Payment Nordic banks agree to co-operate: Money will soon move between countries as fast as a text message

Is there is it too difficult to transfer money from one Nordic country to another?

At least six Nordic banks believe so. That is why OP, Danske Bank, Swedbank, SEB, Nordea and Handelsbanken have joined forces to form a new company, P27 Nordic Payments, with the aim of facilitating payments between countries and currencies in the Nordic countries.

“Everything has to happen in real time these days, right? We want to create a platform that is more efficient and secure for real-time payments. The infrastructure in the Nordic countries is good, but quite old. It needs to be updated, ”P27 started as CEO on Monday Paula da Silva tells HS.

The name P27 refers to more than 27 million people living in the Nordic countries.

“Our intention is to make transferring money between the Nordic countries as easy as sending a text message. This applies to both individuals and companies, ”says da Silva.

Da Silva has a long background at SEB Bank in Sweden, where he most recently served as Head of Payment Services.

P27 develops the infrastructure on which banks can build their services, such as payment applications. For example, the Mobilepay service can currently be used to transfer money to another Finnish bank customer with a Finnish personal identity number. P27 does not affect what kind of services banks offer, but the infrastructure it builds could also make it possible to transfer money from Mobilepay to a user of the Swedish Swish application.

In any case, in the future, all Mobilepay payments would go through the infrastructure built by P27, da Silva says. He said the new platform would also allow for new, more flexible forms of payment.

Da Silva compare the performance of the P27 to mobile phones. A single cell phone has no job without a cellular network.

“Even if it’s the latest Iphone model, it won’t do anything if the network doesn’t work,” da Silva says.

Similarly, a platform is needed behind banking and payment services. The platform provided by P27 would allow real-time payments in the Nordic countries, regardless of currency.

“There is a lot of trade between the Nordic countries, but there are still barriers between them. We need an efficient and secure payment system to lower the thresholds between countries, ”says da Silva.

P27 is headquartered in Sweden, where the company’s operations are supervised by the local financial supervisory authority, the Finansinspektionen. The company has already set up offices in Helsinki and Copenhagen.

A total of hundreds of people work on the project in partner banks and through other partners. P27 has 60 employees and the number of employees is expected to double by the end of the year.

The first services built on the infrastructure built by P27 should be operational next year. Launches start in Sweden. The company’s customers are banks, and in the future it would be possible for non-founding banks to join the entity. For example, Paypal or Alipay cannot join the infrastructure due to regulation unless they set up the actual bank.

“There will be more cooperation in the market in the future. Some banks can only be users of this infrastructure. ”

The Nordic payment market is not a button trade. In 2020, according to P27, 15.1 billion payment transactions were executed in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, with a total value of EUR 9.8 trillion, or EUR 9,800 billion.

Da Silvan It is likely that the new infrastructure will also lower the prices of currency transfers and cross-border payments. Currency transfers through traditional banks can be slower and more expensive than, for example, through the Wise service previously known as Transferwise.

“As volume grows, prices will probably go down. The number of payments in many countries is much higher than in any single country. It’s up to the banks themselves to what they ultimately charge customers, ”says da Silva.