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Norway 2025

Market Overview
Payment Organisation VBB AS, interbank organisation that merged Vipps, BankAxept, and BankID. In 2022, BankID and BankAxept demerged from Vipps.
Domestic Payment Brands BankAxept debit cards; mostly co-badged VISA or Electron.

BankAxess is the domestic online bank transfer service for payments of purchases in online shops.

Vipps, the digital A2A payment app for the Norwegian banks
Market Structure Cards with a debit function are predominant. The domestic BankAxept debit card system accounted for 53.40% of card transactions in Norway and abroad in 2023; including all debit cards, the proportion is 87.58%.

Credit cards continued to grow in the past five years.

Card use, already among the highest in Europe, hit 544 payments per capita including cashbacks (288.9 on BankAxept debit cards) in 2023.

In November 2020, the Nordic processor NETS was acquired by Italian processor Nexi for $9.2 billion.

In June 2021, VBB announced plans to merge Norway’s Vipps with Danske Bank’s MobilePay and Finland’s Pivo to form a pan-Nordic mobile A2A payment operator. In 2022, Pivo was removed from the planned merger.

Emerging Open Banking payment ecosystem.
Notable Market Trends Mobile HCE NFC wallets, contactless BankAxept cards, Vipps,
mobile A2A payments, tokenisation security, biometric cards.As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, contactless payments increased by 6% and a 14% rise in internet card payments.
Major Card Issuers DNB Bank, Nordea (NBN), Eika Gruppen, EnterCard, SEB Kort.
Major Card Acquirers Teller (NETS), Elavon, DNB Bank.
Major Card Processors NETS, Tietoevry, TSYS (Global Payments).

Key Statistics 2023
Population 5.55 million, with 2.28 cards per capita
Cards Debit: 7.64 million (BankAxept)

Cards with credit function: 4.72 million

Total: 12.62 million
Card Transactions Debit cards: 2.64 billion; value NOK 955.9 billion (€83.67 billion)

Charge cards: 10.3 million; value NOK 15.5 billion (€1.36 billion)

Credit cards: 362.2 million; value NOK 229.1 billion (€20.05 billion)

Total cards: 3.01 billion; value NOK 1,201.9 billion (€105.20 billion)

Total payments: 2.98 billion; value NOK 1,152.2 billion (€100.85 billion)
POS Terminals 173,973
POS Payments All cards: 2.61 billion; value: NOK 978.1 billion (€85.61 billion)

Cashbacks 8.8 million; value: NOK 4.8 billion (€0.42 billion)
ATMs 1,217
ATM Withdrawals All cards: 15.7 million; value: NOK 30.0 billion (€2.63 billion)
Digital A2A Payments Credit transfers: 846.7 million, value: NOK 22,549.7 billion
– thereof instant payments: 214.9 million, value NOK 137.8 billion
Direct debits: 115.2 million, value: NOK 527.3 billion
Note: Card use by card types includes domestic and foreign payments, cashback, and cash withdrawals.
Note: Italic forecast figures for 2024F are estimated in the payment market context based on 2023 figures.
Source: Norges Bank, NETS.

General Note – ECB changed its statistical reporting

In the 22nd Edition of the Digital & Payment Card Yearbooks there were some statistical reporting changes to address. The statistical data for 2022 was based on the new ECB regulation ECB/2020/59, which replaced the ECB reporting statistics regulation from 2013 up to 2021 (ECB/2013/43), the well-proven ECB bluebook reporting was discontinued.

For 2022, the ECB declared all data as provisional, because the first-time reporting under the new standard may include errata and double counting.

The researchers and editors worked hard in the 22nd edition to balance out any obvious errata, but it remains that in some instances the data from 2022 cannot be compared to 2021 and previous years.

Where this has occurred, we have clearly stated it and have added explanation to the table and text.

In this, the 23rd Edition we have clarified any errata and filled in all missing data from the previous year.

Introduction – Payments in Norway

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a sovereign and constitutional monarchy with a unicameral Parliament (Stortinget).

Norway is a founding member of the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Council of Europe and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Norway issued applications for accession to the European Union (EU) and its predecessors in 1962, 1967 and 1992, respectively. While Denmark, Sweden and Finland obtained membership, the Norwegian electorate rejected the treaties of accession in referenda in 1972 and 1994.

After the 1994 referendum, Norway maintained its membership in the European Economic Area (EEA), an arrangement granting the country access to the internal market of the EU, on the condition that Norway implements the EU’s pieces of legislation which are deemed relevant.

Successive Norwegian governments have, since 1994, requested participation in parts of the EU’s co-operation that go beyond the provisions of the EEA agreement. Non-voting participation by Norway has been granted in, for instance, the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, the Schengen Agreement, and the European Defence Agency, as well as 19 separate programmes.

The adoption of the revised Payment Services Directive, PSD2, and disruptive technologies have set the stage for digital payments for the digital economy in Norway. They have accelerated digital payment transformation and mobile payment services, as well as cardless IBAN-based payments directly from bank accounts.

In the last decade, Norwegian consumers have embraced mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT). This change significantly impacts their shopping experience. Consumers are increasingly connected and they have started to purchase anywhere, at any time, from any device.

In addition, new consumer demands are a game changer. Norwegian consumers like digital banking apps with access to all their accounts at different banks in one single app, with the option to make payments directly from their bank account of choice. Additionally, they appreciate more banking services and payment services added to their mobile banking app. Consumer adoption of digital payments in Norway is driven by minimal cost, secure payments and a high level of user convenience.

Driven by the development of social media and mobile devices, the emergence of permanently connected consumers has impacted their interactions with brands but also their expectations of how to shop using the increasing number of touch points between consumers and merchants, e.g.:

The ongoing rollout of a mature online and mobile communication infrastructure is an enabler for digital card payment transformation and for Open Banking payments in Norway.

In a few years from now, mobile banking apps and mobile payment apps are expected to combine account management, digital payment services, personal finance management and value-added digital services from location finders to digital vouchers.

Cash payments, card payments and cardless payments directly from bank accounts (A2A payments) all remain relevant for Norwegian merchants and are heavily used by Norwegian consumers.

This country profile provides an introduction into two competing payment ecosystems in Norway:

Legal Framework for Payment Services

The legal framework for European payment services is a joint project undertaken by the European Commission as the regulator, the European Central Bank (ECB) as the Euro System, and the European Payments Council (EPC) with the objective of standardising payments in Europe and to remove existing barriers, promote cross-border competition between payment services, strengthen the European internal market and drive the digital payment transformation.

Based on its vision, the EU Commission has therefore created a unique legal framework for cashless B2C and B2B payments that supersedes pre-existing national legislation and is binding for financial service providers and payment service providers throughout the EU.

Norway has largely transposed this legal framework into their national payment legislation.

Historically, there has been a de facto national regulation of all Norwegian payment schemes with high technical barriers to ensure and defend payment security.

With the implementation of the payment services directive, all payment services in Norway are based on the unique legal framework for payment services of the European Commission effective in the European Economic Area (EEA).

In addition, the respective rules and regulations of the domestic card scheme and the international card schemes continue to be applied by the card payment service providers (e.g. EMV, PCI, RTS SCA, and SEPA Cards Framework), respectively.

Legal Framework relevant for Payment Services in Norway

The revised Payment Services Directive, PSD2, had established a legal and regulatory framework for payment services providers, enforcing several protections for their clients such as safeguarding of funds; and required them to execute processes in accordance with banking regulations, such as KYC and AML. It has already resulted in significant progress regarding the integration of the European retail payments markets.

Following the alignment with the EEA region, the legal framework for payment services in Norway includes the directives and regulations of the European Commission (EC), the ECB, and/or the national central bank (NCB) of the individual country.

All card payment service providers and all cardless payment service providers of the Open Banking payment ecosystem must apply for the European legal framework including:

Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2)
PSD2 is the key directive for borderless banking and payment services in Europe.
Among others, PSD2 regulates digital payment services and payment service providers such as payment institutions, e-money institutions, payment initiation service providers and account information service providers. PSD2 formulates the Open Banking Mandate for regulated access to payment accounts.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – effective from May 2018
GDPR establishes a regulatory framework for customer control of their data through consent mechanisms, the right to be forgotten and the right to retrieve all personal data for re-use at other service providers of choice, thereby preventing a ‘lock-in’ situation.

E-Money Directive (EMD)
The EMD sets out the rules on the business and supervision of e-money institutions.

Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD)
The AMLD6 aims to improve the harmonisation of the criminal liability of money laundering and terrorist financing across the EU27.

Customer Rights Directive (CRD)
CRD gives consumers the same strong rights across the EU. It aligns and harmonises national consumer rules, for example on the information consumers need to be given before they purchase something, and their right to cancel online purchases, wherever they shop in the EU.

EU Price Regulation for cross-border payments
In 2001, Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001, followed in 2009 by Regulation (EC) No 924/2009, fixed uniform underlying conditions for processing cross-border payments in euro, and the fees for intra-EU cross-border payments in euro were aligned with those for domestic payments in euro.

SEPA End-Date Regulation
SEPA payment instruments replaced domestic A2A bank payment instrument formats for euro payments.

Card Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR)
The IFR caps interchange fees for payments with consumer cards, effective from 9 December 2015. It increases transparency on fees thus permitting retailers to know the level of fees paid when accepting cards.

Domestic bank service laws
Complementary to EC directives and EC regulations.

Characteristics of the PSD2 – Outlook: PSD3 and PSR  

The adoption of PSD2 has formalised the relationship between banks and trusted payment providers (TPPs) by establishing the Open Banking Mandate providing open access to customer account data and the payments infrastructure. This is expected to stimulate the Fintech market to develop new integrated services models for both consumer and business customers.

This regulation is a reaction to the growing demand from customers as mobile and internet applications have become widely adopted driving expectations in how services should be delivered across all industries. Other market segments have adopted Open Banking APIs to respond to this demand and shown that innovative applications can grow business and change customer behaviour.

PSD2 has a significant impact on the European payments industry. According to the EC, the revised Payment Services Directive brings several new important elements and improvements to the EU payment market e.g.:

In 2022, the regulator started a PSD2 review process, which may end up in a revised PSD2 dubbed PSD3. While consultations are currently ongoing, the revisions are expected to address the achievements of the PSD2 and evaluate the need for a revised standard.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals who live in the European Union (EU). Since the Regulation applies regardless of where websites are based, it must be heeded by all sites that attract European visitors, even if they don’t specifically market goods or services to EU residents.

Adopted in April 2016, the Regulation came into full effect in May 2018, after a two-year transition period. The GDPR replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and is designed to:

The GDPR mandates that EU visitors to all websites must be given a number of data disclosures. Sites must also take steps to facilitate such EU consumer rights as timely notification in the event of personal data being breached (breach notification). Among others, the GDPR mandates the user’s right to access its data and the right to be forgotten. In addition, the conditions for consent have been strengthened, and companies are no longer able to use long, illegible terms and conditions full of legalese. Also, it must be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it.

Proposed EC Revisions to the EU Payment Services Regulation – PSD3 and PSR 

In June 2023, the European Commission (EC) published its proposed revisions to EU payment services legislation, as well as a proposal on Open Finance/data access in the financial services sector beyond Open Banking/payment accounts in the form of a new Open Finance framework called “FIDA”.

Essentially, the EC is proposing that PSD2 would be split into two different instruments. These will ensure consumers can continue to make electronic payments and transactions safely and securely in the EU, domestically or cross-border, in euro and non-euro. Whilst safeguarding their rights, it also aims to provide greater choice of payment service providers on the market:

Objective of the regulation is to enhance harmonisation of the rules and enforcement across the various EU Member States. In addition, the EC proposed to merge the E-Money Directive (EMD2) with the proposed PSD3 and PSR texts, so as to have one coherent regime for both payment services and e-money services and thereby ensure a level-playing field between PIs and EMIs.

PSD3 also amends the Settlement Finality Directive (SFD) in order to allow non-bank PSPs (e.g. PIs and EMIs) to participate directly in SFD-designated payment systems. Fintechs will be given access to all EU payment systems, with appropriate safeguards, and giving them a right to have a bank account. That way, those non-bank PSPs would no longer need to rely on banks in order to execute payment transactions.

A system to check IBANs and a platform to enable payment service providers to share fraud-related information are two proposals around consumer protection, including an extension to all credit transfers of IBAN/name matching verification services. These have been proposed by the Commission for instant payments in Euro. All consumers should benefit from them, for both regular and instant credit transfers.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is given once again a number of mandates under PSD3 and the PSR to prepare draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) and draft implementing technical standards (ITS), ultimately to be adopted by the EC, as well as guidelines, and to continue maintaining the register.

In 2024, significant progress has been made in updating PSD2. In April 2024, the European Parliament adopted the European Commission’s proposals for PSD3 and PSR at first reading. While the exact timelines for enforcement are not yet confirmed, it is anticipated that the finalised versions of PSD3 and PSR may become available by mid-2027.

eIDAS regulation and Digital ID Trends

The electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services regulation (eIDAS) is a set of EU standards and regulations for electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European Single Market. It was established in the EU Regulation as of 23 July 2014, relating to electronic identification, and repeals directive 1999/93/EC from December 1999. It entered into force on 17 September 2014 and applies from 1 July 2016 except for certain articles, listed under its article 52.

In June 2021, the European Commission proposed an update to eIDAS that will enable every European to have a set of digital identity credentials recognised anywhere in the EU. With eIDAS 2.0, by 2024, all EU member countries must make a digital identity wallet available to every citizen who wants one. Many digital ID schemes operate based on super-secure passwords and/or mobile apps confirmed by a second factor, either passwords or one-time token or biometric factors such as fingerprints.

Digital ID in Europe has been proliferating rapidly in recent years. To date, both the nature of these schemes and their application have varied widely – for example, BankIDs in the Nordics being used to support instant payments and the delivery of harmonised government services.

eID platform initiative – In May 2017, a group of European companies including banks, vehicle manufacturers and technology providers signed a “corresponding declaration of intent” to establish a joint, pan-industry platform that will let their customers use a so-called “master key” for registration and identification when accessing online services across a range of sectors including government, aviation and retail.

BankID – the digital BankID scheme is offered and issued by Norway’s banks and is based on a coordinated infrastructure developed by the banking industry through the interbank organisation, VBB. The first Norwegian customers were issued a BankID in 2004. In 2021, more than 4.3 million Norwegians had BankID, and more than 1.6 million had ‘BankID on mobile.’ BankID is used by all the country’s banks, public digital services, and an increasing number of enterprises in different sectors. BankID is used by more than 80% of all adults in Norway.  BankID is an important element of the Norwegian payment system and helps banks maintain a high level of security.

Mobile payment scheme Vipps changed its operations service provider for BankID in October 2021. In July 2022 BankID and BankAxept demerged from Vipps.

In 2022, BankID on mobile began to be phased out in favour of the new BankID app. This is to improve the user experience and accessibility of BankID. As of September 2024, about 4.5 million Norwegians have BankID. As of September 1, 2024, 2 years after the initial announcement of the transition, the BankID on mobile service was officially discontinued after 15 years of operation. As of September 2024, BankID already surpassed 3.3 million app users and 1.5 million have activated their biometrics (November 2023) using the app. Nearly 100 Norwegian banks offer the BankID app.

In July 2021, Norwegian digital ID firm Signicat acquired Spanish firm Electronic Identification (eID), a provider of asynchronous video identification services. Signicat said the acquisition would strengthen its European presence. The eID deal is Signicat’s second acquisition of 2021 after it bought up Nordic customer authentication firm Encap Security in June 2021.

In April 2022, Signicat acquired UK-based anti-fraud and identity verification platform Sphonic. Signicat said the acquisition would enable the company to better protect financial institutions against fraud, financial crime, and money laundering, expanding its existing identity platform with Sphonic’s KYC and AML solutions.

Biometric Authentication Services

As a form of digital identity, biometric factors have been gaining ground across Europe in recent years, especially since the EU mandated their use for national ID cards and passports from August 2021.

In the payments industry, European banks and other account servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs) have started to support new biometrics technology companies that will develop client identification and authentication systems. They will be dedicated to the research and development of software for the digital verification and authentication of personal identity, through facial, voice, image or document recognition, or fingerprint reading.

With the EU regulator’s decision to mandate Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) as part of the revised payment services directive, PSD2, biometric authentications look set to grow further in importance as part of the payments landscape.

Companies such as Sweden’s Fingerprints (for online payment ID) and the UK’s Fingopay (for physical payments) have pioneered their use in P2P and P2B transactions, while some national ID schemes such as BankID in the Nordics and nemID now include biometric factors alongside PIN in their log-in processes.

In October 2016, Mastercard launched its biometric payment authentication service, Mastercard Identity Check Mobile, to Europe. Consumers can now validate online purchases with their fingerprint or face using the Mastercard biometric authentication service.

Among others, in 2024, payments-specific biometric initiatives and pilots in Europe include:

Banking Sector

Norges Bank is the national central bank and supervises the Norwegian banking system together with Finanstilsynet, the Norwegian Financial Services Authority. The legal framework under which Norwegian financial institutions and companies operate is based on Norwegian banking laws as Norway is not an EU member.

However, under the EEA Agreement, Norway is obliged to implement the common European legislation for payment services. For EEA countries outside the euro area, the deadline has been set at 31 October 2016. This means, from that date, domestic and cross-border payments in euros carried out by Norwegian banks must use SEPA schemes.

On 4 November 2014, the European Central Bank (ECB), via the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), assumed the responsibility of supervising the financial stability of banks operating within the euro zone. However, while the ECB has final supervisory authority over all banks operating within the euro zone, it will only directly supervise those banks classified as ‘significant’ under the terms of the SSM (by September-2024, 113 significant banking groups have been recognised). All other ‘less significant’ banks continue to be supervised by Finanstilsynet.

According to Norges Bank, the COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain it led to a severe downturn in the Norwegian economy in 2020, although it started to recover at the end of 2020 and into 2021, with GDP declining by 2.3% in 2021 overall. In 2022, GDP growth of 3.3% was reported mainly due to the rise in the price of oil and gas – a key export for Norway. In 2023, Norway’s GDP grew slower by 0.5% due to high inflation rates and challenging global economic conditions.

Higher energy prices led to a substantial increase in 12-month consumer price index inflation towards the end of 2020 and into 2021. Annual CPI inflation for 2021 was 3.5% and by 2022, inflation rose to 5.8%. Longer-term inflation expectations appear to remain anchored close to the 2% target. By 2023, inflation rate moderated to 4.7% due to tightening monetary policy and easing in energy prices.

Structure

According to Finanstilsynet, there were 106 commercial banks, 45 savings banks, and 35 branches of foreign banks in Norway in 2023. Norwegian credit institutions had 12 branches abroad. In additional, there were 24 payment institutions and 7 electronic money institutions with a licence at year-end 2023.

