Checkout.com activates US MALPB charter for direct card acquiring

Checkout.com becomes one of only three firms to operate a US MALPB charter, gaining direct card-network access without third-party intermediaries.

By Disrupts Editorial Team Sat, 19 September 2026 AI level 2 of 5

AI level 2 of 5: drafted by our AI editorial assistant from the company's announcement; fact-checked, edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean

A silver self-service kiosk with a digital touchscreen is in the foreground of a bright, modern waiting room with blurred light-colored sofas, a coffee table, and a small plant in the background.

Checkout.com has activated its Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Bank (MALPB) charter in Georgia, making it one of only three companies globally to hold and now operationally run that regulatory designation. The move gives the London-headquartered payments processor direct access to US card networks, Visa and Mastercard, bypassing the layer of sponsor banks and independent sales organisations that most non-bank acquirers depend upon. For enterprise merchants processing at scale, that structural change matters: fewer intermediaries means lower latency, reduced settlement friction, and a tighter feedback loop for fraud and acceptance-rate optimisation.

The charter's activation completes the third and final phase of Checkout.com's MALPB journey, which began with application acceptance, moved through regulatory approval from the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, and is now in live processing. Jordan Reynolds, MALPB CEO and Head of North American Banking at Checkout.com, described the milestone as "a defining step in our US journey," citing "years of investment, regulatory rigor, and operational build-out." Georgia's banking commissioner, Bo Fears, confirmed that the framework was specifically designed to support responsible innovation in merchant acquiring, a signal that the state is positioning itself as a regulatory home for next-generation payments infrastructure.

A narrower stack, a wider competitive moat

The practical effect of direct acquiring is a compressed technology stack. Traditional payment flows in the US route through a sponsor bank, which holds the card-network membership, before reaching the acquirer. Removing that layer gives Checkout.com direct sight of transaction data at the network level, enabling what the company says will be AI-powered payment optimisation, real-time routing and decline-recovery logic applied closer to the authorisation decision than is possible through an intermediary architecture. Checkout.com processed more than $300bn in e-commerce payments volume in 2025, so even marginal improvements in acceptance rates translate into significant revenue recovery for its merchant base, which includes Spotify, Uber, eBay and Klarna.

The competitive read-across is significant. Most global payment processors operating in the US, including Adyen, Stripe and Worldpay, have pursued or already hold direct network membership in some form, making MALPB status a table-stakes credential for any processor serious about the enterprise segment. The charter is still rare: only three holders points to a high regulatory bar, which functions as a structural moat for those inside it and a meaningful cost of entry for challengers outside.

Macro context: US payments infrastructure as strategic terrain

The broader convergence story here sits at the intersection of financial infrastructure sovereignty and enterprise technology investment. The US digital payments market is the world's largest single-jurisdiction opportunity, and the MALPB framework is a deliberate piece of regulatory architecture designed to let non-bank technology companies participate at the network level, provided they meet the governance and capital standards of a limited-purpose bank. That framing matters for cross-sector investors: a payments processor that holds a banking charter occupies a different risk and regulatory profile from a pure software business, and the capital requirements and oversight obligations that come with it reshape the competitive economics of the sector.

For sovereign and institutional investors already allocated to payments infrastructure, Checkout.com's activation of the charter is a signal that the company's North American growth phase is moving from regulatory investment to revenue-generating infrastructure. The company has indicated plans to deepen hiring across San Francisco, Atlanta and New York, and to expand enterprise-grade payments infrastructure in the region. The next question for capital markets watchers is whether the operational MALPB charter accelerates a path to a US public listing, Checkout.com has been privately valued at significant scale, and direct network access in the world's largest digital economy strengthens any such narrative considerably.