Francesco Simoneschi is co-founder and chief executive of TrueLayer, a London, England, company whose network lets customers pay merchants straight from their bank accounts. He started the company in 2016 with Luca Martinetti. On the Tech.eu podcast in March 2026, he said, “We are at the starting line when it comes to large retailers adopting pay by bank.” Read our review of TrueLayer.
Launching Bank on File
On May 27, 2026, he published a keynote on TrueLayer’s blog announcing Bank on File, which stores a shopper’s consent instead of card details so a merchant can charge a bank account for subscriptions and repeat purchases. He wrote that card payments are like a spaghetti junction, while pay by bank is more like “a bullet train.”
Studies in Rome and London Before Staq
He studied computer engineering at Sapienza University of Rome and later studied at the London School of Economics.
He founded Staq, an analytics startup for mobile games that was bought by PlayHaven, the company that became Upsight, and he stayed on at Upsight in product and technical roles before starting TrueLayer.