DNB Bank is the market leader. Handelsbanken and Santander Consumer Bank are the major foreign-owned players in the Norwegian market. Since 2019, Nordea Group and Danske Group absorbed their Nordic member banks into their respective groups, meaning that their Norwegian bank assets are no longer supervised in Norway. Excluding Nordea and Danske Bank, the four leading banks accounted for more than 60% of total banking assets in 2021.

Among the second tier of Norwegian-owned banks are the savings banks in the SpareBank 1 Group and along with Sbanken and Storebrand Bank, both controlled by Norwegian insurance companies. Foreign banks, including BNP Paribas and Citibank are active in Norway.

Norwegian banks emerged relatively unscathed from the late 2008 credit crunch. However, Icelandic banks had built up operations in Norway which, subject to moratorium arrangements, were liquidated. The sale of Glitnir Bank ASA to the SpareBank 1 savings bank group was complete in December 2008.

In September 2018, DNB and Nordea agreed to sell a 60% stake in Baltic bank Luminor to the Blackstone private equity consortium for €1 billion. Luminor, the third-biggest bank in the Baltic region, was formed by the 2016 decision to merge Nordea’s and DNB’s operations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The sale was completed in October 2019.

In December 2019, Société Générale announced its intention to sell SG Finans AS to Nordea Abp. The company was incorporated into Nordea on 1 October 2020.

In December 2019, the DNB Group applied for permission to change the legal structure of the DNB Group, making DNB Bank the parent company by merging DNB with DNB Bank. In July 2020, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance granted the DNB Group permission to change the Group’s parent company. The merger was complete by July 2021.

In January 2020, Santander Consumer Bank was given permission to acquire 100% of Forso Nordic and the merger was complete in November 2020.

In August 2021, Boligbanken ASA was granted a licence to start operations.

In September 2018, S-Foretaket was granted a licence to operate as a bank. As the licence terms and conditions were not fulfilled by the deadline, Finanstilsynet revoked the licence in May 2021.

In June 2020, ESSB ASA was granted a licence to operate as a bank. As the licence terms and conditions were not fulfilled by the deadline, Finanstilsynet revoked the licence in September 2021.

In May 2021, SpareBank 1 BV and Sparebanken Telemark were given permission to merge, with SpareBank 1 BV as the acquiring bank. The merger was completed in June 2021. The banks’ operations have been continued under the name SpareBank 1 Sørøst-Norge.

In the same month, DNB ASA and DNB Bank ASA were granted permission to merge, with the bank as the acquiring entity. The merger was completed in July 2021.

In September 2021, Nordax Bank AB was granted permission to acquire up to 100% of the shares in Bank Norwegian ASA. In addition, permission was granted for Bank Norwegian to become a subsidiary of Nordax Bank. The long-term plan is to merge Bank Norwegian into Nordax Bank.

In November 2021, Nordiska Kreditmarknadsaktiebolaget (publ.) and Nordiska NAV 1 AB were granted permission to acquire 100% of the shares in Folkefinans AS. In addition, permission was granted for Folkefinans AS to become a subsidiary of Nordiska and Nordiska NAV 1. Nordiska Kreditmarknadsaktiebolaget has a licence from Finansinspektionen to conduct financing activities.

On 23 June 2021, the Ministry of Finance decided, based on Finanstilsynet’s advice, to place Optin Bank ASA under public administration. This was the first time since 1989 that a Norwegian bank was placed under public administration.

In July 2023, Danske Bank entered into an agreement to sell its personal customer business in Norway to Nordea to focus on business, corporate and institutional banking in Norway in line with its new Forward ´28 strategy.

1 – Banks in Norway 2023

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Note: Nordea acquired Gjensidige Bank in March 2019 and launched digital bank Nordea Direct Bank in February 2020.
Note: Banks Federation figures may differ from those published by individual banks.
Source: Finans Norge (FNO), Nordea Bank Norge.

DNB Bank, previously Den Norske Bank (DnB NOR), is the largest financial service group in Norway, after merging with the Gjensidige NOR Sparebank in December 2003. It changed name to DNB Bank from November 2011. DNB’s principal brand names in Norway are DNB and Cresco. Postbanken was merged with DnB NOR. Nordlandsbanken was formally merged with DNB Bank on 1 October 2012.

DNB Bank Group is 34%-owned by the Norwegian Government, 8.57%-owned by the Savings Bank Foundation (N), around 55% of total shares are owned by Norwegian investors, and 39% by international institutional investors. DNB had approximately 66,295 private and institutional shareholders as of the end of 2023 (2022: 60,788), an increase from 44,445 at the end of 2019.

In 2023, DNB’s banking division reported 2 million retail customers and 237,000 corporate clients. DNB’s subsidiary, DNB Kort, is responsible for the group’s 2.2 million credit cards.

In September 2022, DNB and Sbanken signed a merger plan for the merger of Sbanken into DNB. Sbanken is a wholly owned subsidiary of DNB. The merger will be carried out by Sbanken transferring all its business, including all assets, rights and obligations, to DNB as the acquiring company in the merger.

The purpose of the merger is to fulfil the conditions set out in the Ministry of Finance’s acquisition permit of July 2021, whereby DNB was granted a temporary permission to operate Sbanken as a subsidiary.  The implementation of the merger is conditional upon approval from Finanstilsynet or the Ministry of Finance granting the necessary permissions to implement the merger.

DNB Group – In 2023, DNB Group was represented in Norway and 17 countries worldwide, with operations in the Scandinavian countries, Finland, Poland, the UK, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, the US, Chile, Brazil, India, Singapore and China. The group had total assets of NOK 3.439 billion as at end-2023.

DNB has been less active outside its domestic market than banks like Nordea and Danske. However, in July 2005, it launched the joint venture DnB NORD (51%:49%) with Nord/LB of Germany, headquartered in Denmark and serving customers in Finland, Poland and the Baltics. In August 2010, DnB NOR gave notice to Nord/LB that it had exercised its option to acquire Nord/LB’s 49% of DnB NORD.

Effective from October 2017, DNB and Nordea combined their operations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the new company Luminor Group. DNB’s ownership interest in Luminor Bank was around 44%. In September 2018, private equity investor Blackstone agreed to acquire a 60% stake in Luminor Bank. Both Nordea Group and DNB Bank retained a 20% stake, respectively.

For further details of Luminor Bank, see Lithuania country profile. This deal completed in September 2019.

DNB Monchebank, headquartered in Murmansk, was the group’s foothold in Russia and is authorised to engage in banking nationwide through 6 branches. DNB acquired Monchebank from Rosbank in October 2005. In 2014 DNB sold Monchebank and exited Russia following a decision to focus on its core European markets.

Nordea Bank Norge – Nordea beat off competition from Svenska Handelsbanken to purchase Christiania, which gave Nordea a substantial presence in all four large Nordic economies.

Effective from January 2017, Nordea Group converted its subsidiary banks in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden into branches of Nordea Bank AB. The merger enabled maintaining the ‘One Bank’ operating model and delivering digital banking services for its clients.

In July 2018, Nordea acquired the online banking arm of insurer Gjensidige (N) for €578 million in cash. In March 2019, Gjensidige and Nordea announced that Nordea acquired Gjensidige Bank. In February 2020, the enlarged bank was renamed Nordea Direct, with the aim of being one of Norway’s leading digital banks.

In 2023, Nordea Group had 9.3 million retail customers, 530,000 active corporate customers, and 2,650 large corporate and institutional customers, with Norway comprising 30% of its overall credit portfolio. Nordea Bank Norge has more than 30 branches in Norway, with 320 branches in total across Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. It served 60,000 corporate customers in Norway, and more than 900,000 individual clients of which over 300,000 were active online banking users.

In November 2024, Nordea announced the completion of the acquisition of Danske Bank’s Norwegian personal customer and private banking business. At the time of acquisition, the business comprised approximately 235,000 customers.

In 2019, following the sale of its stake in Luminor, Nordea signed a forward sale agreement with Blackstone to sell its remaining 20% stake in Luminor Bank. In December 2021, Blackstone acquired 8.45 of Luminor from Nordea. In September 2022, Blackstone acquired Nordea’s remaining 11.6% interest. As a result, Blackstone now owns 80.05% of Luminor, and DNB will continue to own the remaining 19.95%.

In accordance with its strategy, Nordea is focusing on its business in the Nordic region and in March 2021 decided to wind down its operations in Russia, initiating a voluntary liquidation process, which was approved by the Central Bank of Russia on 16 April 2021. The voluntary liquidation process of JSC Nordea Bank is ongoing as of mid-2022+.

Danske Bank (formerly Fokus Bank) – until its absorption into Danske Group, Danske was Norway’s third largest bank by total bank assets and had 16 branches and 240,000 customers in Norway at end-2023. The bank is the largest in the Nordic region, with a presence in 8 markets, 2.8 million personal customers, 215,050 business customers, and a network of 146 branches. Fokus Bank was bought by Danske Group in 1999. Effective November 2012, Fokus Bank was rebranded as Danske Bank. In 2023, Danske Bank announced a strategic shift in its operations in Norway. The bank has decided to exit the personal customer market in Norway to focus on business, large corporate and institutional segments. Consequently, Danske Bank entered into an agreement to sell its Norwegian personal customer and private banking business to Nordea. This transaction was completed in November 2024.

In February 2019, Danske Bank announced it would be closing down banking activities in Estonia and Russia. In January 2020, the bank announced the sale of a portfolio of personal customers in Lithuania to Siauliu Bankas, followed by an announcement that it would be closing down banking activities in Latvia and Lithuania.

Handelsbanken Norge is the 2nd-largest bank by total bank assets and has 40 branches in Norway, as well as operations in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

During 2021, Handelsbanken decided to cease its operations in Denmark and Finland, beginning a process to divest these two business segments, and focus on growth ambitions in Sweden, Norway and the UK.

Sparebank 1 Gruppen has a major presence across Norway with a total of nearly 300 branches. The pan-regional savings bank Sparebank 1 Alliance of 14 small savings banks operates in conjunction with the Swedish Swedbank group. The SpareBank 1 Alliance was established in 1996 by major Norwegian regional savings banks. Founding banks were SpareBank 1 Midt Norge, SpareBank 1 Nord-Norge and SpareBank 1 SR-Bank, which are key components of the alliance. A group of smaller savings banks in eastern and southern Norway joined the alliance shortly thereafter. In 2005 Sparebanken Hedmark in the east of the country also joined.  Some of the minor banks have been merged with other banks over time with no effect on the alliance itself. The alliance channels a lot of its mutual interests through SpareBank 1 Gruppen AS, a holding company of life and non-life insurance, mutual funds, a broker-dealer, and other companies.

SpareBank 1 Østlandet is Norway’s fourth-largest savings bank, with 37 branches and 428,500 customers. As of 2023, it had 5,830 private and institutional owners.

The largest owner is Sparebankstiftelsen Hedmark, which owns 52.15% of the equity capital certificates. The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) is the second largest owner. During 2020, Pareto Invest and Geveran Trading substantially increased their stakes, and they are now the third and fifth largest owners, respectively as of 2023. Measured in terms of market value, around 88% of shares are held by investors resident in Norway. According to the bank, it had a 96% digitisation rate in 2021 and by 2022, 100% of mortgage applications are now started digitally via the online loan process compared to 93% in 2021.

Similarly, the bank has automated customer and work processes through the use of digital assistants and the number of hours being freed up now amounts to 60 Full-time Employees in 2023 for the bank, compared to 57 in 2022.

In 2023, SpareBank 1 Østlandet announced a merger with Totens Sparebank, which was approved by the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway. The merger was completed in November 2024.

Eika Gruppen is an alliance owned by 49 local savings banks and OBOS Bank. In terms of total assets, the Eika alliance said to represent a 9.4% market share in retail lending in the Norwegian banking market with combined total assets of NOK 480 billion at end-2023. Effective March 21, 2013, Terra-Gruppen changed its name to Eika Gruppen. Eika has 750,000 customers and 170 branches and claims to be the oldest and most important of the Norwegian banking networks.

Digital Challenger Banks 

A number of digital challenger banks have entered Norway, e.g. N26, Revolut and TransferWise. They already have a clear Open Banking strategy in place. Recent digital bank entrants into Norway included Ferratum and Aprila Bank.

In parallel, many Norwegian banks co-operate and partner with trusted digital payment providers and Fintechs to prepare for the Open Banking ecosystem, enrich their digital banking services, and to offer additional mobile banking app features.

In October 2019, DNB launched the new version of its mobile banking app on Nordic API Gateway, allowing it to access aggregated bank data. DNB and Danske Bank became co-owners of Nordic API Gateway in 2018. Through the API Gateway, DNB became the first Norwegian bank to gain access to all banks in Norway.

During 2020, Finanstilsynet announced it would operate a regulatory sandbox for Fintechs to promote international cooperation and innovation. Finanstilsynet received a total of 12 applications. In April 2020, two projects from Quesnay and Sparebank 1 SR-Bank, respectively, were admitted to the sandbox. Quesnay is a provider of services to the banking and financial sector and develops solutions for use in AML work. SpareBank 1 SR-Bank plans to develop a solution for an authorised digital customer adviser where the technology behind the advisory services includes artificial intelligence.

In March 2021, a project from Abendum was admitted to the sandbox. Abendum is a startup company aiming to develop a solution for blockchain audit evidence. The purpose of participating in the sandbox was to assess the solution in relation to the requirements set in international auditing standards. The project was completed as planned in December 2021. In 2021, Finanstilsynet continued its cooperation with the regulatory sandboxes of the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and the National Archives of Norway.

In January 2021, Norwegian mobile bank app start-up Astat raised NOK 4.5 million in a funding round. The app is aimed at small businesses which are underserved by mainstream banks.

In February 2021, Opera, a Norwegian web browser, launched its own Fintech Dify in a bid to take on Europe’s financial industry. In January 2020, it bought Estonian Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) start-up Pocosys, which serves customers across Japan, Ghana and the UK. In July 2021, it announced plans to acquire Lithuania-based Fjord Bank. In December 2019, Fjord Bank landed a specialised bank licence from the European Central Bank (ECB).

In March 2022, Danish neobank Lunar secured a €70 million Series D-2 funding round, taking the firm’s total Series D funding to €280 million. The Series D follows Lunar’s €40 million Series C round in October 2020. The new funding will enable Lunar to continue its Nordic expansion plans. Lunar also launched a crypto trading platform and B2B payments solution in early 2022.

In March 2022, Lunar announced plans to acquire Norwegian digital bank Instabank for €132 million. Lunar said the deal would significantly increase its footprint in Norway and additionally open the door to the Finnish market ahead of launching its full product offering. However, in September 2022, Lunar announced the lapse of its offer due to its inability to obtain the required capital and regulatory approval for the acquisition of Instabank.

Founded in 2016, Instabank claims more than 60,000 customers in Norway, Finland and Germany, providing both secured and unsecured loans and savings. Founded in 2015, Lunar is active in Denmark, Sweden and Norway and claims more than 950,000 private and business customers as of 2023.

In July 2023, UK Neobank ‘Monzo’ announced merger talks with Lunar. Monzo boasts 7.4 million UK customers as of June 2023 compared to Lunar’s 650,000 users across Denmark, Norway and Sweden. By merging with Lunar, Monzo would gain access to Lunar’s key SME lending capabilities – an area Monzo appears to have underinvested in compared to other, more profitable challengers worldwide. Similarly, this deal would give Monzo access to the European market – something that has become much more difficult for UK companies in the post-Brexit world. By October 2023, the merger talks were dispelled by Lunar’s CEO.

In December 2024, Lunar spun off its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) division into a standalone entity named Moonrise. This move aims to provide enterprise payment solutions to challenger banks and Fintechs, facilitating easier access to the Nordic market. Moonrise leverages Lunar’s existing infrastructure to offer services such as Nordic payment accounts and clearing infrastructure for DKK, SEK and NOK payments.

As of January 2025, Lunar announced the launch of cryptocurrency trading services in Norway. This expansion allows Norwegian customers to seamlessly and securely trade cryptocurrencies directly through the Lunar app.

Digital Banking 

All Norwegian retail banks offer online banking services and mobile banking apps to their clients. Services available include balance and transaction reporting and payment initiation. A number of banks also provide multi banking via SWIFT or EDIFACT standard messages.

The Norwegian Financial Services Association has developed a Nordic XML-based standard message implementation guideline, based on C2B payment initiation, for e-banking, in conjunction with the Danish, Finnish and Swedish bankers’ associations.

In 2016, competing mobile banking apps with payment function include Vipps, mCash of SpareBank 1, Eika wallet of EIKA Gruppen, and MobilePay from Danske Bank Norge. In October 2017, Danske Bank terminated its MobilePay app in Norway and entered in talks with Vipps.

In November 2017, the Norwegian banks agreed to combine their payment units (Vipps, BankAxept and BankID Norge) in a bid to improve product offering. DNB, banking group Eika, Sparebank 1 Gruppen and other Norwegian banks announced that they will combine their payments applications to strengthen their position on the local market and to promote their products abroad. The initiative came at a time when the shadow of Amazon, Facebook and other big tech companies lingers over the banking industry.

In June 2018, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance approved the merger with a DNB Bank ownership of 43.9%. The three companies merged effective from July 2018. The new company, VBB, was focused on improving the customer experience when paying for goods. Cost efficiency and accelerating innovation are also two big priorities.

In June 2021, the Norwegian mobile payment service Vipps, owned by a consortium of Norwegian banks, and Finland’s Pivo, owned by OP Financial Group, announced they would merge with Danske Bank’s MobilePay service. The ambition is to create Europe’s best and most comprehensive digital wallet.

The Norwegian banks behind Vipps were set to own 65% of the new parent company, with Danske Bank owning 25% and OP Financial Group owning 10%. The merged business was set to build the common technology platform starting from Vipps’ platform, to run fully in the public cloud.

In September 2022, following a dialogue with the EC’s Directorate-General for Competition, the owner banks behind the planned merger of the three mobile payment providers reached the decision that OP Financial Group in Finland would not be a co-owner and that Pivo will not be part of the merger. The EC expressed concerns about both MobilePay and Pivo being part of the merger, since this would result in the merger of two sizeable players in Finland. The EC’s view was that the merger would thus adversely affect competition in the mobile payment space in Finland. The planned merger, as amended, was filed to the EC and recieved approval in October 2022. MobilePay in Denmark and Finland will still merge with Vipps.

When created, the new joint company based on Vipps and MobilePay will have almost 11 million users and more than 400,000 physical shops and webshops as customers who combined carry out about 900 million transactions each year. The name of the new company will be Vipps MobilePay AS.

In connection with OP Financial Group withdrawing from the agreement, the ownership ratio between Danske Bank and the Norwegian banks will remain the same. This means that instead of an ownership share of 25%, Danske Bank will have an ownership share of 27.8%, while the consortium of banks behind Vipps will have an ownership share of 72.2% instead of 65%.

