Mesh Payments, the London‑based travel‑and‑expense (T&E) management platform that has built a reputation for AI‑driven spend visibility, announced a new strategic alliance with Adyen, the Dutch payment‑technology provider serving multinational corporations. The collaboration is designed to deepen Mesh’s footprint in the United Kingdom and continental Europe by integrating Adyen’s extensive payment network and local‑card issuance capabilities.
A partnership built for scale
Mesh’s growth trajectory in the enterprise segment has been marked by a steady rollout of its SaaS‑first spend‑management solution, which currently supports a roster of global clients. By joining forces with Adyen, Mesh gains access to a payment stack that processes billions of transactions annually, enabling the fintech to offer “massive scale and reliability” to its customers.
The two firms say the integration will allow Mesh to issue locally‑denominated cards in the UK and Europe without forcing enterprises to abandon existing corporate‑card relationships. This “co‑existence” model is a departure from closed‑ecosystem approaches that require customers to migrate fully to a single provider. Instead, Mesh will sit alongside a company’s incumbent bank cards, providing a supplemental layer of local‑currency cards that eliminate foreign‑exchange fees while preserving the original banking connections.
Why the move matters for the broader ecosystem
The partnership arrives at a time when embedded finance and open‑banking initiatives are reshaping corporate spend management. Enterprises increasingly demand a unified view of all outflows—whether they stem from traditional corporate cards, virtual cards, or expense‑reporting tools. Mesh’s ability to overlay its AI layer on top of both its own cards and external bank‑issued cards aligns with this trend, offering a single pane of glass for compliance, policy enforcement, and real‑time analytics.
Adyen’s global reach also addresses a persistent pain point for multinational firms: the friction of cross‑border payments and the cost of currency conversion. By provisioning locally‑issued cards that settle in the native currency, Mesh can reduce transaction costs for its enterprise customers and improve acceptance rates across regional point‑of‑sale networks.
Executive perspectives
“This partnership with Adyen is a critical accelerator for our European and U.K. operations, which are already serving a growing number of global enterprises,” said Oded Zehavi, CEO and co‑founder of Mesh Payments. “We are moving beyond market entry to a massive scale. By integrating Adyen’s global financial payment infrastructure, we are ensuring that our customers enjoy robust, high‑performance local card capabilities that can grow as fast as they do—without ever forcing them to compromise on their existing banking relationships.”
From Adyen’s side, Alexa von Bismark, President, EMEA, highlighted the strategic fit: “We are thrilled to partner with Mesh Payments to support their continued expansion and operational excellence across Europe and the UK. Our financial technology platform is engineered to help forward‑thinking fintechs like Mesh scale efficiently. By providing a stable and agile financial infrastructure, we are empowering Mesh to deliver the reliability and innovation their global enterprise customers demand.”
Technical underpinnings and compliance considerations
Adyen’s platform is built on a modular architecture that supports real‑time tokenization, dynamic routing, and multi‑acquirer strategies. For Mesh, this means the ability to provision cards instantly, monitor transaction risk, and apply granular controls without latency. The integration also dovetails with emerging European regulatory frameworks, such as the Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the European Banking Authority’s guidelines on strong customer authentication (SCA). By leveraging Adyen’s compliance‑ready stack, Mesh can assure its clients that card issuance and transaction processing meet the latest security standards.
Market positioning and competitive landscape
Mesh’s move positions it alongside other fintechs that have pursued “card‑as‑a‑service” models, including Revolut Business, Pleo, and Brex. However, Mesh differentiates itself by focusing on the enterprise segment and by emphasizing interoperability with existing banking relationships. In a market where many players opt for an all‑in‑one approach—providing both the spend‑management software and the underlying card issuer—Mesh’s hybrid model could appeal to large corporations that have already negotiated favorable terms with incumbent banks.
Adyen, meanwhile, continues its strategy of partnering with niche fintechs to broaden its merchant base. Recent collaborations with Shopify, eBay, and Klarna illustrate a pattern of enabling specialized platforms to tap into Adyen’s global payment rails without building their own infrastructure from scratch.
Potential impact on enterprise spend management
For finance teams, the partnership promises a more streamlined workflow. Expenses captured on Mesh’s platform can now be automatically reconciled with transactions made on locally‑issued cards, reducing manual entry and the risk of mismatched data. The AI layer that Mesh brings—covering policy enforcement, receipt capture, and spend categorization—will operate on a richer data set, potentially improving predictive analytics for budgeting and cash‑flow forecasting.
Moreover, the elimination of FX fees on local‑currency cards could translate into measurable cost savings for multinational firms that regularly incur conversion charges on cross‑border purchases. While exact figures are proprietary, analysts estimate that large enterprises can shave 0.5‑1.0% off total spend by optimizing currency settlement—a non‑trivial amount when annual procurement budgets run into hundreds of millions.
Outlook and next steps
Both companies have indicated that the integration will roll out in phases, beginning with pilot programs for select Mesh customers in the UK and Germany, before expanding to other European markets. Mesh plans to leverage Adyen’s settlement and reporting APIs to enrich its dashboard, while Adyen expects to deepen its presence in the B2B fintech segment through the partnership.
Industry observers will watch closely to see how quickly Mesh can scale its card‑issuing volume and whether the model gains traction among Fortune‑500 firms that are still anchored to legacy banking relationships. If successful, the collaboration could serve as a blueprint for other fintechs seeking to blend open‑banking flexibility with the reliability of a proven payment processor.
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