NatWest and Endava Form Partnership to Drive Merchant Payments Business Forward

WHY THIS MATTERS: The significance of this tie-up extends far beyond a simple vendor agreement; it is a clear signal of how major banks are tackling the non-negotiable imperative of payments modernization. NatWest’s decision to embed Endava’s AI-native capabilities into its Tyl merchant acquiring arm acknowledges a crucial market reality: legacy infrastructure can no longer support the demands for instant, integrated, and scalable payment acceptance. In a landscape where consumer expectations for frictionless experiences are accelerating, this strategic partnership is a defensive move that aims for offensive gains. It directly addresses the structural disruption being felt across the financial services ecosystem, where competitors are leveraging AI in finance to automate core processes like fraud detection and reconciliation. For merchants, this means a faster rollout of best-of-breed solutions. For the industry, it underscores that established institutions are actively choosing specialized technology partners to build the resilient, future-proof platforms necessary to maintain control and drive long-term revenue growth.

Endava, the technology-driven business transformation group whose AI-native approach combines cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise today announced a strategic partnership with Tyl by NatWest, NatWest Group’s merchant-payments arm, to accelerate the evolution of its offering.

The partnership is focused on enabling Tyl’s customers to access a modern, fully integrated payments acceptance experience. By combining Endava’s global operations and its AI-native delivery model Dava.Flow™, as well as deploying components of its Payments Gateway Accelerator, the collaboration will increase the speed at which new, best-of-breed products and services are brought to market, while enhancing flexibility, scalability and performance across the payments lifecycle.

James Hodgson, CEO of Tyl by NatWest commented: “Partnering with Endava marks a significant step forward in the evolution of our merchant payments offering. Our ambition is to deliver a seamless, fully integrated experience that enables our customers to grow faster and operate more efficiently. By combining our market position with Endava’s technology expertise, we are accelerating innovation, unlocking new revenue opportunities and ensuring we remain highly competitive in a rapidly changing payments landscape.”

“This partnership reflects the strength of our long-standing relationship with NatWest and our shared commitment to driving meaningful transformation in payments.” said Melba Montague, Chief Growth Officer for Financial Services of Endava. “By combining our AI-native approach, multidisciplinary teams and deep industry expertise with accelerators such as Dava.Flow and our Payments Gateway, we enable faster delivery of high-impact solutions that directly link technology investment to business outcomes. Together, we are helping Tyl build a more agile, scalable and future-ready platform—modernising its ecosystem, simplifying complexity and delivering differentiated customer experiences at scale.”

Endava has worked closely with Tyl by NatWest to define a comprehensive business and technology strategy, directly linking market opportunity and projected revenue growth to the delivery of new features and capabilities. The partnership between the two leading UK organisations also reflects a continued commitment by NatWest to invest in and strengthen its merchant payments offering, while further demonstrating Endava’s ability to secure and deliver complex, large-scale strategic engagements with industry leading institutions.

Accelerating innovation and modernisation in payments and banking

With over 20 years of experience, Endava supported organisations across banking, payments and beyond in evolving their ecosystems to meet changing market demands. As competition intensifies, regulatory pressures grow and customer expectations continue to rise, financial institutions face an increasingly complex landscape.

By combining deep industry expertise with world-class engineering and an AI-native approach, Endava partners with banks, payments providers and organisations across sectors including retail, automotive and travel to modernise platforms, simplify integrations and address complex challenges such as foreign exchange and end-to-end orchestration.

From data intelligence and core modernisation to customer experience and credit solutions, we act as a natural extension of our clients’ teams, helping define payments strategies, build robust business cases and deliver the technologies needed to drive innovation, accelerate growth and remain competitive in rapidly evolving markets.

To learn more about how Endava supports, visit Payments and Finance and Banking pages.

FF NEWS TAKE: This move definitively moves the needle, serving as a template for how incumbent banks must engage with deep tech transformation firms to overhaul critical revenue streams. The focus on an integrated, fully managed payments acceptance experience suggests Tyl is positioning itself to compete head-to-head with pure-play fintech acquirers. The next watch point is execution: specifically, how quickly Endava’s methodology translates into tangible improvements in Tyl’s time-to-market and whether the resulting payments modernization platform sets a new standard for merchant services.