As of 2023, Vipps was used by 4.4 million users in Norway, 224,000 new users during the year, and approximately 68% of the users were active each month. During 2023, on average, each user made 121 transactions during the year, totalling in 531 million transactions. In general, online shopping declined in Norway in 2023, but Vipps is increasingly being used as a payment method for online purchases. Vipps’ revenue growth in online shopping was 35% in 2023.

In December 2024, Vipps MobilePay launches the world’s first alternative to Apple Pay on iPhone. Vipps users in Norway can tap their phones with Vipps to pay in stores. With ‘tap with Vipps’, users can now use Vipps for all types of payments. ‘Tap with Vipps’ will work on all card terminals that accept BankAxept cards, which corresponds to almost all card terminals in Norway.

Like the rest of the Nordic region, Norwegians have embraced use of the internet for banking with 97% of Norwegians over the age of 15 using e-banking services in 2023.

Norges Bank said in its 2023 retail payments report that there were 3,019 million card payments and 964 million giro payments conducted during the year. The value of giro payments totalled NOK 23,186 billion in 2023 while the value of card payments was NOK 1,202 billion. Giro payments are used for both paying large bills and for paying wages and salaries, but are increasingly also being used for smaller payments, such as P2P payments using the Vipps mobile payment app. Payment cards are primarily used for the purchase of goods and services at point of sale. A typical giro payment is much larger than a typical card payment. In 2023, the average value of giro payments was NOK 24,051, while the average value of card payments was NOK 383.

Online banking (including mobile banking) is still the most used transfer service for retail customers. But there have been fewer such payments in recent years. At the same time, the number of instant payments has grown quickly, and instant payments are now the second most used transfer service. Most instant payments are initiated from the Vipps mobile payment app and are P2P payments. Previously, such transfers tended largely to be made via online or mobile banking platforms. A total of 215 million instant payments were made in 2023 (2022: 259 million). The value of instant payments in 2023 was NOK 138 billion.

Direct debits (Avtalegiro) were the third most used transfer service for retail customers in 2021. In 2023, the use of direct debits (Avtalegiro) in Norway experienced a notable increase. A total of 148 million direct debits were sent out to customers, with 112 million of these being successfully paid. This represents a significant rise from the 111 million payments made in 2022. Direct debits and electronic invoicing Avtalegiro and Autogiro are variants of direct debit payment services. At end-2023, there were 28.9 million direct debit agreements between retail customers, corporate customers and banks. In total, 23,066 payees offered their customers Avtalegiro and 594 payees offered their customers Autogiro.

Direct debits can be combined with electronic invoicing (e-invoicing). At end-2023, there were 43,882 agreements offering the Norwegian banking industry’s e-invoicing solution, eFaktura, to retail customers. The figure for e-invoice agreements with private individuals was 39.1 million. In 2023, 225 million eFaktura invoices were sent from businesses to retail customers. The rise in the number of eFaktura invoices has been pronounced in recent years. From 2022 to 2023, the rise was 17%. The strong growth in recent years partly reflects the opening of the Vipps platform to the distribution of eFaktura invoices in March 2019.

In 2023, 114 million EHF invoices were sent. EHF is the government’s e-invoicing format and covers both business-to-government (B2G/G2B) and business-to-business (B2B) invoicing. Growth in the use of these invoices between 2022 and 2023 was 16%.

Overall, in 2023, there were over 10.46 million online and mobile banking accounts in Norway, compared to 10.25 million in 2022.

As of 2022, DNB reported nearly 1.5 million personal internet banking customers and 1.1 million mobile banking app users. A total of 304 million payment transactions were completed in 2022. No update was provided in 2023.

During 2021, DNB adopted new cloud-based solutions and insight tools, to benefit from advances made in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and to automate processes to provide faster and better customer experiences.

The mobile banking app was updated in 2021 to allow personal customers to make an insurance claim, while the savings app Spare and the mobile banking app were more closely integrated and placed on a common platform to improve interaction between the apps. For the mobile banking App, the Pengebruk (spending) function – which gives personal customers insight into their own consumption – was added and was adopted by almost 1 million customers. Included options for setting up budgets, searching transactions and transferring money from a home equity credit line.

Spare is the most popular savings app in Norway, and by the end of 2023, more than NOK 7.2 billion was invested in mutual funds via the app (2022: NOK 5.5 billion). Two new functions were launched in the Spare app in 2022: an overview of customers’ shareholdings and a new Oppdag (discover) tab, which gives users access to the latest articles and podcasts. The bank also added some new features to its online equity trading service, including free access to real-time market data on the Oslo Stock Exchange for all its customers, morning reports – an estimate of how analysts believe the stock exchanges will behave that day, and an overview of recommended shares and company analyses. In 2023, the bank launched a personalised investment film to give customers an overview of their own investments, in addition to market updates and savings tips.

In 2020, DNB introduced in-store cash services, at the same time, it terminated the banking services previously provided through Posten Norge, the Norwegian postal service, after 20 years. DNB entered into an agreement with BankAxept/Vipps on in-store cash services. The solution is available in more than 1,400 shops across the country.

During 2022, Nordea reported that it had more than 3.1 million digitally active customers and 13% more monthly logins to digital services than in 2021. The bank reported that it was moving towards enabling private customers to carry out daily banking tasks 100% digitally. The bank aims to have 25% more digitally active customers by 2025.

Danske Bank added Apple Pay to its range of payment solutions for retail and commercial customers in Norway in October 2019. The bank also offers a subscription manager in its mobile app, enabling customers to manage digital media or shopping subscriptions from their phone.

Account Aggregation Services – In August 2018, the savings banks Sbanken, Sparebanken Vest, and Sparebanken Sogn og Fjordane said they enable bank clients to view their bank accounts across the banks from within their own online banking platform.

In February 2020, DNB expanded its account aggregation tool by adding the option of making account-to-account payments from any bank supported by its mobile banking app. DNB first launched its account aggregation tool in October 2019 in conjunction with Nordic API Gateway, in which DNB holds equity.

In April 2021, Nordic API Gateway announced it would rebrand as Aiia to reflect the company’s pan-European focus of delivering Open Banking. Nordic API Gateway builds APIs for third parties, enabling access to account data and A2A payments for more than 240 million Europeans through more than 2,000 banks. Aiia currently serves companies, including Danske Bank, DNB, OP Financial Group, Svea Payments, Pleo, Lunar, and Santander Consumer Bank.

In September 2021, Mastercard acquired Aiia to extend its Open Banking reach.

As of end-2023, Aiia has more than 2,700 connected banks across Europe, processes more than 10 million bank logins and more than a million account-to-account payments every month for large banks and e-commerce payment gateways.

About Open API Standards

In June 2017, The Berlin Group, the European payments interoperability coalition of banks and payment processors with membership comprising bank backed ACHs and industry bodies, announced it would push a single standard for API access to bank accounts (XS2A) compliant with the PSD2 regulation.

The Berlin Group says its NextGenPSD2 Initiative will provide a harmonised API standard for accessing bank accounts. Built as an ‘Access to Account Framework’, The Berlin Group says the standard will offer operational rules and implementation guidelines with detailed data definitions, message modelling and information flows based on RESTful API methodology.

As of the beginning of 2021, the Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 was implemented in all EU countries, in several non-EU countries in Europe and in countries outside Europe who are focused on maintaining reachability and compatibility with the European market. Around 80% of European banks and hundreds of third-party providers (TPPs) have implemented the Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 Framework. In 2021, the group was migrated to the Open Finance task force to explore use cases of Open Banking schemes and Open Finance schemes.

Among others, European Open API sets include Open Banking UK, Swiss Corporate API, and STET Open API (F, B).

Norway has a Nordic collaborative model which has created some of the most successful digital payment wallets and digital ID services. In June 2018, the merger of the three Norwegian domestic payments services (Vipps, BankID and BankAxept) was announced, designed to prepare Norway’s domestic payment schemes for the Open Banking ecosystem. Before implementing PSD2, Norwegian online and mobile banking initiatives were already focused on pan-Nordic banking services, credit transfer payment initiation, digital ID authentication and mobile P2P payments.

Norwegian banks provide Open Banking API access in combination with aggregators, which provide connectivity between Nordic banks and between banks and independent PISP/AISPs.  In 2023, Open Banking licenses were in use by 6 third-party players, 4 PISPs, and 1 AISPs in Norway. 109 TPPs were passported in Norway, and 21 API aggregators were operating. As of 2023, there were 194 Open APIs in use.

PSD2 and the Open Banking Mandate

The adoption of the revised Payment Services Directive, PSD2, has set the stage for Open Banking in Europe, a European Open Banking Mandate with significant impact on the financial services industry. PSD2 challenges for banks and Fintechs include Open Banking, Open APIs, and the rollout of digital payment services and mobile apps.

PSD2 lowers the barriers for market entry to third-party service providers, Fintechs, and it opens up doors for innovative players to offer services that currently do not exist, e. g. account information services, third-party personal finance management, digital identity and KYC.

PSD2 is going to change the European payment and banking landscape and ultimately the position and role of banks in the ecosystem. Fintechs drive the change with the banking industry seeking the right strategy.

Post-PSD2, the key question for the financial service industry will be how to grant authorised access for their Fintech partners to bank account information, for instance secure access to account balance, payment data, credit risk, and others.

For banks, the impact of the PSD2 is that they are no longer the only ones that have access to the bank customer information. Bank customers will now decide who they want to grant access to their payment information. Alongside this initiative, with new services based on access to bank accounts (XS2A), banks may lose the direct connection to their customers. To maintain their position in the new PSD2 reality, banks will need to adapt their business and operational models.

By mid-2024, notable challenges for the Norwegian banking industry include:

Payment Services

Under the EEA Agreement, Norway is obliged to implement the common European legislation for payment services.

In 2024, the more than 300 different payment services offered in Europe can be grouped into:

Card Brands and Card Types

All Norwegian retail banks issue BankAxept debit cards. Most of them are co-badged VISA or Electron for international use.

According to Norges Bank, issued debit cards are branded BankAxept, Mastercard or VISA. The most widely used card type is a card combining BankAxept with an international debit card, usually VISA or Mastercard. As of 2023, 60% of cards issued were of this type. The next most widely used card type is international credit cards, which accounted for 37% of cards in 2023.

Issued credit cards are branded VISA, Mastercard, American Express, or Diners. No V PAY cards and no JCB cards are in issue.

Norwegian card products like consumer cards, commercial cards, and purchasing cards range from classic cards to gold cards and platinum cards. Additional card features (e.g. picture cards, bonus points, PIN selection at ATMs, and card control by SMS notification) are used to attract cardholders. Also, individual picture cards and collector cards are issued on demand.

The EMV migration of cards is de facto complete since the end of 2013. Standard EMV smartcards in Norway use open Proton Prism technology, which incorporates the Proton e‑wallet functionality, Småpengekort.

From July 2023, banks and other card issuers will no longer issue Maestro cards. Instead, they will need to issue Debit Mastercard cards. Maestro was launched in 1991, and it was the world’s first debit card that could be used via an online network. About 400 million Maestro cards are in circulation worldwide, mainly across Europe. However, Maestro is not enabled for the demands of e-commerce and cannot be used for online or in-app payments, hence the decision to phase it out in favour of Mastercard Debit products. Visa announced that Electron cards will be phased out globally in 2024. The features of the Visa Debit card have been modified to match the features of the Visa Electron card.

Debit cards issued are BankAxept, Debit Mastercard, or VISA Debit cards. There are no V PAY cards in circulation.

Credit Cards issued are cards branded VISA, Mastercard, or American Express. There are no JCB cards in issue. Diners Club exited Norway in 2019.

Prepaid Cards – Most Norwegian banks issue prepaid cards. An estimated 74,000 prepaid BankAxept cards are in circulation co-badged VISA or Electron.

Co-branded cards – In Norway, co-branded cards are issued together with non-banks, although the number of programmes has declined in recent years. Co-branded cards are based on the international card brands Mastercard or VISA.

EnterCard is the main issuer of co-branded cards. EnterCard issues a COOP VISA Classic card together with retailer COOP.

Contactless Cards and form-factors

From 2013, the Norwegian banks issued contactless cards branded Mastercard or VISA with added PayPass or payWave functions, respectively.

From mid-2016, BankAxept cards with contactless function were in circulation. The domestic debit network BankAxept partnered with Canadian debit network, Interac, to use contactless technology from Interac in order to launch contactless BankAxept cards and NFC mobile solutions in Norway.

In July 2018, Handelsbanken, BankAxept and EVRY launched a contactless BankAxept card that can be put into a wristband, bracelet, watch strap or keyring.

According to Norges Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly accelerated contactless card usage. In 2023, there were 12.42 million contactless cards issued, and 90% of payments at physical POS locations were contactless payments. The average value of contactless payments was NOK 346. There are also other payment methods available at physical POS terminals that are contactless, but that do not involve payment terminals. As a rule, these payments are registered in the statistics as regular online payments. An example is payments made using the Coopay mobile payment app.

Contactless payments can either be made with a physical card or in some other manner, for example with a mobile phone, watch or wristband. Payments made with physical cards currently account for most contactless payments. Payments using mobile phones, watches or wristbands accounted for 8% of payments at payment terminals in 2023, up from 5% in 2022. There were 184 million such payments in 2023, an increase of 55% for the year, which is well below the increase of 133% from 2021 to 2022. In 2022, 1,440 million (76%) of total contactless payments were made using BankAxept. The remaining contactless payments, 437 million, were made using international cards.

Predefined contactless limits in Norway – Contactless payments of purchases below a predefined contactless limit are without PIN or signature and without transaction receipt. In Norway, the contactless limit for payments without PIN/signature is set at NOK 400 for cards branded BankAxept and for international cards carrying the PayPass or payWave function. In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the contactless limit was raised to NOK 500 to encourage more non-cash transactions.

Contactless biometric card ZWIPE – In October 2014, Mastercard partnered with Norwegian start-up Zwipe, a manufacturer of a contactless payment card that includes an integrated fingerprint biometric sensor, for the commercial launch of the technology following a pilot with Norway’s Sparebanken DIN. The Zwipe Mastercard card stores the cardholder’s biometric template within an embedded EMV-certified secure element, rather than an online database, and can replace the PIN as a means of verifying the identity of a cardholder with fingerprint verification.

To pay with a Zwipe Mastercard, the holder presses their thumb to the sensor on their card and then touches it to a merchant’s terminal in the same way as a standard contactless card transaction is made.

In May 2015, Danske Bank launched a contactless biometric Mastercard card developed by Zwipe.

In July 2021, Zwipe announced that a global Tier 1 smartcard manufacturer had taken delivery of Zwipe Pay ONE components to evaluate inhouse manufacturing of biometric payment cards using Zwipe’s latest technology. Zwipe Pay ONE is the world’s first single silicon-based biometric payment platform offered to card manufacturers globally.

In November 2021, Norwegian Fintech firm IDEX Biometrics announced that VISA had fully certified IDEX Biometrics’ TrustedBio fingerprint authentication solution, as part of IDEMIA’s F.CODE biometric payment card platform. In August 2023, the IDEX Biometrics payment card solution was fully certified by Mastercard and received a Conformity Compliance Statement (CCS).

Interchange Fee Arrangements

International and Intra European Non-EEA Interchange Fees are set by the members of the international card schemes to be applied in case of cross-border transactions or foreign cards used in Norway, respectively. The effective rates of Mastercard and VISA can be found on the respective Mastercard and VISA websites.

In Norway, domestic Merchant Interchange Fee (DMIF) rates for Norwegian cards are defined by Mastercard and VISA, respectively. The interchange fee regulation 2015/751/EU is applied for Norwegian card business as follows:

American Express – As a result of the EU regulation of interchange fees (IFR), American Express elected to exit all of its bank licensing arrangements in the European Union. This means that they have terminated all licenses with its existing EU partners, stopped issuing new cards and are in the final stages of the process of closing down all operations directly related to bank licensing. Over the course of 2019, American Express credit cards issued under independent operator agreements were rendered invalid in all countries of the European Union. Various banks that have up to now had exclusive licensing contracts with American Express have already responded accordingly and provided their clients with the opportunity to switch to other card brands.

From 2020, American Express Payments Europe is now the sole issuer and acquirer of American Express cards in Europe, including Norway. However, American Express Payments Europe continues its local sales partner arrangements with local acquirers enabling the use of American Express cards at ATMs and POS terminals.

E-Money 

Electronic money schemes are available in Norway. The Norwegian law on e-money services adopted the EU e-money directive (EMD).

In 2023, there were 7 e-money institutions (EMI) registered in Norway.

Additionally, software-based e-money e-/m-wallet services are also offered by 172 international payment service providers and e-wallet issuers from the EEA region. They provided notification of operating in Norway under the EU passport system.

Prepaid Products – In 2012, paysafecard (A) entered Norway and launched its prepaid product, paysafecard.

Digital Account-to-Account Payment Services 

In the Yearbooks, account-based payment services are classified as IBAN-based payment services in SCT/SDD format offered by banks or by independent payment initiation service providers (PISP).

Credit transfers are used for commercial payments like salaries, taxes and social security benefits and for both high value corporate payment transactions. They can be paper based or automated. Electronic credit transfers are used by the government and companies for salary, supplier and benefit payments. Under Norwegian legislation, all the credit transfers are processed on a same day value basis.

Under Norwegian legislation, banks cannot sit on a float, hence all credit transfers are processed on a same day value basis. Norway is a part of the SEPA initiative for EUR‑denominated retail payments. All banks in Norway participate in the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Scheme.

Direct debits are used for low value recurring payments such as utility bills. There are two types of direct debit in Norway: The AutoGiro that is limited to business‑to‑business transactions, and the AvtaleGiro, Norway’s fastest growing payment instrument.

AvtaleGiro requires both the payer and payee to sign an agreement with their respective banks. A similar requirement applies to AutoGiro, which additionally requires both the payee and the payer to sign an agreement to authorise the transaction.

SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) schemes were launched at end-2011, following the transposition of the EU Payment Services Directive into Norwegian law.

Instant payments (SCTINST) is the IBAN-based immediate payment scheme in Europe, officially launched in November 2017. It makes funds immediately available to the beneficiary – compliant with existing SCT infrastructure. The regulators will require all banks to offer Instant Payments from 2018.

Among others, the characteristics of SCTINST include an initial maximum of €15,000 with the funds made available on the beneficiary’s account in less than ten seconds, 24/7/365 real-time processing, and immediate refunds in the case that the SCTINST payment was not successful. From July 2020, the maximum amount for instant payments will be €100,000.

Chaired by the ECB, in 2014, the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) identified the need for a pan-European instant euro payment solution. In April 2016, EBA Clearing started the SCTINST project with more than 40 large European banks involved. In November 2016, the European Payments Council (EPC) published the SCTINST scheme and SCTINST rule books version 1.0 while the ERPB provided the governance model. In November 2017, EBA Clearing completed the pan-European instant payments infrastructure, RT1.

