Swedish FinTech Trustly Group is scrapping plans to raise an estimated $950 million in an initial public offering (IPO) following a review by regulators, Bloomberg reported on Monday (May 3).
The IPO was scuppered after the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) found issues with the way the payments startup screens customers. Trustly said in April that it needed time to examine the FSA’s assessment.
Trustly said that it still thinks an IPO is a smart move for the company but it has a responsibility to stakeholders to “resolve any outstanding questions from the Swedish FSA’s preliminary assessment,” per Bloomberg.
The Swedish payments platform — backed by Nordic Capital, Alfven & Didrikson and BlackRock — said the IPO won’t happen in the second quarter and as of yet, it has no timeline to move forward with a public listing.
Like other tech firms, Trustly saw its user base escalate during the pandemic as people sought contactless ways to shop and pay bills, with revenue up almost 300 percent at the end of 2020. The startup has already quickly expanded across the U.S.
In January, Trustly was eyeing an IPO at an $11 billion valuation. Nordic Capital in 2018 bought a majority stake in Trustly for nearly $800 million. Trustly was working with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Carnegie on an IPO originally slated for late April.
A June 2020 funding round led by Blackrock Capital pegged Trustly’s valuation at more than $1 billion. Aberdeen Standard Investments, Neuberger Berman, Investment Corporation of Dubai, and RSIC also participated in the round.
Founded in 2008, Trustly doesn’t use cards for payments and instead, formed its own network that facilitates payments directly from customers’ bank accounts. Trustly processed $21 billion in transactions last year, 40 percent more than in 2019.
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