Sweden Country Report

Table of Contents

This Verisk Financial Research Country Report delivers commentary on Sweden's retail banking and payments landscape supported by historic and forecast data. The report gives detailed insight into the market's key players, including cards networks, issuers, acquirers, banks, and PSPs, plus the country's payments infrastructure, digital and mobile payments developments, demographic and consumer trends, regulatory drivers, credit card profitability, and more.

What you will learn from this report:

• How a tradition of collaboration has led to payments innovations such as P2P market leader Swish – with more infrastructural plans in train that promise to transform payments across the Nordics
• Why the trend towards cashlessness does not mean a cashless Sweden is inevitable
• How the global schemes have fared as market share has shifted dramatically in the debit cards space
• Why revenue from fees is becoming crucial for the credit cards business in Sweden
• How Sweden has become one of the few Western economies in which mobile payments have become widespread, with the country's banks now handling more such transactions than ATM withdrawals.

Key Facts

• Retail banking, consumer finance and payments in this market are largely controlled by four major banks: Nordea, SEB, Swedbank and Handelsbanken.
• Sweden is one of the world's most cash-free countries, with cash in circulation and cash transactions both declining rapidly.
• However, the prospect of a fully cashless society may recede should banks be forced to provide cash-handling services to consumers: legislation is being considered to that end.
• Swedish consumers made an average of 430 card payments in 2018, one of the highest rates globally.
• The country's mobile payments scheme, Swish, has grown rapidly since its launch in 2012. Two thirds of the population use the service, primarily for P2P payments.
• Swish is also growing in popularity for online payments since that functionality was added in 2017. QR code payments at the POS were also made available in the same year.
• Payment by invoice is popular in Swedish e-commerce, with transaction volume almost as high as that of cards. This is facilitated by companies such as Klarna that handle invoice payments for merchants.
• Sweden's four big banks are collaborating with three banks in the region to create a pan-Nordic payments infrastructure. The project, named P27, is expected to be operational in 2020.