SEPA credit transfers and direct debits can be settled on a same-day or next-day basis. In 2021, about 50% of all IBAN-based payments in Europe were processed intra-day, or even immediately inside of the same bank group. Potential first use cases for SCTINST in Norway may include P2P, mobile banking apps, online payments, and B2B.

As of May 2024, 2,295 banks from 36 European countries had registered for the SCTINST scheme. This represents 63% of all SCT scheme participants.

As in many European countries, bank transfers have been adopted for online payments, enabling consumers to pay direct from their bank account as an alternative service to payment cards.

In Norway, online credit transfer services on the internet include BankAxess. Additionally, Inpay (DK), Klarna (S) and Trustly (S) offer account-based bank payment services cross-border.

In May 2016, Stripe (US) launch its service ‘Managed Accounts for Stripe Connect’ to marketplaces based in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

In 2021 Finanstilsynet reported 24 PISPs licensed in Norway. Authorised in another EEA member state, cross-border PISPs have provided notification of operating in Norway under the EU passport system. No update was provided for 2022 and 2023.

BankAxess – NETS, BankAxept and 18 Norwegian banks developed the online credit transfer service BankAxess allowing for payments of online purchases by online credit transfer.

To be granted BankAxess, users need to make an agreement with their bank. Users identify themselves and authorise payment using the BankID certificate that is issued by the user’s bank. BankAxess for use with smartphones was launched in 2013.

At end-2011, Norges Bank said that 1.2 million consumers had a BankAxess agreement and about 120 online merchants offered payment using BankAxess. In 2022, there were 100 million BankAxess payments totalling NOK 0.2 billion, up 42.9% from 2021 in terms of volumes and flat in terms of transaction value (see Table 2). Based on the data from Norges Bank, it appears that BankAxess payments have been phased out completely in 2023.

2 – BankAxess Use

[ninja_tables id=”4889″]

Source: Norges Bank.

Advanced Payment Services

In the Yearbooks, advanced payment services are classified as online wallets, e-wallets, and/or mobile wallets with any type of payment service chosen by the wallet user to complete the payment.

In Norwegian online shops, the wallets PayPal, Skrill, and Payex are offered as advanced payment means.

PayPal – PayPal is available in Norway. As of end-2023, PayPal reported more than 431 million active customer accounts globally, down 0.91% from 435 million in 2022.  During 2022, PayPal added approximately 8.6 million net new active accounts, ending the year with 435 million active consumer and merchant accounts. PayPal’s total payment volume increased to $1.52 trillion in 2023 (up 11.7% from $1.36 trillion in 2022) and customer engagement grew to an average of 58 transactions per active account, driving 13% growth in transactions per active account at the end of 2023.

During 2020, with consumers worldwide embracing digital wallet capabilities, the company launched several related services including QR Code Checkout, Buy Now Pay Later, Crypto purchasing and Xoom direct transfers to bank accounts and debit cards.

In June 2018, PayPal continued its shopping spree with a $400 million cash deal to acquire e-commerce platform Hyperwallet. The acquisition followed deals to buy Venmo, Xoom, Sweden’s iZettle (renamed Zettle) for $2.2 billion and AI-based merchant marketing outfit Jetlore, as Paypal bids to extend its reach to all corners of the payments market.

In May 2022, PayPal Ventures invested in Modulr, an embedded payments platform for digital businesses, as part of a $108 million Series C funding round led by General Atlantic, Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, and Highland Europe. Modulr delivers payments infrastructure for over 200 top-tier customers, including Revolut, Wagestream, Sage and BrightPay, and processes an annualised transaction value of more than £100 billion.

In 2023, PayPal is exploring the sale of Xoom, its international money transfer subsidiary, in a bid to cut costs and focus on high-growth business areas. Also, Stax Payments – an all-in-one payment provider for businesses – announced its partnership with PayPal in July 2023. This partnership will allow PayPal’s users to easily make payments with more than 20,000 merchants of Stax through a fast checkout process as well as new payment options such as Buy-now-pay-later solutions.

In 2023, PayPal launched its own US Dollar denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), which is fully backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US treasuries, and similar cash equivalents and designed for digital payments and Web3. Eligible US PayPal customers who purchase PayPal USD will be able to transfer the token to external wallets, send person-to-person payments, fund purchases at checkouts supported by PayPal, and convert cryptocurrency holdings to and from PayPal USD.

In January 2024, PayPal launched AI-powered features to drive personalised offerings for both merchants and customers based on the data it possesses. These features include Smart Receipts (for merchants) which predicts what shoppers may want to buy next from the merchant. The merchant can then offer personalised recommendations, and cashback offers on this receipt. A major feature for users is CashPass which will use give users personalized cashback offers based on an AI analysis of their spending activity.

In March 2024, PayPal launched a complete suite of payment processing tools for online small businesses in the UK, Canada, and across more than 20 European markets. The PayPal Complete Payments package enables small businesses to accept an expanded range of payment instruments including PayPal, buy now pay later, Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit and debit cards, and alternative payment methods from around the world. By April 2024, PayPal added new features to its complete payments solution for small businesses to enable small businesses to accept a range of payments including PayPal, Venmo and PayPal Pay Later products. PayPal also gave small businesses access to four new features to help them drive payment acceptance and enhance how they run their business, and this will include Apple Pay as a checkout option.

Amazon Pay – In 2016, Amazon (US) launched its checkout payment service, Amazon Pay, enabling customers to pay for goods and services in participating third-party merchant websites. All active Amazon account holders can use Amazon login and password at the checkout. More than 50 million customers have used Amazon Pay to make purchases globally, with more than half of these coming from Amazon Prime Members.

Digital Payment Services

In the Yearbooks, digital payment services are classified as card-based payment services using EMV tokenisation security on the internet combined with HCE NFC technology in the case of contactless payments at POS terminals.

As at October 2019, the digital wallet VISA Checkout is used in conjunction with Stripe for online and POS payments in Norway. However, Mastercard’s digital wallet MasterPass is supported by Eika Bank, SpareBank 1 and Resurs Bank.

As at mid-2022, the Click to Pay online payment checkout service was not yet available in Norway. Click to Pay replaced the previous MasterPass and VISA Checkout services respectively. Click to Pay is a joint service between Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express, enabling consumers to make secure one-click payments without having to enter card details or passwords online.

Contactless payments on cards using Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, or Google Pay (previously Android Pay) made by foreign users at contactless POS terminals in Norway are processed as payments on contactless cards.

Global contactless transaction values will reach $10 trillion by 2027, up from $4.6 trillion in 2022, with contactless mobile and wearable payments expected to grow by 221% and contactless card payments by 119% over the same period.

Contactless ticketing spend will increase by more than 440% globally between 2022 and 2027, with growing prominence and support for OEM pay solutions, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay being key enablers for mobile NFC ticketing across many markets.

Overall growth in contactless transaction values will be catalysed by growing mobile payments adoption, with 99% of all smartphones capable of making contactless payments by 2027, up from 94% today, and average transaction values for Apple Pay reaching $28.20 and $33.40 for Google Pay.

Apple Pay has become one of the world’s most used digital payment methods. Its user base increased from 521.4 million to 535.8 million in 2022. By 2024, the total number of Apple Pay users was estimated at 640 million and is projected to exceed 700 million by 2027.

According to Apple’s Q2 last 2022, they saw a record of transactions with more than 1.8 billion processed during the quarter, up 40% year-over-year. This payment method is also available in over 90% of the US and 60% of stores globally.

Apple Pay is the #1 most popular digital wallet with a 92% market share, processing a global total of $6 trillion in payments in 2022 and produced a revenue of $1.9 billion.

As of 2023, Apple Pay processed 14.2% of all online consumer payments and 3.5% of all in-store purchases.

Around 51% of global iPhone users have enabled Apple Pay in 2022. There are 10 million Apple Pay-friendly contactless payment terminals worldwide.

The transactions made using Apple Pay are mostly in-store purchases, online transactions, and peer-to-peer payments. It is trendy for contactless payments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2024, an estimated 60.2 million Apple Pay users in the United States; projections indicate that over 75 million consumers will use Apple Pay by 2030. Putting it all together, Apple Pay is increasingly becoming an effective customer acquisition and retention feature for Apple. In June 2022, Apple Pay added Apple Pay Later, its buy-now-pay-later service, allowing users to split purchases into four equal instalments with no interest or fees. Initially launched in the US, the service is expected to roll out to other countries during 2023. In 2023, Apple launched its Card savings account from Goldman Sachs with a 4.15% annual percentage yield. Apple Wallet users can set up and manage a savings account directly from Apple Card in Wallet, with no fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balance requirements.

In June 2018, Apple launched Apple Pay in Norway supported by American Express, Nordea, Sbanken, Santander Consumer Finance, Danske Bank, Komplett Bank, BRAbank, ST1, Storebrand and the foreign digital banks Monese, N26 and Revolut.

As of end-2024, Apple Pay was supported by 57 banks and payment service providers in Norway.

Google Pay has 150 million active users across 42 global markets.

In January 2022, it was reported that the company was planning to transform Google Pay into a “comprehensive digital wallet”, following the app’s reported slow growth and the shutdown of Plex. In April, it was reported that Google was planning to revive the “Google Wallet” branding in a new app or interface and integrated with Google Pay. Google officially announced Google Wallet on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. The app began rolling out on Android smartphones on July 18, replacing the 2018 app and co-existing with the 2020 Google Pay app in the US. While the app name itself was changed from Google Pay to Google Wallet, the service name of actually paying for things online or in-store remains “Google Pay.”.

In the US, Google Pay has over 25.2 million users.  Also, Google Pay is used on nearly 800,000 websites as a secure payment gateway. Roughly 20% of all mobile purchases are made using this digital payment processor.

In 2018, Google launched Google Pay in Norway supported by Mastercard, VISA and the same Norwegian and foreign digital banks that support Apple Pay in Norway. In April 2018, mobile network operator Telia Norway launched Google Pay carrier billing.

Samsung Pay is available in available in 29 countries worldwide and has an estimated 140 million users. Samsung Pay works with Galaxy phones, including the latest Galaxy S22. Samsung claims that its system will work with almost all point-of-sale systems: NFC, magnetic stripe and EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) terminals for chip-based cards. In June 2022, Samsung Pay announced the launch of Samsung Wallet, enabling users to organise payment, loyalty and gift cards into one app.

Samsung Pay is available in Norway from Norway Savings Bank.

Overview of Cashless Payments

For many years, the value of cash in general circulation remained relatively stable at around NOK 45 billion. According to Norges Bank, the value of cash in general circulation has been stable over the past 5 years. Following the outbreak of the pandemic in spring 2020, the amount of cash in circulation temporarily increased. At year-end 2023, cash in circulation amounted to NOK 37.7 billion. Cash as a share of the monetary aggregate M1 increased from 1.3% at end-2022 to 1.4% at end-2023.

The dominant payment instrument in Norway in terms of volume is card payments which accounted for 75.65% of all cashless payments compared to 55.85% in the EU. However, credit transfer is the dominant payment instrument in terms of value. In 2023, credit transfers and direct debits, accounted for 21.44% and 2.91%, respectively.

Cheques have significantly declined but are still used for one-off large value retail payments. According to Norges Bank, there were fewer than 0.1 million cheque payments left, and in 2023, the total cheque transaction value was NOK 0.1 million.

In 2023, there were 713.2 cashless payments per capita composed of 539.5 card payments, 152.9 credit transfers and 20.8 direct debits.

3 – Cashless Payment Transactions in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4890″]

Note: giros delivered at the counter (cash payments) are not included.
Source: Norges Bank.

Cheque use continued to decline in Norway due to the increasing preference for electronic payments for both high value and low value transactions. Cheques are principally used for one off, high value retail and commercial payments.

Exchange Rates

The Norwegian Kroner (NOK) is the domestic currency in Norway. In 2023, the NOK accounted for €1: NOK 11.4248.

4 – Average Exchange Rates

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Source: ECB.

Market Infrastructure

The Norwegian payment system is based on a high level of co-operation and former interbank agreements between the Norwegian banks. One special aspect of the Norwegian model is that the technical infrastructure for the Norwegian POS network and for card processing remains based on a co-operational understanding.

More generally, the card issuing and acquiring sectors in Norway have been undergoing almost continual evolution since the break-up of the original VISA Norge and Europay Norge national monopolies more than ten years ago (see Appendix).

A number of significant changes were announced and implemented in the Norwegian financial infrastructure in 2021. Some of the planned changes were implemented in 2022, others in 2023–2024.

During 2021, Norges Bank undertook further development of the infrastructure for fast payments, in anticipation of real-time payments forming an increasing share of payments in the coming years.

In response to a public consultation, in 2021, Norwegian banks expressed support for the initiation by Norges Bank of negotiations with the European Central Bank about participation in the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), the Eurosystem’s infrastructure for real-time payments. Participation would imply settlement of real-time payments in NOK in the TIPS system on behalf of Norges Bank. Norges Bank’s Executive Board decided in October 2021 to start such negotiations. A final decision on participation was set to be made after negotiations on a participation agreement had been completed and an evaluation of the conclusions had been made. In 2022, Norges bank reported that work is in progress to expand Norway’s current real-time payment infrastructure to support government payments. Norges Bank has entered into dialogue with Nordea, DNB, the Norwegian Government Agency for Financial Management (DFØ) and Bits AS (Bits) to clarify how banks, DFØ and Bits can facilitate this type of payment. Among other things, this requires the banking industry to enable the use of payment identifiers (e.g. customer identification (CID) numbers) in the existing real-time payment infrastructure. One aim is for the solution to be independent of existing clearing and settlement systems, so that it can also be used in the event of Norway’s participation in TIPS.

The common operational infrastructure for instant payments (‘Straks FOI’) was established in 2013 and the solution has gradually been adopted by most banks. The solution is now being further developed as part of the modernisation project associated with NICS, where the message format for submission will be changed from NISOK/NIBE to ISO 20022 format. In 2022, after migration to ISO 20022, the banks will send their instant payments directly to the NICS Real clearing solution. Once all the banks have migrated to the new messaging format and to NICS Real, ‘Straks FOI’ from 2013 will be phased out.

In 2021, Mastercard decided to take over the operation of the banks’ payment services, the Norwegian Interbank Clearing System (NICS) and the common operational infrastructure (FOI services). Nordic processor NETS assisted Mastercard in operating the solutions following the transfer of NETS’ account-to-account services to Mastercard in 2021. The transfer was initiated in 2022 and was still ongoing as of end-2024.

P27 Payments Project – Norway is a member of the P27 payments project, which aims to establish the first integrated region for domestic and cross-border payments across multiple currencies in the Nordics and Scandinavian regions. P27 is an initiative from Danske Bank, Nordea, Swedbank, Handelsbanken, SEB and OP to serve the region’s 27 million people, creating the world’s first integrated domestic and cross border real-time payments platform, a vital step for trade between Nordic countries.

In February 2018, the major Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish banks banded together to explore the possibility of establishing a pan-Nordic payment infrastructure supplemented by common products, with the aim of making it possible to clear immediate payments and settle accounts within seconds, regardless of currency. The P27 project – so-called for the 27 million people who live in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland – will build on the success of the mobile bank payment apps of the Nordic banks like Swish in Sweden, Norway’s Vipps and MobilePay in Denmark.

The collaboration reflects an effort to stay ahead of global technology giants like Apple and Samsung as customers no longer rely exclusively on their banks for financial services. The difference between P27 and the payment apps Nordic banks already offer is the cross-border nature of the project.

To facilitate this, P27 acquired the Swedish clearing house Bankgirot in October 2020. Bankgirot manages transactions of a total value of approximately SEK 73 billion per day. In July 2021, P27 Nordic Payments secured merger approval from the EU Commission to establish its pan-Nordic payments platform.

In June 2022, P27 announced that 13 banks connected to Swedish mobile payments system Swish were set to test on P27 by the end of 2022. Banks connected to Swish, which is used by more than 90% of the Swedish population, are at the front of P27’s drive toward processing the platform’s first transactions. The current timeline called for SEK instant preparations to be finalised during H2 2022, followed by SEK batch preparations to be finalised in early 2023.

However, in April 2023, P27 announced the withdrawal of its clearing license from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finnsinspektionen) as a result of new requirements and regulations that have challenged its operating model. While this reflects the continuously evolving landscape for payment infrastructure, it poses a major setback to the ambitious vision. Finland and Norway are yet to make formal statements. However, Denmark’s banking sector had decided to proceed with other solutions instead of the P27 project, choosing to pursue an alternative review of modernising the country’s payment infrastructure. Additionally, the Swedish Instant Payment scheme also decided in recent weeks that it will work with other players to modernise the country’s payment schemes.

Nordic KYC Utility (now Invidem) – In June 2018, four Nordic banks decided to explore the possible establishment of a Nordic Know Your Customer (KYC) infrastructure. The banks DNB Bank, Danske Bank, Nordea Bank, Svenska Handelsbanken, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken established a joint venture, Nordic KYC Utility, with a focus on developing a secure and cost-effective Nordic KYC infrastructure. Swedbank has since become another bank involved in the project.

The company will be owned and controlled by the founding banks. However, the plan is that the company will also offer its services to third parties. The initiative will contribute to ensuring a healthy financial environment, prevent financial crime, and to protect customers and society.

In July 2019, Nordic KYC Utility received regulatory approvals in accordance with EU merger control rules and has now established itself as a joint venture company named Invidem, with each bank involved holding an equal share. In April 2020, Invidem signed long-term technology deals with Econompass and iMeta Technologies for automated KYC data-gathering and KYC information management ahead of Invidem’s commercial launch in 2021.

In April 2022, Invidem entered an agreement with Swedish fund management company Indecap Fonder. Indecap Fonder will be the company’s seventh and first non-owner client.

In April 2023, Invidem announced that it was winding down after the regulatory and technological development in recent years changed the prerequisites for the business and made the task more complex than was anticipated.

Nordea e-Invoicing Messenger service – In November 2017, Nordea and NETS launched an e-invoicing service that enables consumers to post invoices and pay their bills via Facebook Messenger. The service, which requires a Bank-ID and mobile security PIN, is fully automated and the payment is initiated via an online dialogue with a chatbot in Facebook Messenger.

Norges Bank

Under the Central Bank Act of 1985, Norges Bank, the Norwegian central bank, is required to promote an efficient payment system. Norges Bank is more directly involved in direct oversight of retail payments than any other European bank. To exercise this responsibility, it shapes payment policy, hosts various payment-related committees and forums, and collects and prepares statistics on the payment system.

Since 1988, Norges Bank has published an annual statistical report on payment system trends and prices. The report covers all important developments in the area of payment systems.

