The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2024–2026
Token.io bets EU instant-payment rules make Pay by Bank the default European rail
The EU made instant SEPA transfers mandatory; Token.io's open-banking 'Pay by Bank' stack is now the market's leading infrastructure.
Token.io
What the business is
Sells 'Pay by Bank' infrastructure: APIs that connect merchants and payment service providers to open-banking and instant-payment rails, so customers pay straight from a bank account instead of by card.
How it started
Token.io built open-banking payment initiation APIs under Europe's PSD2 framework: a merchant could take payment straight from the customer's bank with immediate confirmation. The product's bet was that bank rails would displace cards once they were fast, verifiable and cheap.
What happened
The EU's Instant Payments Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/886) then turned that bet into a mandate: euro-area payment service providers must offer instant SEPA credit transfers (processing within 10 seconds, 24/7), and the rules also opened central-bank payment systems like TARGET to non-bank financial institutions. Every bank and PSP Europe-wide suddenly needed instant, API-accessible rails — Token's existing open-banking stack. By June 2026 Token.io announced the next growth phase, hiring Gil Danziger (co-founder and former CTO of B2B payments fintech Mondu) as CTO and managing director of its German arm to run the engineering organisation.
How it ended up
Still live and scaling; positioned as the UK and Europe's leading Pay by Bank infrastructure provider as of June 2026.
Background
Europe's payment market is built on cards, but a 2024 law targeted the alternative: the EU's Instant Payments Regulation requires euro area PSPs to offer instant SEPA transfers and gives non-banks access to settlement. From October 2025, banks must send and receive instant transfers at standard prices.
Token.io had spent the PSD2 era building open-banking APIs for Pay by Bank. When the regulation landed, its stack became the fast path to compliance. By June 2026, it was 'the leading Pay by Bank infrastructure provider in the UK and Europe', recruiting Mondu's co-founder as CTO.
Six months after the mandate, the bet is validated: open-banking rails are core infrastructure, and Token.io holds the market-leader position in a category the law created.
What has to be true
- The regulation made instant SEPA transfers mandatory, so upgrading rails stopped being a choice; buying APIs is cheaper than rebuilding.
- Token's product was built for regulation from day one, so the new mandate reused its existing stack.
- First-mover positioning attracts partnerships and talent, compounding the lead.
What can be applied
Find a regulation obliging an industry to buy tech, then build compliant rails: a mandate turns nice-to-have into procurement.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 the regulation's mandate is live: euro-area PSPs must offer instant SEPA credit transfers, and Token.io is executing a scale phase — a new CTO and managing director for its German arm, expanded engineering, and continued positioning as the reference Pay by Bank infrastructure in the UK and Europe. Card networks still process the bulk of European checkout volume, so the company is betting on the years ahead, when the regulatory push toward instant, account-to-account payments does to checkout what it already did to the back office.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/886 — instant credit transfers in euro
- Token.io hires Gil Danziger as chief technology officer and MD of Token GmbH
- Instant payment
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe what you are building, and see who is betting on the same thing.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card