TrueLayer, Europe's leading Pay by Bank network, has been selected to join the Financial Conduct Authority's Supercharged Sandbox, the regulator's programme for firms developing and testing advanced AI use cases in financial services.

The FCA said TrueLayer was one of 21 companies selected out of a record of 199 applications. The cohort runs from 13 July to 31 December 2026 and has a particular focus on agentic payments. During the programme, TrueLayer will test how AI agents can initiate and complete Pay by Bank payments securely on behalf of consumers.

Agentic commerce — AI agents that search, compare, and pay on a consumer’s behalf, rather than a person clicking through checkout — is gaining early traction against a backdrop of AI adoption. 66% of UK consumers say they are likely to use AI while shopping, while 97% of retailers have already implemented some form of AI.*

"Agentic commerce is the next major shift in how people pay. For that to become a reality, agents need a payment method built for instant, secure, API-native transactions, rather than a checkout form designed for a human typing out sixteen-digit card details — making Pay by Bank the natural fit,” explains Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer.

The selection comes as Pay by Bank moves into the mainstream of European commerce. TrueLayer now serves almost 30 million users and processes more than $150 billion in annualised payment volume for merchants including Amazon, eBay, Revolut and Ryanair. The company is building a modern payments network for Europe: instant, secure account-to-account payments running on open banking infrastructure rather than using decades-old card rails.

“From day one, our goal has been to build a modern payments network for Europe, one designed for the way people pay online today rather than adapted to it. Agentic commerce is where that vision becomes essential, and the Supercharged Sandbox gives us the environment to test it properly, with the regulator in the room from the start," adds Simoneschi.

The Supercharged Sandbox, part of the FCA's AI Lab, gives participants access to a secure cloud environment with GPU-enabled infrastructure, datasets and expert regulatory support to move AI use cases from concept towards commercial deployment.

TrueLayer is currently working with multiple major merchants to build agentic payment solutions, and has already built a working prototype of agentic commerce in action: a human-in-the-loop transaction completed directly within an AI shopping agent, with Pay by Bank as the payment method.

The prototype demonstrates two agentic payment use cases: a single immediate payment made inside the agent, and Bank on File, which lets customers set up a recurring mandate to streamline future purchases. Take a look at the demo

*Sources: Shopify (2025) & UiPath (2026)

About TrueLayer: TrueLayer is Europe's leading Pay by Bank network, serving almost 30 million users and processing more than $150 billion in annualised payment volume across the UK and Europe. Merchants including Amazon, eBay, Trading 212 and Ryanair use TrueLayer to accept instant, secure account-to-account payments. TrueLayer's mission is to change the way the world pays, building a payments network for Europe that makes bank payments the default way to pay and get paid online. TrueLayer is headquartered in London with operations across 22+ countries.

About the Supercharged Sandbox: The Supercharged Sandbox is a cohort-based programme run by the FCA as part of its AI Lab. It provides firms with a secure, controlled environment to experiment with advanced AI technologies, with access to GPU-enabled infrastructure, high-quality datasets and expert support.