Charges – An unusual feature of the Norwegian market is the legal requirement for the cost of payment systems to be borne by users. In practice, this means consumers, since merchants pay only minimal service charges on domestic debit transactions. The recent trend in consumer charges is shown in Table 5; the reporting period ends on 1 January in each year.

5 – Charges on Selected Norwegian Payment Instruments

[ninja_tables id=”4892″]

Note: weighted averages; year to January 1.
Note: prices in loyalty schemes are only NOK 0.1 to 0.2 or for free (i.e. in-house at own bank).
Source: Norges Bank.

In 2009, merchants normally paid fees in a range of NOK 0.12 to NOK 0.20 per payment, regardless of the size of payment. In addition, merchants are charged one-off fees for the installation of terminals and monthly fees for settlements.

Cardholders can sidestep per-payment fees by participating in a bank loyalty scheme. However, ATM withdrawal fees have risen again in 2023. A withdrawal using a debit card during opening hours from a bank’s own ATM now costs an average of NOK 8.7. In 2017, such services for such cardholders were mostly free, the average fee per payment had been NOK 0.01 to NOK 0.02. As part of joining a bank loyalty scheme, customers agree to take several services from the same bank. Norges Bank said in its 2023 report that the average annual fee for BankAxept cards combined with VISA for international use is about NOK 296.90 for non-loyalty scheme cardholders and NOK 236 for loyalty scheme cardholders.

As an illustration of the popularity of loyalty schemes, DNB Bank said that the majority of its customers in its retail banking division had signed up for loyalty programmes and product packages.

Social Cost of Payments – In autumn 2014, Norges Bank published a new survey of payment costs on the basis of data from 2013. The total social costs related to the use of cash, payment cards, and giro payments were estimated at NOK 14.5 billion, or 0.6% of the Norwegian GDP. This estimate includes costs for both providers and users of payment services. Costs have fallen since they were first estimated in 2007. The costs in the Norwegian payment system are low compared with the costs in Sweden and Denmark, according to Norges Bank.

As of 2020, the social costs associated with types of card payment have fallen into line with each other. Each POS payment using BankAxept costs society NOK 0.80, slightly less than for direct debit and online banking transfers.

Domestic BankAxept Debit Card Scheme 

Established in 1991, BankAxept is one of Europe’s pioneering debit card schemes and the country’s universal retail payment medium. Most Norwegian adults have a BankAxept card and BankAxept offers the biggest acceptance network – with over 160,000 locations in 2023. From November 2011, the use of the magnetic stripe (e.g., fallback) was phased out and replaced by EMV-compliant card processing.

According to Norges Bank, issued debit cards are branded BankAxept, Mastercard or VISA. The most widely used card type is a card combining BankAxept with an international debit card, usually VISA or Mastercard. As of 2023, 60% of cards issued were of this type. The next most widely used card type is international credit cards, which accounted for 37% of cards in 2023. Within Norway, all BankAxept cards are used only on the BankAxept network.

In June 2016, BankAxept partnered with Canadian debit network, Interac, to use its contactless technology for BankAxept cards and NFC mobile solutions in Norway.

In July 2018, BankAxept merged with BankID and Vipps to form the enlarged Vipps.

Though merchants do not pay MSCs on domestic debit transactions, they may pay a terminal rental or lease fee. Transactions on combined domestic debit (BankAxept) and international payment cards count as domestic transactions if (as in most cases) the merchant accepts domestic debit cards.

In 2023, there were 7.64 million BankAxept cards with 1.61 billion transactions (-2.15%) amounting to a total value of NOK 578.9 billion (-1.93% from 2022). The ATV per card payment accounted for NOK 359.12 (€31.43), and there were on average 210.9 transactions per card per year.

6 – Transactions on BankAxept Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4893″]

Source: Norges Bank.

Domestic Mobile Payments App Vipps

In May 2015, DNB launched a new mobile person-to-person payment solution, Vipps. After one month, there were 236,169 registered Vipps users, increasing to 986,135 at end December 2015. As of 2021, Vipps was used by 4.1 million users, with 97.5% of users active every month. During 2021, there was growth of 20% in transaction numbers and 22% growth in value. After the merger with MobilePay, the new firm ‘Vipps MobilePay’ now has more than 11.5 million users as of end-2023, over 400,000 physical stores and online stores as providers, and it exceeded 1 billion transactions in Norway, Denmark and Finland. By the end of 2023, Vipps had 4.4 million users in Norway, 224 000 new users during the year, and approximately 68% of the users were active each month.

In February 2017, the Norwegian banks joined DNB to make Vipps the ‘single mobile wallet’ for Norwegian customers. More than 100 Norwegian banks took a stake in Vipps. The banks continued the development of Vipps in collaboration with DNB, and the service was launched in-store in 2017.

In September 2017, NETS delivered instant mobile payments to customers of all Norwegian banks who use Vipps. In October 2017, Danske Bank terminated its MobilePay app in Norway and moved to support Vipps instead. In addition, Nordea Bank (N) switched from MobilePay to Vipps, without being a Vipps stakeholder.

In June 2018, the merger of payments services Vipps, BankID and BankAxept was approved in line with recommendations from Norway’s financial supervisory authority. The merger was designed to prepare Norway’s financial system for competition against global technology firms after certain regulatory changes made it possible for companies outside the banking industry to facilitate payments.

In December 2018, Norway’s Vipps and Finland’s ePassi adopted Alipay’s QR-code standard to enable interoperability for the 4 million users of their mobile wallets. Under the agreement, consumers would be able to use their home app to scan the QR-code of the partner scheme from 2019. As part of the announcement Vipps began the roll-out of Alipay in Norway, beginning in Bergen and then extending this to more key locations across the country.

In March 2019, Vipps added new e-invoicing options to its P2P platform via a partnership with payments processor NETS, making the NETS’ e-invoicing tool eFaktura available across the Vipps platform. In May 2020, Vipps began to roll out its new solution for payments at EFTPOS terminals, with a BankAxept card as the underlying payment instrument.

DNB customers with an iPhone were the first bank customers able to pay with Vipps at the terminal, with Android users following later in 2020.

In June 2021, the Norwegian mobile payment service Vipps, owned by a consortium of Norwegian banks, and Finland’s Pivo, owned by OP Financial Group, announced they would merge with Danske Bank’s MobilePay service. The ambition is to create Europe’s best and most comprehensive digital wallet.

The Norwegian banks behind Vipps were set to own 65% of the new parent company, with Danske Bank owning 25% and OP Financial Group owning 10%. The merged business was set to build the common technology platform starting from Vipps’ platform, to run fully in the public cloud.

In September 2022, following a dialogue with the EC’s Directorate-General for Competition, the owner banks behind the planned merger of the three mobile payment providers reached the decision that OP Financial Group in Finland would not be a co-owner and that Pivo will not be part of the merger. The EC expressed concerns about both MobilePay and Pivo being part of the merger, since this would result in the merger of two sizeable players in Finland. The EC’s view was that the merger would thus adversely affect competition in the mobile payment space in Finland. The planned merger, as amended, was filed to the EC, and approved in October 2022. MobilePay in Denmark and Finland will still merge with Vipps.

When created, the new joint company based on Vipps and MobilePay will have almost 11 million users and more than 400,000 physical shops and webshops as customers who combined, carry out about 900 million transactions each year. The name of the new company will be Vipps MobilePay AS.

In connection with OP Financial Group withdrawing from the agreement, the ownership ratio between Danske Bank and the Norwegian banks will remain the same. This means that instead of an ownership share of 25%, Danske Bank will have an ownership share of 27.8%, while the consortium of banks behind Vipps will have an ownership share of 72.2% instead of 65%.

Finance Innovation Association

In August 2017, more than 20 Norwegian banks and tech companies aligned to create a Fintech hub to push a global innovation agenda amid growing collaboration between banks and start-ups in Norway.

Members of the association, dubbed Finance Innovation, comprise Sbanken, Nordea, DNB, Tryg Forsikring, Monobank, Sparebanken Vest, Tripod, Stacc, Knowit and Webstep. Academic partners include NHH Norwegian School of Economics and the University of Bergen.

As of 2023, Finance Innovation currently holds 90 member companies, including banks, insurance companies, tech companies, entrepreneurs, investors and R&D institutions collaborating on Fintech solutions.

NETS in Norway

PBS (Payment Business Services), the former Danish interbank organisation (see also Denmark profile), completed the proposed merger with Nordito, the Norwegian holding company which owned Bankenes Betalings Sentral (BBS) and Teller in January 2010 (for Background BBS Norway see Appendix).

The merged company, headquartered in Copenhagen, is called Northern European Transaction Services (NETS). The core operations of NETS include processing Dankort in Denmark and BankAxept in Norway, the domestic debit card schemes. NETS said it has given undertakings to stakeholders in both schemes that the national infrastructures will be maintained and will be run at least as effectively as in their unmerged state. Nonetheless, substantial revenue and cost synergies are expected for the merged NETS.

In March 2014, the private equity investors Advent International, Bain Capital Private Equity and Danish pension fund ATP signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the share capital of NETS from the existing shareholders, a group of 186 primarily Danish and Norwegian banks, for $3.1 billion.

In September 2016, NETS applied for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in a partial share sale valued at $2.36 billion. In September 2017, NETS agreed a $5.3 billion bid from private equity investor Hellman & Friedman (US). Effective 2 February 2018, NETS was delisted from Nasdaq Copenhagen. As at 7th February 2018, indirectly through Evergood 5, H&F Corporate Investors VIII controlled 65.57% of the total share capital and 93.87% of the total voting rights in NETS (including treasury shares), respectively. Under Danish law, the remaining minority shareholders were requested to transfer their shares in NETS to Evergood 5 (94.1%).

In June 2018, NETS and German-based acquirer and merchant service provider Concardis Payment Group agreed their merger structured as a share exchange which saw Concardis Group’s private equity shareholders, Advent International and Bain Capital, contribute their shares in return for NETS shares. Concardis was valued at €700 million in a transaction with Bain and Advent in January 2018. Concardis Payment Group included Italian Mercury Processing Services International.

Also, in June 2018, NETS expanded into Poland through a €73 million acquisition of online payment providers Dotpay/eCard. In August 2019, Mastercard entered into an agreement to purchase the Real-time Payments Platform (RPP) from NETS for $3.2 billion. This follows Mastercard’s decision to enter the P27 consortium in the Nordics (see above).

In January 2020, NETS acquired Finnish software developer Poplatek and payment terminal service provider Poplapay to boost its payment terminal service capabilities. Poplatek and Poplapay have a combined annual revenue of around €5 million. In August 2020, NETS followed that with the October 2020 acquisition of PeP, one of Poland’s five major card processors.

In November 2020, Italian processor Nexi confirmed its intention to buy NETS for €7.8 billion, with the signing of a merger deal taking place in June 2021. The completion of the transaction was subject to approval from Finnish regulator FIN-FSA and closed in June 2021. The merger of Nexi and NETS creates Europe’s largest payments firm by volume and number of customers.

In January 2021, NETS acquired e-commerce firm Checkout Finland through its Paytrail subsidiary, its latest move in the accelerating payments consolidation wave. Checkout Finland, part of the OP Financial Group, provides online and physical retail stores with payment services. It also operates a mobile payments channel. The company has around 8,000 customers and €12 million in revenue for 2020.

As of 2023, the enlarged Nexi was present in 25 countries, representing 65% of European consumption and had 2.2 million merchants, processing 140 million cards. Nexi reported €3.36 billion in revenues in 2023 and entered into the Spanish market through its acquisition of 80% of Sabadell’s merchant acquiring business in February 2023.

In September 2023, Nets, part of Nexi, signed a 7-year extension with BankID BankAxept as related to BankAxept, the Norwegian domestic scheme. With this extended agreement, Nets will continue its key role (having managed the processing of BankAxept transactions since 1993) in processing payments for the domestic scheme till year-end 2031, providing a secure and convenient payment solution for Norwegian consumers and merchants, and further developing the functionality and relevance of the domestic scheme.

Tietoevry

EDB Business Partner, the Oslo-based, stock exchange-listed IT services group, agreed a merger in June 2010 with ErgoGroup, the IT subsidiary of Posten Norge, the Norwegian post office, creating the largest IT group in Norway. From March 2011, the new name of merged EDB ErgoGroup was EVRY. The company was a key provider of IT services to DNB, the Sparebank 1 Gruppen and Norges Bank. EVRY’s IT services include hosting of processing systems and card processing services.

Though Posten Norge held 47% of the shares of the merged company, it had undertaken to cut its stake to 40%. Telenor, which owned 51% of EDB, saw its stake post-merger fall to 30.24%. After being delisted in 2015, EVRY was relisted on the Oslo stock exchange on 21 June 2017. As of year-end 2017 the company had a market capitalisation of NOK 12.1 billion, and the IPO in June was one of the largest IPOs in the Nordics during 2017.

As at end-2017, EVRY was owned by 1,592 shareholders, of which Lyngen Holdco (54.3%) was the largest shareholder. By nationality, 10% were owned by Norwegian interests while 90% were held by foreign investors.

In June 2019, Tieto and EVRY announced their merger, creating one of the most competitive digital services and software companies in the Nordics. The merger was complete in December 2019. As of 2021, Tietoevry was present in 90 countries, and had revenues of over €2.82 billion.

In 2020, the Eika Alliance entered into an agreement with Tietoevry regarding delivery of core banking solutions to the local banks in the alliance. The transition from SDC to Tietoevry is scheduled for completion in 2022-2023. The agreement will result in the proportion of Norwegian banks using Tietoevry as their operations service provider increasing significantly in the financial sector. This will result in increased concentration risk.

In July 2021, Tietoevry signed an agreement with Bank Norwegian to follow the bank on its journey to Europe by expanding into Germany and Spain. Bank Norwegian’s customers in those countries will now get access to credit card services that also cover fraud prevention. The agreement is an extension of the existing partnership, in which Tietoevry delivers Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) card services to Bank Norwegian in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

In June 2023, Tietoevry launched a new innovative Payments as a Service Plus (PaaS+), a cloud payments platform, enriched with managed services for payments operations. This enables financial institutions to meet the increasingly demanding needs of customers within the payments business, ensuring compliance and real-time access to markets.​ By leveraging PaaS+, banks can eliminate the challenges associated with managing their payment systems comprehensively. This includes responsibilities such as on-time upgrades, compliance with regulatory requirements, real-time monitoring, KYC, etc.

In August 2023, Handelsbanken Norway chose to consolidate on Tietoevry Banking’s wealth management solution to modernise its IT landscape and enhance customer experience. With this new agreement, Handelsbanken will be able to equip their customers and wealth management advisors with cutting-edge interactive and easy-to-use resources that allow them to optimise their savings and investments. In addition, the Wealth platform from Tietoevry Banking will enhance self-service actionability, with 24/7 availability and the highest security standards.

In December 2024, Tietoevry Banking integrated Visa B2B Connect – a Visa Direct offering – into its Payment Hub, enhancing cross-border payment capabilities for its clients. This integration offers faster, more cost-effective and transparent payment options for financial institutions and their corporate customers.

Card Issuers – Overview

Norwegian banks issue credit cards, charge cards, debit cards and prepaid cards in combination with bank accounts. Addressing the specific needs of personal banking and business banking, the card portfolio is composed of consumer cards, business cards and corporate cards.

Dedicated card products are offered for the individual client segments: families, millennials, students, affluent clients, small business clients, corporate clients and even basic account clients. The credit cards offered range from classic cards to gold cards and platinum cards.

According to Norges Bank, most Norwegian banks issue Mastercard and VISA credit cards, BankAxept debit cards co-badged with VISA or Electron for international use, prepaid cards and virtual cards for internet use.

Leading issuers are DNB Bank, Nordea Bank Norge, Eika Gruppen, EuroCard (SEB Kort) and EnterCard. Other issuers include Danske Bank (formerly Fokus Bank), Santander Consumer Bank (previously GE Money Bank), Diners Club (SEB Kort), and Ikano Bank. American Express Payments Europe now issues American Express cards on its own.

In February 2014, DNB Bank sold its commercial card portfolio of 85,000 cards to Eurocard Norway (SEB Kort). Table 7 illustrates the card brands issued by the leading issuers in Norway as of mid-2024.

7 – Leading Card Issuers in Norway

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Source: PCM research

Outlook – By mid-2024, Norwegian card issuers face the following notable challenges:

Card Processors and PSPs 

In Europe, the payment processing industry is composed of card processors, ATM/POS network hub processors, e-/m-payment service processors (PSPs), and specialised processors (e.g. CSM processors, TSM services).

In Norway, card issuer processing services range from technical issuer processing, including card printing, to full cardholder processing services. They include all types of cards and card technologies allowing for card use in multi-channels (i.e. at ATMs, POS terminals, on the internet and in-store mobile payments in the future).

Acquirer processing services in the country range from technical acquirer processing, including POS terminal services, to full merchant processing services. Usually, ATM/POS network processing is part of acquirer processing while payments on the internet are routed by specialised e-/m-payment service processors (PSPs) to the card acquirers and independent payment service providers (e.g. Fintechs like PayPal), respectively.

Leading card processors in Norway are NETS and Tietoevry. Also, the Norwegian banks use in-house bank IT systems, e.g. DNB Bank.

NETS continued to be the largest card processor in Norway, through NETS Norway, and in the Nordic region and one of the three largest processors in Europe. NETS absorbed the Norwegian card processor BBS in 2010. In 2023, NETS processed more than 7.7 billion card transactions for more than 240 banks, and it administers more than 300,000 merchants and 140,000 online merchants. In addition, NETS Group serves 260,000 corporates, and all Nordic payment modules for online shopping are connected to the card platform.

NETS is said to have a 30%-35% market share of the card processing market in the Nordic region. The national debit card systems in Denmark and Norway, Dankort and BankAxept, accounted for more than half of all payment card transactions processed in the Nordic region (see also Denmark country profile). Measured in terms of authorisations and card transactions, the number of transactions in 2020 amounted to around 7.7 billion on the entire NETS platform – the group also manages over 9.1 million digital identities.

NETS said to have a 30%-35% share of the card processing market in the Nordic region. The national debit card systems in Denmark and Norway, Dankort and BankAxept, accounted for more than half of all payment card transactions processed.

TSYS – In June 2010, DNB Bank said that TSYS had converted DNB Kort’s 2.2 million Mastercard credit cards to its Prime card and merchant management platform, operated by DNB Bank and EVRY. An additional 0.7 million VISA credit cards were migrated to the Prime platform in the final phase. DNB Bank said that the deal with TSYS enabled its card processing to be moved from a variety of external legacy systems on to a single in-house platform. For 2018, TSYS reported its global transaction volumes of $4.03 billion on 32.3 billion transactions processed for 821,000 merchants.

In May 2019, Global Payments announced plans to acquire TSYS in a deal worth $21.5 billion.

Online Payment Service Processors (PSPs) 

Online payment service processors (PSPs) are specialised technical processors for all kind of secure online payments and mobile payments. Some of them also offer virtual PSP platform services (VPSP) for bank acquirers who want to take advantage of a kind of ‘internet network processor’.

