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Noda co-founder Lasma Kuhtarska’s account of building the company starts with a practical problem: payments can be slow and fragmented for both merchants and customers. In a December 9, 2025, TechBullion interview, she describes a strategy for connecting bank-based payments and financial data to merchant services. Her story illustrates Noda’s stated approach; it does not independently prove that the approach produces better results for every merchant.
What problem did Kuhtarska set out to solve?
The TechBullion article presents Kuhtarska’s background in financial processes, including work connected with a central bank and SEB, as context for her interest in payment inefficiencies. The article does not cite underlying records for those biographical details. In a separate interview, Kuhtarska says she saw recurring problems in legacy processes and recalls that “these problems were not outliers. They were structural.” That is her retrospective assessment, not an independent finding about the whole payments industry. Securities.io interview
The friction she describes is familiar to merchants: payment flows involve multiple systems and intermediaries, while customers may face delays or cumbersome checkout. Noda’s proposed response is to use bank connections to make account-to-account payments and relevant financial information available through a merchant-facing platform.
How does Noda’s open-banking approach work?
In an open-banking payment, a customer authorizes a payment from a bank account, typically through an interface connected to their bank. A provider’s software links that payment initiation to the merchant’s checkout. This is a digital payment route, not a physical payment device, and it is distinct from paying with a card.
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Kuhtarska’s strategy, as described in the TechBullion article, emphasizes reducing unnecessary intermediaries, making relevant data useful in real time, and considering compliance as part of product design. These are company principles, not a guarantee that every transaction will be faster, cheaper, or simpler. The actual experience depends on bank and country coverage, customer authentication, integration quality, local rules, and the merchant’s payment mix.
What does Noda offer beyond payment initiation?
Noda describes itself as a merchant-payments and financial-data company. Its official site lists open-banking payments, payment links, payouts, data enrichment, and bank-based sign-in. Noda services
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Payments
Payment initiation lets a customer authorize a bank-based transfer at checkout. Noda’s pages also describe payment links and payouts. The product list shows the stated scope of the service; it does not establish transaction performance across merchants or markets.
Know Your Whales analytics
In an interview, Noda describes Know Your Whales (KYW) as an analytics product that can use bank data shared through an account information service provider (AISP) to derive spending insights. The company says those insights can support customer segmentation and marketing. Fintechnews interview
That data use raises concrete questions for a merchant to resolve before adopting analytics: what account information is requested, what consent the customer gives, whether the data is used only for the stated purpose, how long it is retained, who can access it, whether it is shared onward, and how a customer can withdraw consent or request deletion. Kuhtarska’s comments about Noda’s practices are company representations; the cited material is not an independent security or privacy audit.
What do Noda’s growth and coverage figures establish?
The TechBullion article reports that Noda had connections to more than 2,000 banks and a network spanning 30 countries. It does not provide a counting method or a clearly defined measurement date for those figures. Noda’s current partnership page instead describes 2,000-plus banks across 26 countries. Noda partnership page
These figures should not be combined into a single definitive coverage claim. Country counts can differ with date, geography, brand or entity, and the definition of a supported bank connection. A merchant evaluating the service should ask for a current, country-by-country list of relevant banks and clarify what “connection” means for the payment or data feature it plans to use.
Noda’s partnership page also relays a Juniper Research forecast that open-banking payment value would reach $57 billion in 2023 and $330 billion by 2027. This is a third-party forecast quoted by Noda, not a measured outcome or a current market total; the underlying Juniper report is not cited here.
Are open-banking payments cheaper or better for merchants?
Noda-authored material says card processing may cost 2–3% or more of transaction value, while open-banking fees may be below 1%. Those are company-published figures, not an independent market-wide benchmark, and they do not establish the savings a particular merchant will realize. Noda-authored HackerNoon article
Kuhtarska and Noda materials also associate open banking with potential benefits such as faster settlement, fewer chargebacks, improved conversion, and more effective customer targeting. The reviewed sources do not independently demonstrate those outcomes across merchants or markets. A useful comparison should look at total fees, settlement timing, reversibility and dispute handling, customer completion rates, integration costs, and the share of a merchant’s customers who can use the route.
| Comparison area | What to verify |
|---|---|
| Payment route | Whether the option is bank-initiated account-to-account payment, card payment, or a local method, and which customer journeys it supports. |
| Coverage | Named countries and banks, the date of the coverage list, and how the provider defines a supported connection. |
| Economics and operations | Total fees, settlement timing, refunds, reversibility, dispute handling, and any conditions attached to advertised rates. |
| Integration | Available APIs, plugins or checkout components, onboarding requirements, support, and the merchant’s implementation work. |
| Data governance | Data requested, consent wording, purpose, retention and deletion, access controls, and any third parties receiving information. |
| Risk and accountability | Applicable permissions and local rules, customer authentication, and which entity is accountable for executing the payment. |
What should businesses check before partnering with Noda?
Noda’s partnership page describes white-label, reseller, franchise, and agent options, including referral links for resellers. The page also says NaudaPay Limited, which previously operated under the Noda and Noda.live brands, is now a separate entity and no longer trades under those brands. Noda partnership page Noda site notice
Because entity and brand arrangements can change, a prospective partner should confirm the contracting company, the current program and eligibility, how referrals are tracked, and the applicable commercial terms directly before making a commitment.
What Kuhtarska’s story says about Noda’s direction
Kuhtarska’s account connects payment-process frustrations with a broader product ambition: combine bank-based payment initiation with financial-data services for merchants. Its value for a specific business depends on practical fit—not the strategy alone—including coverage in the merchant’s markets, clear and limited data use, dependable integration, local compliance, and demonstrated economics for that merchant’s transactions.
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