Sadra Hosseini on Europe, AI agents and the case for sovereign payments

Ryft’s £20m Series B will fund expansion into Europe and the US, according to co-founder and CEO Sadra Hosseini. Sadra joined host Justin Hanna on The Payments Shed Podcast, recorded live at Fintech Meetup Europe in Lisbon. They covered Europe’s fragmented markets, how AI agents will change payments, and who should own the rails in 2026.

Why multi-party commerce needs a different kind of payments

Sadra describes Ryft as payments built for multi-party commerce. Platforms and marketplaces are changing whole industries. The businesses behind them need payment flows that older providers were never designed to handle.

He uses a food delivery order to explain the problem. A customer pays £100 for dinner, and that payment must be split three ways. The driver gets £10, the platform £20 and the restaurant £70. “The legacy guys were not set up for this,” Sadra says. “We were built from the ground up for this.”

That is the job of Ryft’s split payment functionality: one customer payment, routed automatically to every party in the transaction.

What Ryft’s £20m Series B will fund

Gresham House led the round, and existing investors Pembroke VCT and Ingenii Capital also took part. New investor PXN Ventures joined through the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. Sadra says the capital will allow Ryft “to scale internationally into the EU, US, and then global from there.” Full details are in our Series B announcement.

Europe, the US or enterprise: which is hardest to crack?

When asked which growth path will be hardest, Sadra says each is difficult in its own way. The US is a very large market where platforms already reach far more of the market than in the UK and Europe. It is also saturated, so competing there takes a lot of capital.

Europe is where Sadra sees the most excitement, with strong growth expected in platform commerce through to 2030. The challenge is fragmentation, because each country has its own payment methods, tax rules, languages and buying culture.

Moving upmarket brings a third set of demands. “It’s not purely about cost anymore,” Sadra says. Larger merchants care about conversion rates, global coverage and whether a provider can process payments in many currencies.

“For us, I think the biggest challenge will be Europe, but that’s also the most exciting.”

Why platforms want to become their own payment processor

Sadra sees a clear shift in how platforms think about payments. Platform businesses have grown quickly over the last 10 to 15 years, led by delivery and ride-hailing apps. Until recently, most charged a SaaS fee and sent their merchants to a separate payment processor.

That model is changing. “I’m processing millions or billions, and I’m just charging a hundred pound SaaS fee,” Sadra says, describing how a platform sees it. “Why don’t I become my own payment processor?”

The catch is cost and complexity, because becoming a processor means securing licences and building the technology from scratch. Sadra says that route can cost millions. Platforms now want a partner that lets them earn from payments without building everything themselves. This is the model behind transaction monetisation for platforms.

What a payments product for European businesses scaling globally looks like

Payment methods are the first hurdle. Sadra points out that Dutch shoppers expect iDEAL, whilst French shoppers expect Cartes Bancaires. German shoppers have strong preferences of their own. “Without having those, you’re not going to win in that market,” he says.

Many businesses have responded by building what Sadra calls “Frankenstein solutions.” They take card acceptance from one provider, local methods from another and payouts from a third. Their developers are then left maintaining several APIs at once.

Sadra believes businesses want all of this in one package: one unified API, full reporting and the right pricing. “They don’t want to have to think about that,” he says. The ideal is a partner that handles the complexity whilst the business earns margin on every transaction.

Payment methods are only the tip of the iceberg, though. Sadra says buyers in the Netherlands are happy to buy from foreign providers. In France and Germany, buyers tend to want native speakers and a provider that feels homegrown. Success means “really understanding what each local really wants, and building for that.”

Why AI agents may make payments harder before they make them easier

Most commentary assumes AI will make payments easier. Sadra argues agents will add complexity first, and the challenge depends on which side of the transaction you sit.

For a payment processor, each payment started by an agent raises a new question about intent. Is the agent acting for a genuine user, or is this an attack in disguise? Processors also need to know who the real customer behind each payment is.

For merchants, the challenge is discovery. Businesses have long relied on search ads and paid social to reach buyers. More and more people now hand that research to AI agents. “It’s not going to find the best,” Sadra says of an agent researching suppliers. “It’ll find those who’ve done the work to be more discoverable.”

Sadra sees an opening in this shift, much like search engine optimisation 15 years ago. Businesses that move quickly can become more visible to agents and outcompete larger legacy rivals. For practical next steps, read our guide to agentic commerce and embedded payments.

When will consumers trust AI agents to buy for them?

Sadra calls this “the million-dollar question.” He compares agentic commerce today with ecommerce 20 to 25 years ago. Back then, people hesitated to enter card details on any website. Trust layers built up over time have since made online checkout feel routine.

He expects trust in agents to follow the same path, with roughly a two-year gap before it becomes mainstream. Contactless is a useful model, because spending limits rose step by step as people grew comfortable. Sadra expects users to let agents make small purchases first, then raise their limits gradually.

“The turning point will be once you see it does a better job than you can,” Sadra says. “Then you’ll trust it. That will definitely come.”

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Does it matter who owns the payment rails?

Sadra’s answer is yes, and he says the concern is growing amongst Ryft’s prospective clients. Ryft is winning clients from US-headquartered providers, partly because those businesses worry about political risk. They fear a future US administration could cut off services to the UK or Europe with little warning.

“It’s a genuine worry because we’ve seen it done before,” Sadra says. His message is sovereign payments: “We’re not going to move our banking offshore. Why are we doing that with payments?”

He argues UK businesses have few homegrown options for processing payments at scale. Ryft aims to be that alternative, built in the UK and expanding across Europe. Ryft has also applied for an EU licence from the Malta Financial Services Authority. If it is granted, Ryft could passport its services across the EEA.

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About Ryft

Ryft is an FCA Authorised Payment Institution providing payments for marketplaces and platforms across the UK and Europe. Split payments, seller onboarding and payouts all run through one API. To talk through how this fits your platform, speak to our payments team.

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