Online shops of merchants are directly connected by an API interface or a hosted payment page either to the internet payment gateway of a bank acquirer, or they are connected to multi-acquirers through a PSP.

PSPs usually partner with more than one card acquirer and payment initiation service providers. Core services offered by PSPs may include payment gateways to card acquirers and other online payment service providers, online payment processing, risk management services, and collection services for merchants.

Security technologies applied to ensure secure online card payments include EMV tokenisation and strong 3D-Secure (MCSC, VbV, SafeKey) combined with one-time tokens. For card-less payment services, the security technologies applied include userID/password combined with one-time tokens and online banking access with one-time TAN.

In 2009, BBS acquired the e-commerce company Netaxept from DnB NOR. Netaxept was rebranded as NETS, Norway’s largest provider of payment, financing and delivery solutions for online retailers. Other PSPs active in Norway include PayEx (N), AltaPay (DK), ePay (DK), InPay (DK), Worldline (F), Klarna (S), Trustly (S).

Norwegian PSPs process online payments on cards (Mastercard, VISA, AmEx, Diners, Discover, JCB and UnionPay), bank transfers like BankAxess and online wallets like e.g. PayPal and Skrill.

Like other countries, not only the domestic PSPs and acquirers, but as well cross-border acquirers and foreign PSPs, are actively servicing Norwegian online merchants:

PayEx is an online payment service provider comprising of a number of companies in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. PayEx offers payment solutions for internet, mobile and physical commerce as well as administrative services within billing, account management and debt collection. PayEx also offers financial services such as factoring, instalment and loans.

In May 2017, Swedbank (S) acquired PayEx. The acquisition was subject to the customary approvals from regulatory authorities, including the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and the Swedish Competition Authority. The deal completed in August 2017.

Acquiring and Acceptance

In Europe, most acquirers offer multi-channel card acceptance and value-added merchant services at POS terminals, mobile MPOS terminals and online shops. The leading acquirers usually act on a European level and offer their services cross-border.

Additionally, innovative acquirers also offer the acceptance of card-less payment services based on partner agreements with the issuer of those payment services (e.g. account-based payments, wallets, prepaid products).

Most acquirers either operate their own acquirer systems and ATM/POS/MPOS network service hubs, or they use the processing services of external processors. In order to service online merchants in Europe, they may operate their own PSP processing platforms or they co-operate with one or more specialised online payment service processors (PSPs).

From 2009, European acquirers compete in their home markets, cross-border on a European level, and cross-channel at POS terminals and servicing online merchants. From 2016, innovative acquirers started to offer omni-channel and multi-payment acceptance.

By mid-2024, omni-channel acceptance includes the ability to service all channels (i.e. POS/MPOS terminals, mobile in-store, online shops, in-app), and to accept multiple payment means in all of these channels. Multi-payment services demanded by merchants include cards, IBAN-based payments (SCT, SDD), online wallets, digital wallets, prepaid products, and immediate payments.

Outlook – By mid-2024, Norwegian acquirers face the following notable challenges:

Leading acquirers in Norway are Teller (NETS), Elavon, and DNB Bank. Teller, the market leader in Norwegian acquiring, was owned by a group of 41 Norwegian banks, all customers of the company, before the creation of Nordito, which became part of the Nordic processor NETS.

Other acquirers include Danske Bank (previously Fokus Bank), Worldline and Swedbank.

DNB Bank and Teller acquire American Express while SEB Kort acquires Diners cards, Discover cards and Eurocard-Mastercard cards. Further, Elavon accepts Diners and JCB cards while Teller acquires JCB and UnionPay cards. In January 2019, Diners Club International, a part of the Discover Global Network signed an agreement with NETS to help expand Discover Global Network acceptance in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

All Norwegian acquirers accept BankAxept, Maestro, Electron, V PAY, Mastercard, Debit Mastercard, VISA, and VISA Debit cards. Many Norwegian acquirers accept online credit transfer payments branded BankAxess on the internet. Table 8 illustrates the card brands accepted by the leading domestic acquirers as at mid-2024.

8 – Leading Acquirers in Norway

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Source: PCM research

In July 2021, Handelsbanken announced it would sell its card acquiring business to pan-European payment provider Worldline. In 2020, the card acquiring business had net commission income of approximately SEK 190 million and external costs of approximately SEK 20 million. In conjunction with the sales agreement, Handelsbanken has also entered into a distribution agreement with Worldline. The compensation to the bank for the sale is approximately SEK 2,000 million. Worldline offers digital payment services in the Nordic countries and Europe, as well as globally. Worldline has turnover of around €5 billion.

Teller – In June 2015, NETS acquired Nordea Merchant Acquiring (Kortaccept) – the section of Nordea’s payment business dealing with acquiring of international payment cards in the Nordic and Baltic regions – for a price of €230 million on an enterprise value basis. NETS Group now offers acquirer services, operating under the Teller brand, for around 700,000 merchants and 140,000 online merchants across the Nordic and Baltic region. In 2020, NETS operated in more than 20 countries through cross-border activities.

In June 2021, NETS and JCB announced the latest expansion of their partnership to bolster JCB contactless acceptance in the Nordic region. JCB cardmembers can now use JCB Contactless on 244,000 merchant POS systems across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

Bambora – In May 2014, Swedish bank SEB agreed to sell its Euroline card acquiring business to Nordic Capital (see Sweden country profile). In May 2015, Euroline was rebranded as Bambora. Key acquisitions included Beanstreams Internet Commerce, Asian IP Payments, DevCode Payments and Paybyway.

In July 2017, Ingenico Group (F) bought Bambora for $1.74 billion from Nordic Capital, recouping fivefold its investment in Bambora. In 2020, Bambora served over 126,000 merchants in 65 countries, and became part of the Worldline group after Ingenico was acquired by Worldline.

Payment Institutions in Norway

In 2023, there were 24 payment institutions resident in Norway and 24 payment service providers which primarily provide money remittance services and have limited authorisation.

ATM Terminal Infrastructure

Norway has a well-developed ATM infrastructure, which allows bank customers to use all ATMs. The EMV migration of ATM terminals is 100% complete.

Norwegian ATM terminals are open for debit cards (BankAxept, Debit Mastercard, Maestro, Cirrus, VISA Debit, Electron, Plus, and V PAY) and credit cards (Mastercard, VISA, American Express, Diners, Discover, and JCB). A few ATMs allow for withdrawals on Chinese UnionPay cards.

ATM withdrawals rose for the first time in 2022 after 21 years of decline, up by 8.28% but declined by 7.65% in 2023. The great majority of ATM transactions are on bank cards, though this includes transactions on combined cards used as bank cards.

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on cash usage can be seen in the large falls in ATM withdrawals. In 2023, there were 1,168 ATMs (-5.12%) and 15.7 million cash withdrawals (-7.65%) with a total value of NOK 30.3 billion (-9.91% from 2022) reverting back to a decline. There were 1,120.1 withdrawals per ATM per month, down 2.67% year on year, and the ATV per cash withdrawal accounted for NOK 1,910.83 (€167.25).

9 – ATMs and Cash Withdrawals in Norway

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Note: ATM terminal figures have been restated.
Source: Norges Bank.

The breakdown per type of cards shows that withdrawals on domestic BankAxept cards have a dominating market share of 82.80% by number (2005: 91.6%) and 84.67% by value (2005: 89.5%), respectively.

10 – Cash Withdrawal Breakdown by Type of Card

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Note: from 2020 Norges Bank no longer gives separate figures for national or international cards.
Note: figures are for Norwegian cards and foreign cards in Norway.
Source: Norges Bank.

ATM Withdrawal Charges – Norway opted into the EU cross-border regulations 2001/2560/EC and 2009/924/EC, which provide that charges on ATMs must be the same on domestic transactions as for cross-border transactions in the eurozone.

The Norwegian principle ‘user pays’ extends to ATMs segmented by the type of usage. Up to the end of 2016, loyalty cardholders could withdraw cash for free from their own bank during bank opening hours (from 2024: NOK 8.7), or by cash-advance at POS terminals in retail outlets (‘cashback’). Other withdrawals are charged as shown in Table 11.

11 – Norwegian ATM Withdrawal Charges

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Note: process during opening hours; prices in loyalty schemes are only NOK 0.1 to 0.2 or for free (i.e. in-house at own bank).
Note: from 2017, charges for ATM withdrawals on debit cards at own bank’s ATM were set to NOK 5.50 discouraging ATM withdrawals, since then charges have increased.
Source: Norges Bank.

Cash-advance Services in Norway – Competition for ATMs 

In an Open Banking ecosystem, the dominant role of ATMs for cash withdrawal services may decline as more cash-advance and cash-handling services are offered at retail outlets in Europe.

Cash in-Store – In parallel to ATM cash withdrawals on cards, Norwegian banks support cash-advance services on cards at POS terminals in retail outlets (see below).

POS Terminal Infrastructure

As in many European countries, Norway’s POS infrastructure has increased in recent years.

The value of payments at POS terminals passed those at ATMs in 1997 and was more than double ATM withdrawals by 2003 based on domestic debit card payments alone, though allowance needs to be made for cash withdrawals by other means.

In 2023, the number of payments at POS terminals was 166.34-times higher than cash withdrawals at ATMs, reflecting the low use of ATMs and the high use of POS terminals.

The Norwegian POS network is operated by NETS. Since 2009, most banks have transferred their POS terminal lease agreements to NETS, so that the terminals are owned by NETS instead. Thus, as from 2010, only a minority of terminals are owned by banks. The number of retailer-owned terminals has only slightly grown over the years (2010: 37% of the installed POS base, 2002: 18%).

POS terminals in Norway are provided and maintained by NETS, with most accepting international cards, domestic credit cards, and bank debit cards. A small number of merchants operating in sectors like restaurants and cafés accept only international cards. The EMV migration of Norwegian POS terminals is complete.

Accepted card brands at Norwegian POS terminals are debit cards (BankAxept, Debit Mastercard, Maestro, VISA Debit, Electron and V PAY), and credit cards (Mastercard, VISA, American Express, Diners, Discover, and JCB). A few POS terminals accept payments on UnionPay cards.

There were an estimated 179,855 POS terminals (+2.14%) installed at end-2023 with 101,694 POS locations accepting BankAxept cards (down 1.36% compared to 2022). The number of locations with payment terminals refers to shops, post office branches, etc.

In 2023, there were 2.61 billion POS payments (+3.93%) with a total value of NOK 978.1 billion (+4.76% from 2022). There were 1,210.0 payments per POS terminal per month, and the ATV per POS payment amounted to NOK 374.52 (€32.78).

12 – POS Terminals in Norway

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Source: Norges Bank.

In the reporting year, the breakdown per type of cards shows that payments on domestic BankAxept cards have a market share of 82.74% by number (2005: 94.7%) and 80.09% by value (2005: 92.9%), respectively.

13 – POS Terminals and BankAxept Payments

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Note: all figures for POS payments at AbankAxept terminals have been restated
Source: Norges Bank.

Cash-Advance (cashback) in Norway is used for small amounts, while counter transactions continue to be used for large withdrawals. Up to 2004, use of cash advance services at POS terminals (‘cashback’), for which there is no charge over and above the payment for the goods purchased, increased year-on-year, but it showed a decline in 2005 after a change by Norges Bank in the way the statistics are prepared. By way of explanation for the fall in cashback transactions from 2005 onwards, Norges Bank said that the figures for 2006 onwards include only “registered cashback.”

One of the attractions of cashback is that cash withdrawals from shops’ payment terminals do not incur additional fees. In contrast, cardholders are charged for using their own bank’s ATMs outside business hours and other banks’ ATMs during and outside business hours.

Notably, cashback made at POS terminals is significant with 56.05% of ATM withdrawals by number and 16.33% by value. Like other European countries, cashback is only granted in combination with other goods purchased.

14 – Development of Cashback in Norway

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Note: figures cover cashbacks on bank cards, international cards, domestic credit cards and as well as use of foreign cards in Norway.
Note: cashbacks made on POS terminals are alongside purchase of goods only.
Source: Norges Bank.

MPOS Terminals – Small and mobile merchants have started to use their smartphone and tablet PCs as a kind of mini-POS+ECR device with added chip reader dongle. In late 2012, Square clones like iZettle, SumUp, Miura, and others have launched MPOS services in Europe. Swedish iZettle is expected to support the Nordic banks. Also, Norwegian merchants can initiate MOTO-like card payments on their smartphones and tablets by downloading a payment app.

In June 2013, NETS began offering MPOS terminals for small merchants in the Nordic region followed by Dutch Adyen with its Shuttle MPOS terminal in Norway in August 2013. In May 2014, Nordea selected iZettle to be its provider of MPOS solutions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

SmartPOS Terminals – In 2018, POS terminal vendors launched innovative new types of POS terminals. Named SmartPOS terminals, they combine the electronic cash register functionality (ECR) used by merchants in outlets with a contactless POS payment terminal and merchant services in the cloud. For the very first time, the so far separated ECR devices and POS terminals are integrated in just one checkout solution device. From late 2018, SmartPOS terminal vendors like Castles, Clover, Ingenico, Jusp, Handpoint, PAX, Poynt, Spire Payments, Verifone, Worldline, and others have launched their SmartPOS devices and services in Europe. It is believed that Norwegian SME merchants will embrace SmartPOS terminals.

iZettle – In June 2017, iZettle (S) opened up for invoicing and added local mobile payments in the Nordics and the UK. iZettle enables European users to register local mobile payments and send invoices through its point-of-sale app. This gives iZettle’s users a complete overview of their sales history, ensures compliance with local tax regulations. The service is free of charge and allows for mobile payments from British ‘Pay By Bank’ app, Swedish Swish, Norwegian Vipps and MobilePay in Denmark, Finland and Norway.

Also, iZettle launched an invoicing service across Europe. The service will enable small business owners to send invoices with just a few clicks, get paid faster and skip the hassle of manual administration and payment reminders.

In April 2018, iZettle launched an e-commerce marketplace for small business owners to sell their wares online. Priced at £29 per month, iZettle e-commerce lets small business owners set up and customise an online shop or start selling across multiple channels online, including social media, blogs and existing websites. The online mall processes all major credit cards and online payments, including PayPal. Traders who take up the offer get a full overview of in-store and online transactions and real-time inventory stocktaking in one place alongside actionable sales data. The platform is available in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

In September 2018, PayPal completed its acquisition of iZettle for approximately $2.2 billion.

Remote Payments on the Internet – Cards & More 

In 2022, about 5.0 million Norwegian consumers shopped online, comprising 92% of the population. According to a survey by PostNord, 31% of Norwegians shopped online more often due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. By 2024, PostNord reported that 83% of Norwegians shop online at least monthly.

As many as 77% of Norwegians in the survey stated that they made cross-border online purchases – a percentage exceeded only by Finland among the Nordics. It is likely that this figure will decrease due to the January 1, 2020, rise in VAT in Norway.  From that date, foreign companies must pay VAT from the first NOK 50,000 on shipments to Norway. Previously, VAT only had to be paid on goods that exceeded NOK 350 in value. By 2023, according to PostNord, 48% of Norwegians shop online from abroad at least once a month, an increase from 34% in 2019. The neighbouring Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark are popular markets for more than half of the online shoppers. Buying from Sweden is much more common than it was in 2019, when the country was in fourth place.

In 2022, customers abroad made fewer purchases at Norwegian online shops than Norwegians made at online shops abroad. Customers abroad accounted for 12.1 million such purchases, with a total value of NOK 18.3 billion. Both the number of purchases and their values rose from 2021 to 2022. No update was provided in the Payment Report for 2023.

In 2023, total B2C e-commerce was €10.80 billion, a decline of 10.0% from 2022. The total B2C e-commerce amount per capita was €1,945.9, and the total amount per online buyer was €2,138.3.

Internet Use – In 2023, 99% of Norwegians used the internet, and 91% of internet users purchased in online shops in the last 12 months.

15 – Internet Use in Norway

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Source: Eurostat, ITU.

Cards on the Internet (CNP) – All cards with international brands are accepted in Norwegian online shops if the merchant has signed an acceptance contract accordingly. Also, the Norwegian banks issue prepaid cards and virtual cards for internet use only. 3D-Secure technology is applied when paying online with cards. Further, web-based mail order services for merchant-initiated payments and Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) are offered.

Norwegian specific, DNB and SpareBank 1 Alliance combine 3D-Secure with Risk-Based Authentication (RBA). RBA is used in combination with BankID and BankID mobile, already familiar to Norwegian customers. The authentication solution is based on a number of predefined parameters and criteria, with the result that customers can often complete an online transaction without additional authentication.

Norwegian Card Payments on the Internet – According to Norges Bank, there has been a sharp increase in internet card payments over the past few years. In 2023, there were 724 million such purchases made with Norwegian payment cards. In the period between 2022 and 2023, growth reached 14%. Growth was higher for purchases from Norwegian online shops than from foreign online shops. Payments to Norwegian online shops accounted for 64% of the total payments for online shopping.

Surveys show that almost half of online purchases were made using traditional card payments. The use of mobile payments is increasing rapidly and now accounts for one in four online payments. Most online purchases are ultimately settled with a payment card, including when the primary method of payment is mobile payment, invoicing, or some other manner.

According to Norges Bank, in 2023, the total value of online payments was NOK 322 billion. The value of payments rose by 18% between 2022 and 2023. The average value of online payments increased from NOK 430 in 2022 to approximately NOK 444 in 2023.

16 – Use of Norwegian Cards on the Internet

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Source: Norges Bank.

According to a 2023 survey from Nexi, 41% of Norwegians prefer card payments when online shopping. Vipps comes in second, with 29% preferring this method, while invoicing (15%) was third, ahead of PayPal. The most crucial factors in choosing a payment method in Norway are simplicity (49%) and security (48%). Speed is only a factor for 33% of shoppers. Approximately a quarter of online purchases were made on a mobile payment platform. Somewhat less than a quarter were invoiced. However, even if the primary method of payment is giro, mobile payment, or some other manner, there is also often an underlying card payment. Payment cards are usually the funding source for online mobile payments, and payment cards are often used to pay online shopping invoices. An increasing number of survey participants report using mobile payments for their most recent online purchases. Online payments are assuming an ever larger share of payments made with Norwegian payment cards. In 2022, online payments accounted for 22% of all payments using Norwegian cards.

The e-Payment Mix in Norway – According to Norges Bank, as of spring 2024, 39% of online purchases (2023: 45%) were made directly with a payment card. 26% of purchases were invoiced, while payments made using different mobile payment solutions accounted for 30% of purchases, and other payment methods, such as PayPal accounted for 6% of purchases. Payment cards are usually the funding source for mobile or PayPal payments, and payment cards are often used to pay online shopping invoices.

