EXCLUSIVE: “Vive La Différence!” – David Rintel, Finby in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

Finby’s rebrand from TrustPay last year represented more than a name change. It marked its evolution into a European payments partner that can leverage the market’s fragmentation to create merchant success

In Europe’s payments market, scale and simplicity have proved irritable partners. For years, the dominant narrative suggested that as ecommerce expanded across borders, payments would follow in a standardised, streamlined and uniform manner.

Instead, Europe has moved in the opposite direction – away from homogeneity and towards a complex, deeply localised ecosystem. That doesn’t surprise Slovakian payment services provider Finby, formerly known as TrustPay. Consumer preferences, banking infrastructure and regulation vary widely between countries, creating real complexity for merchants trying to grow.

CEO David Rintel sums it up: “While ecommerce is global, payments in Europe remain deeply local.”

But that defining reality – of a market characterised by a patchwork of different and disparate nations that are bound together by a desire for market and geopolitical cooperation – is forming the basis of Finby’s future strategy. Because, at its core, Finby is built to address this fragmentation-by-default. As Rintel put it, ‘the market is evolving in the opposite direction of standardisation’, driven by the rise of strong domestic payment ecosystems.

Solutions such as iDEAL in the Netherlands and BLIK in Poland are deeply embedded in native behaviour.

“These methods are increasingly preferred over international card schemes,” he says. “For merchants, this means that offering cards alone is no longer sufficient.”

The impact is measurable. When customers are offered familiar payment methods, conversion improves, approval rates rise and friction drops. When they are not, even well-designed checkout experiences can fail. Without localisation, businesses face ‘lower conversion rates, higher decline rates, and ultimately missed revenue opportunities’, Rintel has observed.

But localisation comes at a cost. With each market bringing its own payment methods, technical standards, regulations and expectations, there’s a mishmash of conflicting requirements which means increasing in size becomes difficult to manage for businesses expanding across Europe.

It is at this tense intersection – between local relevance and cross-border scalability – that Finby is positioning itself. Its platform combines acquiring, local payment methods and market expertise into a single solution, enabling merchants. to operate globally while paying – and taking – payments locally.

It’s a response to a broader shift in how scale itself is defined. As domestic payment methods have become embedded in consumer behaviour, the traditional standardisation model has lost relevance.

“For a long time, scalability was associated with standardisation – one solution across all markets But Europe has been moving in a different direction,” says Rintel.

At the same time, a new layer of pan-European innovation is emerging. The European Payments Initiative, for example, aims to bring greater cohesion to the market. Its flagship solution, Wero, represents a new generation of account-to- account, bank-backed cross-EU-border payments, pointing to a dual-track future where domestic schemes continue to strengthen.

“We’re seeing initiatives like Wero, which aim to bring a more unified layer back into the ecosystem,” Rintel says. “That’s important, but it won’t replace local preferences overnight.

“It’s not about choosing between standardisation and localisation, it’s about enabling both. Wero will coexist with local payment systems for quite some time. This is the new reality of European payments.”

A balancing act

The market is likely to remain layered for some time, despite the European Central Bank outlining a strategy for a more cohesive and competitive payments ecosystem in 2026, alongside efforts such as the digital euro to strengthen European monetary sovereignty. For Finby, that complexity – hyper local, regional and international payment systems existing in parallel – means ‘the future of scaling is not about choosing between standardisation and localisation, it’s about enabling both’.

Managing that fragmentation effectively, though, remains the challenge. Differences in infrastructure, regulation and payment behaviour create a complex environment where interoperability is limited, and consistency is difficult.

This is where Finby extends beyond infrastructure, bringing the complexity of local markets into one coherent system, so merchants don’t have to choose between local relevance and operational efficiency.

“Scaling across Europe requires a balance between local relevance, operational simplicity and performance,” Rintel says. “That’s exactly what we deliver in a single platform. The most immediate impact is improved conversion and approval rates.”

By aligning payment methods with local preferences and optimising acquiring setups, Finby reduces checkout friction and improves performance.

“We offer a true one-stop payment solution,” Rintel adds. “Instead of managing multiple providers and integrations, merchants can rely on a single partner.”

This reduces overhead, simplifies reporting and accelerates expansion into new markets. And the model is not purely technological.

“We don’t just provide infrastructure,” says Rintel. “Merchants have access to account managers and support teams who help optimise performance and guide decision-making (because) choosing the right local payment methods is not always straightforward. That’s where our expertise comes in.”

As businesses scale across Europe – particularly in high-volume sectors such as digital goods, subscriptions, retail and emerging areas like AI – the need for resilience becomes more pronounced. Payments must perform reliably across markets, currencies and transaction types, while remaining flexible enough to support different business models.

Finby enables direct acquiring and continuous optimisation, so companies can maintain speed, stability and scalability as volumes grow. Performance is monitored in real time, with issues identified early.

“We ensure payments never become a bottleneck,” says Rintel. “Instead, they become a foundation – and a competitive advantage – for merchants.”

Central to this is choice, allowing European consumers to pay in the familiar ways they expect, as Rintel explains.

“They do not behave as a single market. They expect payment options that are trusted in their own countries. Local methods are a core driver of conversion.”

And that’s because they often offer faster, simpler and more secure experiences than cards. At the same time, merchants need flexibility.

“Subscriptions require recurring billing, cross-border sales require multi-currency support, and different verticals have different needs,” says Rintel.

New brand, new strategy

Looking ahead, the company’s strategy is closely aligned with the continued evolution of the market. Following its rebrand in 2025, Finby – first established in 2009 as a cross-border payments provider for Europe – is sharpening its position as the practical and strategic solution to today’s European payments reality.

“Our rebrand represents much more than a name change,” Rintel says. “It marks our evolution into a focussed European payments partner.”

The company is doubling down on localisation, expanding its portfolio of payment methods and investing in optimisation tools to improve approval rates, reduce fraud and lower costs. At the same time, it is strengthening its acquiring capabilities to provide greater flexibility and resilience. But perhaps the most important element of its approach is philosophical. Rather than viewing fragmentation as a problem to eliminate, Finby treats it as a structural fact of life.

“In that sense, fragmentation isn’t something to fight,” Rintel says. “It’s something to work with.”

Europe may not run on a single payment system – yet. But for those able to navigate its intricacies, it remains one of the most dynamic markets in global commerce. For merchants, success in Europe lies not in simplifying the market into a single model, but in understanding and embracing its diversity. Those that can balance local relevance with scalable operations, delivering trusted payment experiences in each market while maintaining a unified backend, will be best positioned to succeed.

And Finby believes it has the means to make that happen as smoothly as possible.

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue #38, Page 43-44

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