REAL-TIME PAYMENTS IN FINLAND
Where does Finland go with development of Real-Time Payments?
SIIRTO BRAND CHOSEN TO EXECUTE DOMESTIC RULEBOOK
Bank of Finland’s (“BoF”) Payment Council announced in end of October 2025 that it has concluded to handover the development and execution of domestic Rulebook and Governance Model of Real-Time Payments to Siirto Brand.
According to the meeting notes, Siirto Brand was the sole provider within reasonable time period to execute the Rulebook.
On top of the execution of the Rulebook, the scope of the creation of domestic scheme includes also:
Peer-to-peer -transactions within SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (“SCT Inst”),
Support POS-transactions and
Provide commonly known SCT Inst based payment method to eCommerce.
Scheme shall be open for all financial institutions and payment companies. Going forward, a separate association shall be created, which shall be funded by member fees.
Project will not include a separate end-user application – solutions shall be built in financial institutions and payment companies’ applications.
Siirto’s presentation from the decision meeting may be found here.
CURRENT STATE OF “REAL-TIME” PAYMENTS IN NORDICS
Finland has been the only Nordic-market where the domestic end-users have been missing a common widely used platform for peer-to-peer (“P2P”) money transfers. In other Nordic-countries the market and end-users have adapted common widely spread platforms and applications, whereas in Finland, none of the applications has been able to attract a full mass of domestic population as end-users.
So far, Mobilepay has been the most successful one with its 2,8 million end-users, followed by Siirto with its 1,5 million end-users.
Mobilepay’s solution has historically been based on card-based transactions, once Siirto has been based account-to-account (“A2A”) transactions.
Mobilepay’s solution has not been bank specific, as Siirto has been servicing only customers of selected banks, which explains the success of Mobilepay in its customer acquisition.
REAL-TIME PAYMENTS IN NORDICS
SWEDEN AND SWISH
In Sweden the solution has been account-to-account (“A2A”) based Swish, which was previously run in Bankgirot, but which has been later transferred into Swedish Riksbank’s RIX-INST.
Riksbank’s RIX-INST is also connected into ECB’s Eurosystem’s Target Instant Payment Settlement (“TIPS”), which allows Swish to benefit real-time payments also in other currencies, providing possibilities for Swedish payment companies to innovate services also for EUR-countries. Swish is used by 82 % of the total population and allows P2P-transaction and is widely offered payment method within payment companies and merchants.
Swish was founded in 2012 and is owned by largest Swedish banks; Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Länsförsäkningar, Nordea, SEB, Swedbank and Sparbankerna. Other banks have connected to Swish after that.
VIPPS MOBILEPAY; NORWAY, DENMARK & FINLAND
In Norway, the commonly used platform for P2P transactions is Vipps, which is nowadays (after the merger of Vipps and Mobilepay) known as Vipps Mobilepay. In Norway Vipps is covering 93 % of the population exceeding 15 years. Vipps has also launched a possibility to add Vipps as a payment method into Apple’s and Android’s mobile wallets. Vipps enables A2A- and card transactions and is commonly used in P2P-transactions and offered widely within payment companies and merchants.
In Denmark, Vipps Mobilepay is serving 92 % of Danish population exceeding 15 years old. Vipps Mobilepay is commonly used in P2P-transactions and offered widely by various payment companies and merchants. Vipps Mobilepay is enabling card-based transactions and enables A2A-transaction within majority of Danish banks.
In Finland, Vipps Mobilepay is the most commonly used P2P-platform and it’s also widely offered in ecommerce by various payment companies and merchants. Transaction in Finland are supporting card-based transactions and A2A-transactions. A2A-transactions are supported within the banks who part of European Central Bank’s (“ECB”) SCT Inst -scheme. In Finland Mobilepay has end-users covering 59 % (2,8 million) of the population who are 13 years or older.
Vipps Mobilepay is owned 72,2 % by consortium of Norwegian Banks and holding companies (majority shareholders being DNB, Sparebanken 1, Eika and Balder) and Danske Bank 27,8 %.
Vipps has announced, that it has agreed about collaboration with EuroPA Alliance, which shall allow Vipps Mobilepay users to settle money in real-time with end-users of EuroPA Alliance. Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain) and MB Way / SIBS (Portugal), which covers 50 million end-users. Recently Blik (Poland) and IRIS (Greece) have joined EuroPA, which expands the coverage into 10 countries and increases the coverage of end-users into 100 million.
EuroPA has announced a co-operation with European Payment Initiative (“EPI”), which shall allow end-users of EuroPA Alliance to be able to transfer funds within the EPI scheme, which is serving the end-users in multiple banks in Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany and all Revolut users globally.
