Are card fees eating into your profits? When customers pay by card, the transaction runs through the card networks, and that’s where the big costs come in to eat into your profits. But it doesn’t have to stay that way – innovative open banking platforms like Noda can help you bring those transaction fees down dramatically.
Cost Efficiency with Noda Payments
When businesses accept card payments, they face two core charges: the fee paid to the issuing bank and the fee charged by the card schemes. In Europe, the bank-side charge is legally restricted – usually around a quarter of a percent for consumer debit cards and slightly higher for credit. But these limits only apply within the EU. Once a payment crosses an international border, the transaction is treated as “interregional”, and the rate rises sharply to well above 1%.
Alongside this sits the card-scheme charge, which is the price merchants pay for using networks like Visa or Mastercard. These are standardised, can’t be negotiated, and usually consist of a small percentage plus a fixed pence amount.
Open banking works differently. Instead of travelling through card rails, the payment moves directly between bank accounts through regulated, secure APIs. This cuts out the card networks entirely, which is why the overall cost structure can be significantly lower for merchants.
According to Noda savings calculator and Noda reviews, a merchant can save up to £126,360 on an annual sales volume of £36,000,000. Imagine having these funds re-invested into your business.
Quick Facts about Noda
- Noda is an online payment platform that uses open banking to make checkout faster and easier for businesses. It connects with most major banks across the UK and EU, reaching more than 2,000 banks in 28 countries.
- Entrepreneur Dmitry Volkov was an early investor in Noda 2020, but exited in 2023, so the Noda Volkov relationship ceased to exist.
- Noda worked with many notable merchants, including Wargaming and TTN, and provides offline payments in the UK. Noda reviewsare overwhelmingly positive.
Better User Experience (UX)
A clunky checkout is one of the fastest ways to lose a customer. Research backs this up: PwC found that nearly a third of shoppers walk away from a brand after one frustrating moment, and Forrester’s data shows that better UX can multiply conversions several times over. Despite this, almost no one feels online stores consistently meet their expectations.
Pay-by-Bank streamlines the whole experience. Instead of entering long card numbers, customers move straight into their banking app, verify the payment, and finish within seconds.
Consumers value this simplified experience, and adoption is growing fast. In the UK alone, there are now 15 million active users.
Real Industry Case Studies & Noda Payment Reviews
Use cases are widespread as this payment method can be beneficial across many different industries.
Wargaming and Noda
Direct bank payments fit naturally into the gaming world, especially when players want quick, no-friction ways to top up or buy in-game items. Wargaming, for instance, added Pay-by-Bank through its partnership with Noda, giving players a faster checkout while helping the company reduce its payment costs, according to their Noda payment review.
Noda & TTN Network
The travel sector is adopting this payment method too. Tickets Travel Network (TTN), a major European booking platform, introduced pay-by-bank through its integration with Noda. This gives customers an easy way to pay for everything: from flights and trains to hotels and insurance, directly from their bank accounts.
Their Noda payment review noted that the integration sped up the entire booking journey for both customers and staff. Travellers move through checkout much quicker, and the internal team has far less manual admin to deal with.
Pay-by-Bank for Offline Businesses
You might think this payment option is only for online businesses, but it works seamlessly in-store too. For example, QR payments allow customers to scan with their phones and complete transactions in moments. It’s a convenient option that fits perfectly with the growing shift toward mobile payments.
For example, a Brazilian deli in London introduced QR codes, allowing customers to pay straight from their bank accounts in seconds. The fully mobile experience proved highly popular with their shoppers.
Another example is Barber Browns, a family-run barbershop in Scotland, which added QR code payments for its clients. In their Noda payment review, they said:
“Our customers really enjoy this smooth payment experience. It’s flexible, quick and easy, and the setup is minimal – we only need our phone and Noda’s dashboard to generate a QR code.”
– Donna Brown, owner of Barber Browns
Trust and Security in Open Banking Payments
Pay-by-bank comes with a higher level of security, largely because customers don’t hand over any card information at all. Everything moves through tightly regulated APIs, which cuts down on fraud risk and avoids the vulnerabilities associated with older screen-scraping techniques.
Each transaction must also pass Strong Customer Authentication. That means the user confirms the payment with two independent checks – often a biometric login plus approval inside their banking app.