, which Trustly itself lists as variables it has to balance. Conversion looks like growth until the wrong payments clear.

That is a hard line to run as a standalone business. Account-to-account checkout works when the merchant, the risk book, and the payout rails all pay their way. Trustly’s own second-quarter math shows volume doing the job in America and price and risk giving the profit back. In April 2026 it hired Randy Kern, formerly of card issuer Marqeta, as group chief technology officer to push the U.S. build. The Americas can keep growing and still need cash if losses stay this high.

Nordic Capital’s 62 Percent Stake

Nordic Capital owns 62 percent of Trustly, Alfvén & Didrikson 11 percent, and BlackRock 9 percent. The rest sits with other holders, staff equity, and founders. Nordic Capital’s own case page still describes a network of 9,000 merchants and 12,000 banks in more than 30 countries. Clients named in company materials include Alibaba, PayPal, Wise, and BNY Mellon.

Alfvén & Didrikson has been on the register for 15 years. Nordic Capital took control in 2018 through Fund IX, and the Swedish firm announced Nordic Capital as new co-owners in 2018 at the time. In 2020 Nordic Capital stayed majority owner while a consortium put BlackRock as a minority shareholder alongside Aberdeen Standard Investments, Neuberger Berman funds, the Investment Corporation of Dubai, and RSIC. The company was valued at over $1 billion in that deal.

This raise is not new names on the cap table. It is the two longest holders writing more cheques, then asking everyone else if they want to follow. If BlackRock and the smaller holders do not take up their share, their stakes shrink. If they do, the cash comes in with less of a shift in control. Either way Nordic Capital still sets the clock.

What the New Money Is Meant to Buy

Trustly said the pledges will speed new products that use AI to turn payments into insights for merchants, covering acquisition, retention, and risk. Other existing shareholders will be offered the chance to participate, and the raise is expected to conclude in November 2026. That is the whole public use-of-proceeds line.

AI is not a first for the group. Nordic Capital’s own notes say Trustly launched an AI-enabled recurring payments product in 2024, after it combined with SlimPay and after it bought UK open-banking firm Ecospend. Pay & Repeat already ships in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and France. The new money is for more of that stack, built by a company that has just told staff the old organization was too heavy to execute.

We are not meeting the opportunity in front of us with the level of execution it demands. The way we are set up has made it harder than it should be to deliver: structures have become too complex, work is duplicated, ownership is unclear, and investment is not aligned with our priorities.

Johan Tjärnberg, Group CEO, email to staff, 16 September 2026

Sixteen days later the same CEO was talking about a vote of confidence. Both lines can be true at once. Owners can believe in the network and still have to fund a year when sales fell, cash went out, and a quarter of the people left. The product bet is that insights on top of account-to-account rails are worth more than checkout alone. The payroll bet is that 205 fewer people can ship it.

Five Years After the Listing Collapsed

Trustly has been an exit story for most of Nordic Capital’s hold. A Stockholm listing was pulled in 2021 after the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority criticised the group’s customer due diligence. Talk then put the company around SEK 80 billion. When it last took money from existing holders in 2023, the value was SEK 12.9 billion.

In June 2026 people close to the owners said a listing was again the main option, with a sale also possible, and that the process might wait until 2027. Trustly denied those claims through its PR adviser. Nordic Capital declined to comment on market rumours. The 2 October pledges do not settle that argument. They keep the company funded while the hold goes into a ninth year.

THE OWNER YEARS, FROM BUYOUT TO THIS RAISE

1. 2011: Alfvén & Didrikson invests when Trustly has about a dozen staff.
2. March 2018: Nordic Capital becomes majority owner; Alfvén & Didrikson stays on.
3. June 2020: BlackRock and a consortium take a minority stake at a value over $1 billion.
4. 2021: A Stockholm listing is pulled after the Swedish FSA criticises customer due diligence; talk at the time was around SEK 80 billion.
5. 2023: Existing holders put in more equity; the company is valued at SEK 12.9 billion.
6. October 2025: Trustly issues a €375 million bond at a coupon of about 8.75% to refinance a bank loan.
7. 2025 full year: Sales fall 16.8% to SEK 2,427.7 million; the net loss widens to SEK 534.3 million.
8. 16 September 2026: Tjärnberg tells staff that 205 jobs will go.
9. 2 October 2026: Nordic Capital and Alfvén & Didrikson sign pledges for more than $40 million; the raise is due to close in November 2026.

The November close still has to happen, and other holders still have to decide whether to write cheques of their own. Until then the coupon on the 2025 bond keeps running at about 8.75%, and the people who left in September are not coming back to build the AI products the new equity is meant to fund.