After these collaborations have been implemented, it shall increase the coverage of Vipps MobilePay, EuroPA Alliance and EPI in total into coverage of 200 million end-users, which is impressive figure in a fairly short period of time.
SIIRTO IN FINLAND
Siirto Brand is a joint-venture between Nordea and OP Bank, which was originally established already in 2017 by Automatia, based on technology bought from TietoEvry. At that point Automatia was owned by Nordea, OP Bank and Danske Bank. Later on, Automatia and its ATM-operations was acquired by Loomis, but OP Bank and Nordea agreed to acquire rights to Siirto. Siirto was serving customers of Nordea and S-Bank and at least Aktia had committed to the solution. Back then Danske Bank and OP Bank had their own initiatives around real-time payments, which were Mobilepay and Pivo, and therefore adaptation of siirto never took off.
After long silent period and after the approval of Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (“FCCA”), the Siirto-solution was re-launched in 2025.
Siirto is currently serving customers of Nordea and OP Bank. Vaguely interpreted, some can drove into conclusion that Oma SP Bank has committed to utilize Siirto’s solution. Nordea’s separate Siirto-application enables Nordea’s, OP Bank’s, S-Bank’s and Ålandsbanken’s customers. OP Bank’s solution has been to build the functionalities into its general mobile bank -application and according to OP Bank it supports SCT Inst only between Nordea and OP Bank’s customers.
Siirto is currently serving 1,5 million end-users, which is 1,3 million end-users less than Vipps Mobilepay is currently serving in Finland.
Siirto is mainly offered by Payment Service Providers operating in Finland, incl. Paytrail, Svea Payments, Visma Pay and Verifone.
REAL-TIME PAYMENTS IN EUROPE
EUROPEAN PAYMENT INITIATIVE
EPI is the most widely used real-time payment platform within Europe, which was founded by 16 European banks operating in France, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands and later on global PSP’s Worldline and Nexi (the owner of Nets, who also owns most widely used Finnish PSP Paytrail) joined EPI as shareholders.
EPI was founded in 2020 with support of ECB and its Eurosystem. Eurosystem is also the party controlling Target Instant Payment Settlement (“TIPS”), which is a European clearing standard for SCT Inst between the banks and the payment companies. ECB’s Payment Council is the party controlling the rulebook and scheme for SCT Inst.
In 2023 EPI acquired Dutch and Luxembourg payment companies iDEAL and Payconiq, which are to be enrolled to EPI infrastructure. IDEAL’s coverage in Netherlands was nearly 100 % of the eligible population.
Until September 2024, EPI was supported in founder and member banks mobile bank -applications, until it launched a specific mobile phone application called Wero.
Currently Wero is used by 45 million end-users in France, Germany, Belgium and more to come after the launch of Wero in Netherlands, Luxembourg and roll-out of the Revolut cooperation.
As mentioned previously, in relation to Vipps Mobilepay, EPI and EuroPA Alliance announced in June 2026, that they will start to collaboration in order to find a solution to enable real-time payments between EPI and EuroPA end-users. In total the coverage would include 15 European countries, collectively representing 382 million inhabitants (covering 84 % of the European Union population and Norway).
CONCLUSION
Conclusion of the state of Finnish Real-time payments is that Finland is way behind the development compared to majority of the European Union and European Economic Area countries.
Most other countries have applied applications for P2P transactions, which have been attracting required masses of users to become a unified standard within the local market.
Once Finland is just about to start the development of a common platform, European level initiatives are expanding, gaining new markets, members and masses of users on a very rapid pace.
Without knowing the details of participating into EPI or EuroPA as a member or a shareholder, it seems somewhat odd, that instead of relying on European level collaboration, Finland shall develop its own domestic solution. Especially as it shall anyhow, at the end of the day, be integrated on a way or another into EPI or EuroPA in order to facilitate the ECB’s retail payment strategy.
If the decision of developing domestic platform (instead of joining European initiative) is related to independence and domestic control, we must bear in mind that the solution shall be built on SCT Inst and TIPS, which are European level standards, which shall anyhow create European level dependency.
Once Siirto will be at some point ready with its technical development and deploy its solution to market, it’ll be interesting to see the adaptation of the solution, which shall require majority of the Finnish banks and PSP’s as members of the scheme, in order to be successful.
Another challenge with Siirto will be the distribution channels and how successful it will be in attracting PSP-partners and direct merchant agreements.
Remains to be seen how successful Siirto will be. Will EPI and Wero enter Finland? How successful Mobilepay shall be especially after its launch of the collaboration with Klarna?