Trustly: Open Banking, Explained Without the Jargon

Trustly belongs to the European family of open-banking payment services. Instead of handing card details to a merchant, the payer authorises a transfer inside their own bank’s interface, and the merchant receives a confirmation rather than any account credentials. The mechanism is regulated at European level, and its practical effect for a reader in Bulgaria is a payment that behaves like a bank transfer but settles like a card.

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The figures

What happens during the payment

The cashier hands the payer to a bank selection screen; the payer logs into their own bank with their usual credentials and confirms the amount there. Nothing about those credentials passes to the gaming site — the confirmation returns as a yes or no. Because the authorisation happens inside the bank, there is no separate 3-D Secure step to time out, and no merchant category code for the card network to refuse, which removes the two most common card failure modes described on the Visa page.

Why the return leg is fast

A card payout has to travel back through the scheme’s settlement cycle, which is why it takes one to three business days. An open-banking payout is instructed as a transfer, so once the operator’s own review completes — normally within about 24 hours — the money moves within the day. That makes Trustly one of the four routes on this site that return money in hours rather than in banking days, alongside the wallets, ePay.bg and EasyPay. The full sequence is on the withdrawal page.

Trustly next to ePay.bg

For a Bulgarian reader these two occupy almost the same position: both pay from a bank account without exposing a card, both settle a payout within 24 hours of approval, both need no separate provider account to verify. The distinction is coverage and familiarity. ePay.bg is a domestic system that many readers already use for utility payments and that connects directly to Bulgarian banks. Trustly is the pan-European option, more useful to someone holding an account outside Bulgaria or moving between countries. Neither has an advantage in speed, and the choice is a matter of which interface is already familiar. Both appear in the comparison on the payments desk.

What it does not change

Identity and address verification still applies to the gaming account, and the review still takes roughly 24 to 72 hours; the bank account used must belong to the registered account holder, exactly as a card must. The tax position is unchanged as well — with an organiser licensed in Bulgaria the player does not declare winnings as taxable income, since the levy sits with the organiser, and the National Revenue Agency confirms individual cases. And whether the operator is licensed at all is settled in the NRA register, which lists permit status and covered domains.

Questions about open banking

Related: bank transfer, depositing and the Alphawin desk.