Remote Payments on the Mobile Internet – Since 2009, online buyers with a high affinity for smartphones have started the use of their mobile phones for shopping on the mobile internet. Mobile online shops can be accessed by mobile internet, by mobile app, or by scanning a 2D QR-code displayed in a newspaper or at a bus station. Thus, remote mobile phone payments are executed either by using the e-payment page of the mobile online shop or by using payment apps of a PSP or an acquirer.

Also, merchants can download a payment app from their acquirer in order to initiate MOTO payments with cards and/or online direct debits. Leading Norwegian merchants are testing their own mobile apps including loyalty functions (e.g. e-vouchers, discounts, outlet finder, QR-code scanning) and an IBAN-based direct debit payment function.

Mobile Payments – Overview

In 2023, many Norwegians owned more than one mobile phone (mobile subscriptions: 112.0%), and 98% of internet users own a smartphone (from 68.4% in 2015). Also, tablet penetration (72% in 2021) has grown significantly in recent years. Smartphone penetration is high in Norway, at 97% of internet users in 2023. Both apps and browsers are popular platforms, taking a roughly equal share of sales.

Since 2009, the next generation of mobile services and payments has started, pushed by online buyers’ high affinity to smartphones and tablets and, also, by new disruptive technologies (1D-barcodes, QR-code, Bluetooth BLE, and Near Field Communication NFC).

Mobile initiatives in Norway are field testing and using new technologies either as initiating form factors to bridge to online shops on the internet (1D-barcodes, QR-code, NFC) or to enable contactless access to the retail POS outlet (1D-barcodes, QR-code, BLE, Bluetooth Low Energy, NFC Stickers, Mobile NFC Phones) e.g.:

The m-Payment Mix in Norway – There are no official m-payment statistics, but PSP information indicates that the domestic m-payment mix is similar to the e-payment mix (see Remote Payments on the Internet section).

Mobile Payment Initiative Details

In 2024, the various European mobile payment initiatives can be grouped into

Norway is at the forefront of mobile payment initiatives, with several key developments shaping the landscape:

Vipps, Norway’s largest mobile payments app, has launched a new service called “Tap with Vipps” as an alternative to Apple Pay for iPhone users. This service works on all card terminals that accept BankAxept cards, covering almost all terminals in Norway.

Vipps is merging with Denmark’s MobilePay to enable real-time cross-border transactions between Norway and Denmark, which is expected to significantly boost real-time payments volume in Norway.

Norges Bank, Norway’s central bank, plans to settle instant payments in Norwegian Krone (NOK) via the Eurosystem’s TIPS (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement) service. This initiative aims to facilitate the best possible development of Norwegian instant payments and improve cross-border payments.

The use of mobile payments in Norway has been growing, with contactless payments dominating the Nordic payment landscape. 90% of shoppers use contactless payments either daily or once a week.

Vipps MobilePay plans to launch its tap-to-pay solution in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in 2025, expanding its reach across the Nordic region.

Norway is also exploring the potential of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as part of its responsible innovation initiatives in the payment system.

Central Bank Digital Currencies, Cryptocurrency Products 

In 2023, the Norwegian payment ecosystem was composed of traditional cash payments, digital cryptocurrency products of independent payment service providers and research and development of central bank digital currencies, CBDC. The regulation of cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly relevant as independent cryptocurrency products have grown more prevalent, posing challenges for regulators and national central banks.

In July 2023, the European Union introduced the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which aims to standardize cryptocurrency regulation across member states, including Luxembourg. This regulation addresses various aspects of crypto assets, such as market integrity, consumer protection, and financial stability, while also promoting innovation in the sector. Under MiCA, crypto-asset service providers will have specific obligations to protect users’ wallets and mitigate investment risks.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) – The Digital Cash Challenge 

Central bank digital currency (CBDC), also called digital fiat currency or digital base money, is a digital currency issued by a national central bank (NCB), rather than by a commercial bank. It is also a liability of the NCB and denominated in the sovereign currency, as is the case with physical banknotes and coins.

All CBDCs are under the authority of the respective national central bank, and they are part of the domestic cash payment ecosystem. Rather than a new currency, CBDC is a form of central bank electronic money that could be used by households and businesses to make payments. In addition, most CBDC implementations will likely not use or need any sort of distributed ledger such as a blockchain.

Unlike “retail CBDC,” which is generally designed as a central bank liability universally accessible to individuals and businesses within a jurisdiction’s financial system, “wholesale CBDC” refers to a digitized central bank liability designed for sizable (generally interbank) transactions, and for which access is limited to certain financial institutions.

National Central Banks (NCBs) have been providing trusted money to the public for hundreds of years as part of their public policy objectives. Trusted money is a public good. It offers a common unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange for the sale of goods and services and settlement of financial transactions. Providing cash for public use is an important tool for central banks. Yet the world is changing.

Even before COVID-19, cash use for payments was declining fast and convenient digital payments have grown enormously in volume and diversity. To evolve and pursue their public policy objectives in a digital world, central banks are actively researching the pros and cons of offering a digital currency to the public, a “general purpose” CBDC.

Central banks’ interest in CBDC has increased as a potential means of delivering their public policy objectives. Profound, ongoing changes across finance, technology and society, as well as the recent COVID-19 crisis, provided additional impetus for the research of, and experimentation related to, CBDCs.

CBDC is a national digital currency issued by the central bank that is expected to replace or coexist with fiat money and hold the same value. Mobile money, on the other hand, utilises existing commercial banking-based accounting to manage customer wallet balances based on an exchange with cash or lines of credit and loans.

CBDC is a direct liability on the central bank as it is the main issuer of the currency, whereas digital money is the liability of commercial banks and other authorised financial institutions using funds on account. Although some implementation approaches propose that CBDC can be implemented in either an indirect or hybrid form, its liability remains on the respective national central bank.

Background on CBDC Evolution

In October 2020, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, Sveriges Riksbank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a report, Central bank digital currencies: foundational principles and core features, identifying the foundational principles necessary for any publicly available CBDC to help central banks meet their public policy objectives.

The report focused on a publicly available “general purpose” CBDC (a digital payment instrument, denominated in the national unit of account, that is a direct liability of the central bank).

A “wholesale” CBDC, restricted to financial institutions, is also an active area of exploration, notes the report, for central banks but one that carries different opportunities, challenges, and risks. The report explored the use cases for, and challenges and opportunities arising from, the possible issuance of a general purpose CBDC.

In September 2021, the same seven central banks and the BIS followed up with the publication of a new set of reports exploring the potential of retail CBDCs, including policy options and practical implementation issues. While none of the central banks has yet decided to proceed with a retail CBDC, they recognise such an instrument would have wide-ranging implications. Delivering on the future needs of consumers would require systems that encourage innovation, choice and competition among a diverse mix of intermediaries.

BIS reported that a 2021 survey of central banks found that “86% are actively researching the potential for CBDCs, 60% were experimenting with the technology and 14% were deploying pilot projects.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is piloting a ‘digital yuan’, known as e-CNY, in various cities, often in association with major sporting events, such as the Winter Olympics.

The ECB published a paper on the potential of a “digital euro” in October 2020, exploring the “benefits and risks” of such an initiative. It completed a public consultation in January 2021 and a series of focus groups in December 2021. Its investigation stage is expected to continue until October 2023, after which the ECB “will decide whether to start developing a digital euro.”

The US Federal Reserve reported in February 2022 that while it has made no decisions about “whether to pursue or implement” a CBDC, it was “exploring the potential benefits and risks of CBDCs from a variety of angles and was inviting public feedback on discussion papers.

The Bank of Japan said in October 2020 that it had no plans for a CBDC and was committed to maintain the cash system as long as there was public demand for it. It nevertheless intended to explore technical feasibility through a proof of concept, consider institutional arrangements and coordinate approaches with domestic and international stakeholders. In 2023, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has announced that it will begin a pilot for its digital yen with commercial financial institutions. In February 2023, Bank of Japan has embarked on a CBDC trial.

In June 2023, the BIS and BoE said they completed a CBDC pilot project involving CBDCs jointly run by the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). Project Rosalind was designed to explore how a “universal and extensible API layer” could connect central bank and private sector infrastructures and enable retail CBDC payments. The project also sought to develop a number of retail-CBDC use cases.

According to the BIS and BoE, the project has successfully demonstrated that “a well-designed API layer could work with different private sector applications and central bank ledger designs and that a set of simple and standardised API functionalities could support a diverse range of use cases”.

In all, the project led to the development of 33 API functionalities and examined 30 retail CBDC cases including peer-to-peer transfers, retail payments for goods and services and small-value business transactions.

While CBDCs are still in experimental phases across major economies, 2024 has seen increased momentum towards real-world implementation, with several countries, notably China and the ECB, moving closer to full-scale rollouts. Public-private collaboration, technological innovation, and privacy concerns remain central to future CBDC development. Central banks worldwide continue to balance innovation with maintaining public trust and financial stability in this rapidly evolving space.

Global Status of CBDCs 

Most National Central Banks (NCBs) are involved in different stages of a CBDC project. Especially, the NCBs have different views on which kind of CBDC they would intend to launch as a digital currency:

As of 2023, the global CBDC status reveals that four central banks – Nigeria (e-Naira), Eastern Caribbean (D-Cash), Jamaica (JAM-DEX), and the Bahamas (Sand Dollar) – have introduced a domestic CBDC scheme.

Six countries have launched a CBDC pilot: France, Canada, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Ghana.

The NCBs of most other countries are involved in either a CBDC proof-of-concept phase – including Norway, Hungary, and Sweden – or they are still in a CBDC research stage.

So far, Ecuador is the only country that has cancelled its CBDC ambitions, Dinero electronico.

CBDC, the European Union and the Digital Euro

In July 2021, the Estonian Central Bank released a report about its experiment with the ECB and the central banks of Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, and the Netherlands to assess the functionality of the digital euro. The project was able to conduct 300,000 transactions per second, with an average rate of less than two seconds per transaction.

In June 2023, the European Commission (EC) has published its legislative proposal establishing the legal framework for a possible digital euro, stressing that the CBDC would be a compliment to, not replacement for, cash.

A digital euro would be available alongside existing national and international private means of payment, such as cards or applications. It would work like a digital wallet, with people and businesses able to pay with it anytime and anywhere in the euro area.

The digital euro would be available for payments both online and offline. While online transactions would offer the same level of data privacy as existing digital means of payments, offline payments would essentially be like paying with cash – with nobody able to see what people are paying for.

The digital euro would be distributed by banks and other payment service providers, with basic services provided to people free of charge. Merchants would be required to accept the digital currency unless they are cash-only firms.

The EC’s proposal still needs to be adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council before the European Central Bank decides whether to roll out a digital euro. Notably, the European Central Bank (ECB) is involved in the preparation phase, which will run until 2025. During this time, technical experimentation and legal discussions are ongoing before any formal rollout decisions can be made​.

CBDC and Norway

In its 2020 Financial Infrastructure Report, Norges Bank said it was considering whether to provide the public with a CBDC to ensure an efficient and secure payment system, and confidence in the monetary system. Norges Bank established working groups to evaluate the feasibility of introducing a CBDC. One possibility is that a CBDC could function as a contingency solution in case of a failure in bank payment systems.

In April 2021, Norges Bank announced it would begin testing technical solutions for a CBDC over the next two years. The bank’s working group said motivation for research into CBDCs had been strengthened by payment technologies evolving at a rapid pace, and the share of cash payments in Norway being one of the lowest in the world.

Norges Bank conducted experimental testing of technical solutions, analysed potential impacts on liquidity management and monetary policy, and reviewed necessary legislative amendments from 2021 to 2023. This phase concluded with a final report published in December 2023.

From 2023, the project entered a fifth phase aimed at providing a basis for deciding whether to introduce a CBDC in Norway. This phase involves analysing the possibilities and implications of a CBDC and testing candidate solutions. The project continues to collaborate with stakeholders in the Norwegian payment system, other central banks and international organisations.

Pros and Cons of CBDCs

According to research by the Bank of England, BIS, and by several other central banks, the benefits of CBDCs include supporting increased innovation in the payment system with:

Possible challenges related to use of CBDCs could include:

The ECB commissioned multiple exploratory reports on the feasibility of a digital euro in 2020 and 2021. The ECB’s working paper suggests a 2-tier system for a “general purpose” CBDC. In July 2021, the ECB announced that it would launch a 24-month investigation phase for the digital euro project, which aims to address key issues regarding the design and distribution of a digital euro. The investigation phase will include focus groups, prototyping and conceptual work. In February 2022, the European Commission announced that it will propose a bill that would serve as the legal foundation for the issuance of a digital euro by the ECB. In May 2022, Christine Lagarde stated that she would be willing to back the digital Euro. By June 2023, the ECB and European Commission had significantly advanced their legislative and technical work, moving closer to launching a pilot phase for the digital euro in 2024. The pilot phase is expected to assess the practical implementation of the digital euro, following the completion of the current investigation period​.

The working paper states that the use of CBDC for retail payments is the primary use-case for the development of a digital Euro. The paper also rejects the motivation of using CBDC as a store of value, which would involve consumers switching deposits from commercial banks into CBDC. The working paper also recommends that a CBDC should be interest-bearing, with attractive interest rates offered for smaller sums suitable for payments and lower rates available for larger amounts.

Unregulated Cryptocurrency Products – Background 

Regulators and national central banks are challenged by unregulated independent cryptocurrency products. Whereas CBDCs are under the authority of the central bank, almost all cryptocurrencies are decentralised, and not controlled or managed by any central authority.

Obviously, financial market authorities and the national central banks are not in favour of unregulated cryptocurrency products, and they see them as a systematic risk for the financial system. Their intention to regulate the respective cryptocurrency exchange platforms has gained momentum.

Cryptocurrencies, originally designed as a store of value, are digital assets, developed and maintained on decentralised blockchains, and they can be used as a medium of exchange or payment method. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular forms of cryptocurrencies worldwide used by consumers and businesses for transactions.

As of 2022, over 400 million people worldwide used cryptocurrencies, with merchants and businesses in more sectors accepting it as a form of payment. The major payment schemes VISA and Mastercard, PayPal and along with a growing number of financial institutions, have launched services allowing consumers to purchase or use cryptocurrencies for a range of applications.

According to a 2022 Deloitte survey, around two-thirds (64%) of surveyed merchants indicated that their customers have significant interest in using digital currencies for payments, and 83% expect consumer interest in digital currencies for payments to increase or significantly increase over the next 12 months.

In addition, merchants are motivated by the prospect of enabling immediate access to funds (40% of respondents), taking advantage of blockchain-based innovations in decentralised digital finance (39%), and allowing in-house management of the revenue cycle/treasury/finance department (39%).

Over half (54%) of large retailers (with revenues of $500 million and up) have invested more than $1 million on enabling digital currency payments, while only 6% of small retailers (with revenues of under $10 million) did so.

A 2022 survey from Checkout.com found a sharp rise in people wanting to use cryptocurrencies as a means of payment, with 40% of 18-35-year-old consumers citing their desire to experiment with using crypto as a payment method, up from less than 30% in 2021. Meanwhile, over 80% of businesses say offering crypto has attracted new customers, led to a decrease in chargebacks, while just over 60% have seen higher authorisation rates accepting crypto payments.

A recent report by Triple-A put cryptocurrency ownership in Europe at around 49 million people.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins are a type of asset-backed cryptocurrency, whose value is typically pegged to the value of an underlying asset such as USD, GBP, or commodities like gold. Stablecoins are partially backed by real assets, and they are designed to have a value pegged to real-world assets, therefore avoiding the extreme volatility that affects cryptocurrencies.

Stablecoins offer the potential benefits of cryptocurrencies, like transparency, security, immutability, and decentralised control, while maintaining the guarantees and stability that come with using fiat currency. Stablecoins have potential to be used in cross-border payments, providing a secure, online environment for peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions to take place without needing decentralised cryptocurrencies or to pay fees to convert money into local currencies.

As of 2024, there were more than 200 stablecoins globally, comprising a market that’s worth approximately $174 billion.

A survey of central banks in January 2021 found that two-thirds of respondents are actively researching the potential impact of stablecoins on financial stability. However, some regulators in the US and China, consider stablecoins as a potential serious risk to financial systems. The risk is especially high with centralised coins, such as those backed by fiat and issued by private organisations, as economic power would be disproportionately concentrated on a single entity.

The widespread use of stablecoins in payment platforms could also pose a systemic risk, in relation to the validation and confirmation of stablecoin transactions which could interfere with payment systems. If stablecoin users couldn’t access money in their e-wallets and businesses couldn’t receive payments, economic activity would be greatly disrupted. However, these risks have not deterred major institutions like JP Morgan and VISA to explore stablecoin use cases via partnerships and internal R&D.

Tether As of 2024, Tether remains the largest stablecoin globally, holding a market share of over 50%. This dominance is driven by its widespread usage and liquidity in crypto markets. Its nearest competitors include USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), and decentralized stablecoins like DAI, although Tether’s market share far exceeds them. Recent reports have shown Tether’s involvement in major financial markets and even Bitcoin mining, further reinforcing its stronghold on the crypto landscape.

Regarding Facebook’s Diem (formerly Libra) project, it was officially abandoned. Diem’s assets were sold off to Silvergate Capital in early 2022, marking the end of the initiative that once aimed to create a globally accessible digital currency. Regulatory pressures and internal challenges led to the dissolution of the project.

Market Size and Dynamics

Cards in Issue

Norwegian specific, table 19 is drawn from Norges Bank’s payment systems report, and shows fewer ‘cards issued’ than ‘cards with debit function.’ This is because there are 7.64 million debit cards with BankAxept function and with 7.60 million debit functions ‘issued by international card companies,’ the bank’s way of referring to VISA, Electron, Debit Mastercard and Maestro card functions. Thus, all BankAxept cards barring about 38,000 are co-badged for use outside Norway. In 2023, there were around 68,000 virtual cards in circulation.

In 2023, there were 12.62 million Norwegian cards (-1.20%), of which 138,000 million were chip-enabled and 12.42 million contactless cards for a population of 5.55 million. The number of debit cards in circulation increased by 2.88% and represented 60.53% of total cards. In 2023, there were 2.28 cards per capita.

According to Norges Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly accelerated contactless card usage. In 2023, there were 12.42 contactless cards issued, and 1,996 million (90%) of payments at physical POS locations were contactless payments. Total contactless value in 2023 was NOK 691.3 billion, compared to NOK 634.8 billion in 2022.

Domestic credit cards cover cards issued by or in co-operation with Santander Consumer Bank, DNB Kort and EnterCard, the joint venture between Swedbank and Barclays (see Sweden profile). DNB Kort and Santander Consumer Bank (formerly GE Money Bank) have pursued a strategy of adding international capability to their domestic cards in recent years.

17 – Payment Cards in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4904″]

Note: some figures have been restated.
Note: all cards with a billing function are international cards.
Note: international cards are brands VISA Debit, Maestro, VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club.
Source: Norges Bank.

