Token.io review: pay by bank platform and APIs (2026)

Token.io is an open banking infrastructure provider that supplies the account-to-account (A2A) payment layer behind "Pay by Bank" checkouts, payouts and recurring bank payments. Its customers are mostly payment service providers, gateways, acquirers and banks, which connect once to its API and then offer bank payments under their own brand.

The company says it processed the UK's first open banking payments in 2018. It operates through a UK entity and a German entity, and in June 2026 it became a founding shareholder in the UK Payments Initiative, a new scheme for commercial variable recurring payments.

At a glance

How the platform works

Token.io describes itself as end-to-end infrastructure for A2A payments built on open banking. A payment provider integrates once with Token.io's API and gets access to many banks, then presents a Pay by Bank option to its own merchants. A white-label route lets partners run the whole proposition under their own name.

A payment follows a familiar sequence. The user gives consent, Token.io connects to the payer's bank, and the payment is initiated against the payer's account. Because the money moves between bank accounts, the company says there are no interchange fees and no chargebacks. Our guide to open banking payments explains the model in more detail.

The documentation lists several ways to authenticate a payer, which Token.io's Payments v2 API exposes as explicit statuses:

Integrators can choose Hosted Pages, where Token.io manages part of the experience, or an API-only route, where the payment provider controls bank selection, mandatory fields and authentication screens. Status updates arrive by polling a payment or through webhooks.

Products

Pay by Bank payments

The core product supports single immediate payments and future-dated payments, and the v2 API also covers variable recurring payments against an existing mandate. The company claims average success rates above 95 per cent in its top markets (undated, homepage). A supported-markets map is linked from the homepage, but its contents were not readable in the text we opened.

Variable recurring payments and the UK Payments Initiative

On 2 June 2026 Token.io announced the launch of the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI), described as the first new UK payment scheme since Faster Payments in 2008. UKPI sets shared rules, a commercial model and dispute frameworks for commercial variable recurring payments (cVRP). Token.io says its infrastructure powers the scheme from launch. The release names Token.io, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Monzo, Revolut and Starling as members and founding shareholders. Initial use cases include government, utilities, charities and financial services, with subscriptions and wider e-commerce planned.

Account on File

Announced on 18 March 2026, Account on File lets a merchant or provider remember a returning payer's chosen bank account and present it by default. The documentation explains that the account details are replaced with a tokenised account ID, and the feature is marked beta. On a first payment the merchant requests tokenisation and stores the returned ID. On a return visit the ID replaces raw account details in the payment request. The company says this removes up to two steps from a typical checkout. Tokens are unique to each provider and account, stored details are encrypted, and tokens can be deleted for privacy reasons. For background on token concepts in cards, see our tokenisation guide.

Payouts

A Payouts API exposes endpoints to create a payout and to list or retrieve payouts. The homepage positions it for real-time payouts and withdrawals. The page we opened did not describe eligibility or authentication, so those terms should be checked directly.

Data, settlement accounts and licensing

Token.io also lists data products, settlement accounts offered through Modulr FS Limited, and licensing as a service for providers that prefer to use Token.io's regulated entities.

Developer experience and integrations

The developer documentation separates APIs by product. The Payments v2 API provides endpoints to initiate a payment, list payments, fetch one payment with its next step, submit embedded authentication fields, and generate a QR code. The docs recommend setting a request timeout to match the client's, because slow banks can return a pending status that later resolves. Other documented items include webhooks, a mock bank, ISO 20022 payment status codes, restricting beneficiary accounts and Pay by Link.

The documentation page for Account on File lists the integration type currently supported as API-only. We did not find a published SDK list on the pages opened, and sandbox terms were not covered in the sections we read.

The homepage names partners and customers including HSBC (Open Payments), Santander, BNP Paribas, Global Payments, Computop and Paysafe, with further logos such as ACI Worldwide, Mastercard, Nuvei, Fabrick, Volt and ecommpay shown without a description of the relationship. See our profiles of Paysafe and Volt for two of the payment providers mentioned.

Payment methods, currencies and coverage

Token.io says it supports 21 markets and reaches more than 567 million bank accounts in the UK and Europe. It also states that it processes 20 per cent of UK open banking payments, and that three in five of the largest UK and European financial institutions work with it. These are company-stated figures from the About and homepage pages, checked on 3 November 2026, and are not dated further.

Account on File availability, as published in its documentation, shows how rollout is staged:

Pricing model

Token.io does not publish a price list on the pages opened. It describes the cost of A2A payments as a fraction of traditional methods because there is no interchange, but gives no rates. Pricing is not published on the company website as of 3 November 2026, so terms would need to be requested from the company.

Recent launches

The last two rows are known from headlines only; we did not open the full releases for the April and September items.

Regulation in brief

Token.io's About page states that Token.io Ltd holds FCA authorisation for payment initiation and account information services (first granted 2 May 2018) and that Token GmbH is authorised by Germany's BaFin (13 April 2021). The company lists later expansion into Ireland, Italy and Romania. Verify current status on the FCA register; our guide on how to check a financial licence explains how.

Who it tends to suit

Token.io is commonly used by payment providers, acquirers and banks that want to white-label Pay by Bank or recurring bank payments without building bank connections themselves, particularly in the UK, Germany and other European markets. Merchants wanting a direct checkout product may prefer a consumer-facing provider such as Trustly or TrueLayer, while teams weighing infrastructure vendors often compare Yapily and Tink. The open banking hub lists related coverage.