Valitor is a

merchant services Merchant services is a broad category of financial services intended for use by businesses. In its most specific use, it usually refers to merchant processing services that enables a business to accept a transaction payment through a secure (encr ...

, acquirer, card issuer and

payment gateway A payment gateway is a merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payment processing for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. The ...

solutions company headquartered in

Hafnarfjörður Hafnarfjörður, officially Hafnarfjarðarkaupstaður, is a port town and municipality in Iceland, located about south of Reykjavík. The municipality consists of two non-contiguous areas in the Capital Region (Iceland), Capital Region, on the s ...

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

. Valitor is Visa's and Mastercard's partner in Iceland and offers various online and e-commerce solutions internationally.

History

Valitor was founded in 1983 by five banks and thirteen savings banks under the name Visa Iceland. In 2007 Greiðslumiðlun hf. changed its name to Valitor in a move to further its international services. On 7 December 2010, following the leak of the US diplomatic cables in February 2010 and the leak of Afghan War documents in July 2010, Valitor suspended payments towards the data company DataCell, the company processing donations for

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

. On 12 July 2012 a

Reykjavík Reykjavík is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...

court ruled that Valitor had to start processing donations within fourteen days on pain of daily fines to the amount of ISK 800,000 for each day after that time, to open the

. Valitor also had to pay DataCell's litigation costs of ISK 1,500,000. In 2015, Valitor was selected as one of six companies to service ApplePay in Europe. In July 2017, Valitor bought UK based Chip & PIN Solutions. In April 2020, Valitor courted controversy as it was accused of using the COVID-19 pandemic to sack staff. The issue arose when Valitor fired 14 entry level staff at its Glasgow branch, claiming they were “restructuring the business”. However, the company is said to have kept on all its HR and senior management by putting them on furlough.

Acquisition by Rapyd

Valitor is now part of Rapyd, a global payment processing and fintech-as-a-service company founded in 2016 as a consumer-mode e-wallet called CashDash. It was the first e-wallet launched in 2017 and the company built an API that enables customers to access a range of financial services, including payouts, foreign exchange fund collection, card issuance, fund disbursements, and virtual IBAN accounts, among others.

References

1983 establishments in Iceland Financial services companies established in 1983 Financial services companies of Iceland {{Iceland-company-stub