A collective group of financial institutions have taken their first steps in developing the Nordic region’s first real-time payments system, titled P27 Nordic Payments Platform AB.
Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, OP Financial Group, SEB and Swedbank have signed a shareholders’ agreement, agreed on a business plan, and made a financial commitment to cover all expenditures up until the company is financially sustainable, with an expected launch in 2021.
Lars Sjögren, CEO, P27 Nordic Payments Platform AB commented: “P27 will become the world’s first integrated domestic and cross border real-time payments platform.
“The Nordic banking sector already has a leading position in Europe, and P27 will help further expand and consolidate this position.
“Today’s decision from all of our owners demonstrates their commitment, belief, and support.”
P27 ultimately could completely change the payments industry in Scandinavia and this agreement acts as the “foundation required for realising the vision” of an integrated, cross-border payment system for the 27 million people living in the Nordic region.
The platform aims to be “secure and versatile” and will enable real-time, batch, domestic and cross-border payments.
Firstly the platform will operate specifically within the countries of Denmark, Finland and Sweden but the scheme will be “designed to be expandable” to enable payments across the rest of the Nordics as well.
“This Nordic initiative was initiated in late 2017,” added Paula da Silva, Chairperson of the board, P27 Nordic Payments Platform AB.
“The owners’ collaboration and commitment has been strong throughout the project and today’s announcement is evidence of their continued support.”
The P27 initiative started in 2017 as a joint Nordic bank project and in May 2019, an interim company was established.
An agreement was signed with Mastercard to operate the payments platform and now the company is targeting to acquire the necessary clearing licence and merger filing approvals, as well as continuing to develop the clearing platform.
