Adyen payments for merchants in Europe
A merchant that sells online and in stores usually needs a gateway, a fraud tool and an acquiring bank. Adyen puts all of it on one platform and holds a European banking license for the acquiring part, so the company that routes a payment also checks it for fraud and settles it to the merchant.
Payments on one platform
Adyen is a financial technology platform for payment acceptance, issuing and bank account services. The company started in Amsterdam in 2006 and built its platform in-house (Adyen). Adyen has European offices in Berlin and Munich.
The products follow the payment from the checkout to the bank account: Unified Payments for online and in-store acceptance, Adyen Issuing for cards since 2019, and Adyen for Platforms since 2016, which lets marketplaces and software providers offer payments to their own users. Adyen is listed on Euronext Amsterdam (Wikipedia).
Adyen's banking license in the EU
Adyen N.V. is authorized as a credit institution under the supervision of De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank. Adyen states that the license lets it provide cross-border acquiring, payment and banking services in all EEA countries under the passporting rules of CRD IV (Adyen). A merchant in Germany therefore signs with a Dutch bank that acquires its card payments directly. Outside Europe, Adyen lists acquiring licenses in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Australia and other markets. Merchant acquiring explains what an acquirer takes on, and payments regulation in Germany covers the licenses BaFin grants and the ones passported from other EEA countries.
AI risk scoring with Adyen Protect
Adyen uses AI in fraud screening. Its risk product Protect "combines AI, rules, and Adyen's global payments data to assess every transaction in real time", and Adyen states that the model scores each transaction against trillions of data points from its network (Adyen Protect). Machine learning adjusts the merchant's risk rules over time, and the merchant keeps the final say on thresholds. Because Adyen is also the acquirer, the score and the authorization come from the same company, without a handover to a separate fraud vendor. Financial crime in payments covers the AML rules that sit next to fraud checks.
Upcoming payments events in Europe
Payments & Digital Money
Risk & Compliance
Is Adyen a bank?
Yes. Adyen N.V. is a credit institution supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank. It uses the license mainly for acquiring and for the accounts and cards it offers through its platform, and it passports the license to all EEA countries, Germany included.
What is the difference between Adyen and a payment gateway?
A gateway only passes the payment data to an acquirer. Adyen is the gateway and the acquirer, so it also receives the funds from the card schemes and pays them out to the merchant. Payment service providers explains the roles in more detail.
How does Adyen use AI?
Adyen's risk product Protect scores every transaction in real time with AI, rules and data from Adyen's payment network, and machine learning tunes the merchant's risk strategy over time.
Card acceptance and licenses
Adyen and Finance Loop
Finance Loop covers merchant acquiring, payment licenses and AI in fraud screening in its Payments & Digital Money and Risk & Compliance tracks. Payment providers, banks and merchants meet at Finance Loop events in Frankfurt and other German cities.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the adoption of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, digital payments, cloud and blockchain solutions. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.