Latest news with #VippsMobilePay
Local Norway
15-05-2025
- Business
- Local Norway
Norway's Vipps app set to enable money transfers across Europe
Vipps users in Norway could be able to send funds to the three southern European countries and Poland by next summer, Vipps MobilePay said in a press release on Thursday. The company has joined up with several other European money-sharing platforms as part of a project to connect users across borders. That should mean that a Vipps user in Norway may be able to send money to a user of the Spanish payment app Bizum in the same way they currently send funds to other Vipps users. Other platforms based in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland joining the project mean that its eventual reach could be 100 million users of the various apps across Europe. Additional countries could also join the network in future, according to Vipps MobilePay. "We are now starting to make the solutions work together, which is called interoperability. Even though the wallets look the same on the outside, they are built very differently. We are starting with 'person to person', and then moving on to 'person to business', Rune Garborg, CEO at Vipps MobilePay, said in a press release. Vipps users in Norway can already send funds to MobilePay or Vipps users in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, with the platforms in each of the Nordic countries already linked . Sweden, like Norway, uses Vipps, while Finland and Denmark use MobilePay. The two apps have around 12 million users across the four countries. Advertisement Cross-border payments within the Nordic region currently incur a fee of four percent, charged by Vipps MobilePay. This is on top of currency conversion surcharges. Vipps MobilePay hasn't yet confirmed whether fees will apply to new countries, or what those fees might be when introduced. In order to use Vipps in Norway, users need to have an account with a Norwegian bank and at least one personal debit or credit card issued by a Norwegian bank. Users also need a Norwegian social security number in order to verify their identity with the BankID electronic ID, and a Norwegian phone number. READ ALSO: Which Norwegian banks issue BankID to foreigners with a D-number?
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
As cyberwarfare threat looms, cashless Nordic nations go back to banknotes
In 2018 a former deputy governor of Sweden's central bank predicted that by 2025 the country would probably be cashless. Seven years on, that prediction has turned out to be pretty much true. Just one in 10 purchases are made with cash, and card is the most common form of payment, followed by the Swedish mobile payment system Swish, launched by six banks in 2012 and now ubiquitous. Other mobile phone payment services are also growing quickly. In fact, according to the central bank's annual payments report, published this month, Sweden and Norway have the lowest amount of cash in circulation, as a percentage of GDP, in the world. But in the context of today, with war in Europe, unpredictability in the US and the fear of Russian hybrid attacks almost a part of daily life in Sweden, life without cash is not proving the utopia that perhaps it once promised to be. Such is the perceived severity of the situation that the authorities are trying to encourage citizens to keep and use cash in the name of civil defence. In November, the defence ministry sent every home a brochure entitled If Crisis or War Comes, advising people to use cash regularly and keep a minimum of a week's supply in various denominations to 'strengthen preparedness'. In its report, the central bank says: 'Measures need to be taken to strengthen preparedness and reduce exclusion so that everyone can pay, even in the event of crisis or war.' For years, it says, efficiency has been the priority for payments, but now safety and accessibility 'are at least as important'. In December the government published the findings of an inquiry that proposed that some public and private agents should be required to accept cash – a recommendation that the central bank says the authorities should implement. In recent years the central bank has been working on its own digital currency, the 'e-krona', as cash declines. But the project ended a couple of years ago, and the bank is now focused on monitoring the global development of digital currencies. Sweden is not the only Nordic country backpedalling on plans for a cashless society. Last year Norway, which has a popular equivalent to Swish called Vipps MobilePay, brought in legislation that means retailers can be fined or sanctioned if they will not accept cash. The government has also recommended that citizens 'keep some cash on hand due to the vulnerabilities of digital payment solutions to cyber-attacks'. Norway's former justice and emergencies minister Emilie Mehl put it in clear terms: 'If no one pays with cash and no one accepts cash, cash will no longer be a real emergency solution once the crisis is upon us.' Ultimately, when it comes to emergency planning, the world's two most cashless societies are still banking on cash. Miranda Bryant is the Guardian's Nordic correspondent