18 – Contactless Payments in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4905″]

Source: Norges Bank.

Card Fraud

Card fraud is one of the most fascinating aspects of the payments industry, not least because it is relentless and mutating. EMV implementation and 3D-Secure, combined with Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), have done much to reduce domestic losses from lost and stolen cards in Europe. However, the war against fraud losses and the changing face of fraud continues to be a threat for the payments industry, including Norway.

The global card fraud challenges are Card-Not-Present fraud (CNP), cross-border fraud and counterfeiting on non-EMV cards. CNP fraud accounted for 80% of the total value of card fraud losses in 2020. From 2017, a new payment fraud category are fraud losses on contactless card payments. International card fraud continues to be smaller in scale than domestic card abuse but is proportionately far more common. And of course, fraudulent cross-border transactions on cards continue to grow on all purchase channels.

Losses from card fraud on the internet and cross-border fraud on domestic cards have grown significantly. Following EMV implementation, card fraud has moved increasingly to countries where POS terminals or online shops have not yet been migrated to EMV and SCA, respectively, and to cross-border fraud with compromised cards.

The breakdown of card fraud losses by method of compromise already indicates the importance of distinguishing between domestic and cross-border fraud losses. The method of compromise covers the means by which fraudsters obtain payment cards or card details. Notable methods of compromise in a complex payment world are CNP fraud based on theft of card credentials and card lost and stolen fraud followed by growing ID fraud and by cross-counterfeit fraud.

The main method of compromise responsible for losses in many European countries is now the theft of card credentials. A high proportion of these card fraud losses are caused by the growth in e-commerce, and still the lack of use of Strong Customer Authentication methods such as 3D-Secure.

In a post data-breach world, identity information, payment credentials, account credentials and responses to security questions are widely available for purchase in bulk. Complete fraud exploits and zero-day attacks are also easily available on the black market for outright purchase or as a hosted / fully managed service.

In the digital payments world and having the changing face of fraud in mind, there are significant challenges for card issuing banks, payment service providers and their supporting processors.

As most POS card transactions are authorised online-to-issuer, acquirer fraud rates in Norway are under control except for offline vending machines, e-commerce and other hotspots. For the per capita losses on payment cards, Norway ranks in the Nordic region second lowest after Denmark.

According to Norges Bank, fraud amounted to 0.0245% of the total volume of card payments in Norway, lower than in the EU28 countries. However, if online payments with cards issued in Norway are considered (NOK 321.7 billion in 2023), the card fraud loss figure would be 0.087%.

In 2023, Norwegian banks recorded NOK 281.0 million in losses connected with misuse of payment cards, up from NOK 219.2 million in 2022, and equivalent to NOK 244.9 per NOK million card payments value.

19 – Fraud in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4906″]

Note: in this table, losses linked to account transfers, generally using online banks, do not include fraudster manipulation.
Note: losses on cards for 2021 include both card payments and cash withdrawals.
Note: Finanstilsynet has changed it’s reporting format in line with PSD2 from the H2 of 2019, therefore direct comparison of 2018 and 2019 figures cannot be guaranteed.
Note: losses on payment cards per NOK million in sales using cards in Norway and abroad.
Source: Norges Bank annual report and Finanstilsynet.

There was a particular decline in “skimming”, i.e. card fraud where data from the magnetic stripe is copied. Important reasons for the decline in card fraud are the increased use of chips, regional blocking, mobile notification and effective police work. From 1 December 2011, magnetic stripe use on debit cards at POS terminals was phased out.

Losses in 2022 were primarily due to misuse of card-not-present transactions (NOK195.1 million).

20 – Losses by Type of Card Fraud in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4907″]

Note: 2019 figures are for H1 only due to Finanstilsynet changing its reporting format in line with PSD2 from the H2 of 2019.
Note: CAGR calculations are for 5 years to 2018 due to full year data not being available for 2019.
Source: Finanstilsynet.

Norges Bank and Finanstilsynet reported that in 2023, there was a significant increase in total losses compared to previous years. The largest increase in losses was observed in fraud involving account transfers, around 64%. In line with the increase in the number of fraudulent transactions, losses from card fraud also increased by 28.3% to NOK 281 million in 2023. The proportion of fraudulent transactions was highest for cross-border transactions outside the EEA. The proportion for all transactions was 0.006%, while it was 0.2% for transactions carried out in countries outside the EEA. For card payments initiated non-electronically, the proportion of fraudulent transactions was 0.24% in 2021.

Issuing banks reported that losses due to fraudulent card payments amounted to approximately NOK 215.8 million in 2022. Losses increased by 18% from the first to the second half of the year, representing NOK 96.8 million and NOK 119 million, respectively. In addition to this were losses of NOK 3.4 million through the misuse of payment cards to withdraw cash, which split between the first and second half of the year at NOK 1.5 million and NOK 1.9 million, respectively.

The proportion of fraud was higher when using payment cards for remote purchases, typically online shopping than for in-person shopping. For payments in remote purchasing without Strong Customer Authentication, the losses accounted for 0.07% of the value of transactions in 2022, which is down from 0.005% in 2021. For cross-border transactions outside the EEA, the losses amounted to 0.32%, which is down from 0.24% in 2021.

Card Use

Norway is a world leader in card use, with 539.5 card payments per capita in 2023 (including cashbacks and BankAxept debit cards), based on the ubiquity of BankAxept, the Norwegian debit card system.

The sustained impact of the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen in 2022’s card usage figures. According to Norges Bank, in 2023, there were 2.99 billion card payments (+4.52%) with Norwegian cards accounting for a value of NOK 1,147.4 billion (+6.87% from 2022). Included in the figures is the use of Norwegian cards abroad which accounted for 433.8 million payments (+7.64%) with a total value of NOK 227.5 billion (+14.84% from 2022). The ATV per domestic card payment amounted to NOK 359.27, equivalent to €31.45.

21 – Payments with Norwegian Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4908″]

Note: card payments on Norwegian cards include cashbacks made at POS terminals alongside purchase of goods.
Source: Norges Bank.

The breakdown per type of cards shows that transactions on domestic BankAxept cards have a market share by transaction numbers of 53.40%. Debit card use by value has grown by 4.62% between 2019 and 2023. Credit card use by value has grown, from a low level, by 6.40% over the same period. In 2023, debit card use accounted for 2.64 billion of the 3.01 billion card transactions, which is 87.58% of the total card transactions.

22 – Transactions by Type of Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4909″]

Note: figures cover payments and cash withdrawals in Norway and abroad.
Note: the ‘other credit cards’ category includes cards issued by American Express, Diners Club, Mastercard, VISA and charge cards.
Note: total card payments calculated excluding cash withdrawals and cashbacks.
Source: Norges Bank.

23 – Transactions Value by Type of Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4910″]

Note: figures cover payments and cash withdrawals in Norway and abroad.
Note: the ‘other credit cards’ category includes payment cards issued by American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, VISA and charge cards.
Note: total card payments calculated excluding cash withdrawals and cashbacks.
Source: Norges Bank.

Card Use per Capita

The total number of card transactions per capita showed a significant compound annual growth rate of 3.57% per year from 2019 to 2023.

There were 290.4 payments per capita (-3.23%) on BankAxept debit cards. Including the relatively small number of payments on domestic credit cards and international-only branded cards, there were 537.5 payments per capita (+3.38%) on all cards in 2023.

Including cashback and cash withdrawals, the total card use per capita is even higher and accounted for 543.5 transactions per capita (+3.26%) compared with 483.4 transactions per capita in 2019.

24 – Card Use Per Capita in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4911″]

Note: total card payments are calculated excluding cash withdrawals and excluding cashbacks.
Note: values calculated in euro equivalent.
Source: calculated using Norges Bank data and ECB exchange rates.

E-Money Use

In Norway, e-money is defined as payments with e-money issued by a resident payment service provider (PSP). Norges Bank figures show yearly declines due to increasing use of international payment cards and mobile payments. In 2023, there were 35,000 e-money cards in circulation, down from 96,000 cards in 2022. In 2023, total e-money purchases accounted for 2.3 million (2022: 1.3 million) with the total value NOK 1.4 billion (2022: NOK 0.8 billion). There were 7 licensed e-money institutions in Norway in 2024.

Leading Card Issuer Details

DNB Bank (formerly DnB NOR) is the market leader in Norway. DNB Kort, the card division, is Norway’s leading Mastercard issuer and had been the franchise holder for American Express’s Norwegian operations up to end-2018, having taken over issuing and acquiring of American Express in Norway in July 1999.

Cresco offers VISA and Mastercard-branded cards. DNB offers Mastercard credit cards. DNB Kort offers domestic BankAxept debit cards, and VISA Debit cards. Before the merger with DNB, Postbanken offered VISA Debit cards, Mastercard credit cards, and various postal account cards.

In 2018, DNB launched digital VISA cards for use in Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay. In May 2019, it launched a VISA digital card for Google Pay. Later that year, it also launched digital Mastercards. In its 2019 annual report, DNB stated that it was working on reducing the number of credit cards in its product range, in response to customer preference and new consumer credit regulations.

During 2020, DNB launched a pilot project for biometric cards, where fingerprints replace PIN codes regardless of the amount limit. DNB also worked to facilitate the use of DNB cards in an increasing number of digital wallets and launched QR-code payment using the payment app Vipps in shops, alongside introducing a BankAxept solution for online shopping.

DNB customers use their cards around 660 million times a year, for a total amount of approximately NOK 250 billion.

Nordea Bank Norge has stepped up issuance of cards in Norway over the past years but showed a decline to 527,000 debit cards in 2017. Its credit card portfolio declined from 249,000 at end-2016 to 236,000 at end-2017 (see also Finland profile). Nordea issues debit cards BankAxept co-badged Electron or VISA Debit, credit cards branded Mastercard prepaid cards and virtual cards for online use. Nordea is Statoil’s partner in its Statoil Mastercard co-branded credit card programme.  The bank did not provide an update for 2023.

Danske Bank Norge (previously Fokus Bank) issues BankAxept cards, Debit Mastercard cards, Mastercard/ VISA credit cards, prepaid cards, and a few virtual cards for internet use. In October 2017, Danske Bank terminated its MobilePay app in Norway and moved to support Vipps instead.

Eika Gruppen and the SpareBank 1 banks issue a range of Mastercard and VISA credit, charge and prepaid cards, and BankAxept debit cards co-badged Electron or VISA Debit. Both banks transformed their mobile payment apps, EiKA wallet and mCash, into the Norwegian mobile payment app, Vipps.

According to SpareBank 1, as of 2021 physical cards remained the preferred means of payment in Norway. SpareBank 1 Østlandet had around 415,000 debit and credit cards in its portfolio at the end of 2021, with customers spending NOK 52.2 billion via 114 million cards transactions in 2021. No update for 2022 and 2023.

Handelsbanken Norge issues Debit Mastercard cards, Mastercard credit cards, prepaid cards, and few virtual cards for internet use. In addition, Handelsbanken will offer mobile payments through the Vipps app. In July 2018, Handelsbanken, BankAxept and EVRY launched a contactless BankAxept card that can be put into a wristband, bracelet, watch strap or keyring.

EnterCard Group, founded in 2005, is one of Scandinavia’s leading credit market companies with over 2 million cardholders in three Nordic markets. It operates two branches in Norway and Denmark, respectively. EnterCard Group is owned by Swedish Swedbank (60%) and Barclays Bank (40%) from the UK, through a joint venture.

EnterCard issues cards branded Mastercard or VISA. EnterCard’s main partnership is with SpareBank 1 Alliance, the biggest savings bank group, and it also has partnerships with two large membership organisations, Coop and LOfavor.

SEB Kort, by some measures the biggest charge and credit card issuer in the Nordic region, has no retail branch network in Norway, but expanded its presence with the purchase of Europay Norge, announced in November 2002. SEB Kort issues Diners cards in Norway as well as Eurocard and Mastercard credit/charge cards. It reported 600,000 customers in Norway in mid-2009 but provided no subsequent updates.

Ikano Bank, the financial services arm of Ikea (S), entered into a long-term cooperation agreement with Shell in May 2010, including the purchase of the Shell Mastercard card portfolio by Ikano Bank. The SHELL loyalty programme was managed by Citibank. As part of the deal, Ikano acquired Citi’s portfolio of customer loans totalling NOK 283 million. Ikano Bank issues Shell Mastercard cards, Ikano VISA cards and IKEA Kort private label revolving credit cards.

Consumer Finance Credit Card Issuers

In June 2014, Banco Santander Consumer Finance signed a definitive agreement to acquire GE Money Bank and its consumer finance business in Sweden, Denmark and Norway for around €700 million. GE Money issued bank cards and retail cards in Norway, usually Mastercard-branded.

Santander Consumer Finance Nordic had 1.65 million customers in the Nordic region as of December 2023.

In March 2021, Santander Consumer Bank launched a personal finance management (PFM) app in partnership with Aiia’s Open Banking platform. The Prosper app enables users to get an overview of all of their bank accounts, regardless of who they bank with.

LaSer Cofinoga subsidiary EkspresBank is Denmark’s leading in-store and direct acquisition consumer credit provider (see Denmark profile). In April 2008, EkspresBank acquired, through parent LaSer, a minority interest of 35% in Aconto Capital, Norway’s leading consumer credit broker, so launching its business activity in the country. EkspresBank also opened a branch in Norway.

Nordic Forso is the joint venture (50:50) between Crédit Agricole-owned consumer finance specialist Sofinco and FCE Bank plc, the captive finance company of Ford Europe. Set up in 2008, it operates in all four main Nordic markets: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. In February 2020, Ford Motor Company and Santander Consumer Bank closed the sale of Forso Nordic to Santander Consumer Bank.

Appendix

Significant Events in Norwegian Banking – source: Yearbooks research

November 2024

November 2024

August 2019

June 2019

September 2018

 Danske Bank completed the sale of its Norwegian personal customer and private banking business to Nordea.

A merger between SpareBank 1 Østlandet and Totens Sparebank was completed

Mastercard enters into a partnership with P27 to deliver real-time payments across the Nordics.

Mastercard acquires the Real-time Payments Platform (RPP) from NETS

Private equity investor Blackstone agreed to acquire a 60% stake in Luminor Bank. Nordea Group and DNB Bank retained a20% stake, respectively.

Data Tables

1 – Banks in Norway 2023

[ninja_tables id=”4888″]

Note: Nordea acquired Gjensidige Bank in March 2019 and launched digital bank Nordea Direct Bank in February 2020.
Note: Banks Federation figures may differ from those published by individual banks.
Source: Finans Norge (FNO), Nordea Bank Norge.

2 – BankAxess Use

[ninja_tables id=”4889″]

Source: Norges Bank.

3 – Cashless Payment Transactions in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4890″]

Note: giros delivered at the counter (cash payments) are not included.
Source: Norges Bank.

4 – Average Exchange Rates

[ninja_tables id=”4891″]

Source: ECB.

5 – Charges on Selected Norwegian Payment Instruments

[ninja_tables id=”4892″]

Note: weighted averages; year to January 1.
Note: prices in loyalty schemes are only NOK 0.1 to 0.2 or for free (i.e. in-house at own bank).
Source: Norges Bank.

6 – Transactions on BankAxept Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4893″]

Source: Norges Bank.

7 – Leading Card Issuers in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4894″]

Source: PCM research

8 – Leading Acquirers in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4895″]

Source: PCM research

9 – ATMs and Cash Withdrawals in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4896″]

Note: ATM terminal figures have been restated.
Source: Norges Bank.

10 – Cash Withdrawal Breakdown by Type of Card

[ninja_tables id=”4897″]

Note: from 2020 Norges Bank no longer gives separate figures for national or international cards.
Note: figures are for Norwegian cards and foreign cards in Norway.
Source: Norges Bank.

11 – Norwegian ATM Withdrawal Charges

[ninja_tables id=”4898″]

Note: process during opening hours; prices in loyalty schemes are only NOK 0.1 to 0.2 or for free (i.e. in-house at own bank).
Note: from 2017, charges for ATM withdrawals on debit cards at own bank’s ATM were set to NOK 5.50 discouraging ATM withdrawals, since then charges have increased.
Source: Norges Bank.

12 – POS Terminals in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4899″]

Source: Norges Bank.

13 – POS Terminals and BankAxept Payments

[ninja_tables id=”4900″]

Note: all figures for POS payments at AbankAxept terminals have been restated
Source: Norges Bank.

14 – Development of Cashback in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4901″]

Note: figures cover cashbacks on bank cards, international cards, domestic credit cards and as well as use of foreign cards in Norway.
Note: cashbacks made on POS terminals are alongside purchase of goods only.
Source: Norges Bank.

15 – Internet Use in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4902″]

Source: Eurostat, ITU.

16 – Use of Norwegian Cards on the Internet

[ninja_tables id=”4903″]

Source: Norges Bank.

17 – Payment Cards in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4904″]

Note: some figures have been restated.
Note: all cards with a billing function are international cards.
Note: international cards are brands VISA Debit, Maestro, VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club.
Source: Norges Bank.

18 – Contactless Payments in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4905″]

Source: Norges Bank.

19 – Fraud in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4906″]

Note: in this table, losses linked to account transfers, generally using online banks, do not include fraudster manipulation.
Note: losses on cards for 2021 include both card payments and cash withdrawals.
Note: Finanstilsynet has changed it’s reporting format in line with PSD2 from the H2 of 2019, therefore direct comparison of 2018 and 2019 figures cannot be guaranteed.
Note: losses on payment cards per NOK million in sales using cards in Norway and abroad.
Source: Norges Bank annual report and Finanstilsynet.

20 – Losses by Type of Card Fraud in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4907″]

Note: 2019 figures are for H1 only due to Finanstilsynet changing its reporting format in line with PSD2 from the H2 of 2019.
Note: CAGR calculations are for 5 years to 2018 due to full year data not being available for 2019.
Source: Finanstilsynet.

21 – Payments with Norwegian Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4908″]

Note: card payments on Norwegian cards include cashbacks made at POS terminals alongside purchase of goods.
Source: Norges Bank.

22 – Transactions by Type of Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4909″]

Note: figures cover payments and cash withdrawals in Norway and abroad.
Note: the ‘other credit cards’ category includes cards issued by American Express, Diners Club, Mastercard, VISA and charge cards.
Note: total card payments calculated excluding cash withdrawals and cashbacks.
Source: Norges Bank.

23 – Transactions Value by Type of Cards

[ninja_tables id=”4910″]

Note: figures cover payments and cash withdrawals in Norway and abroad.
Note: the ‘other credit cards’ category includes payment cards issued by American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, VISA and charge cards.
Note: total card payments calculated excluding cash withdrawals and cashbacks.
Source: Norges Bank.

24 – Card Use Per Capita in Norway

[ninja_tables id=”4911″]

Note: total card payments are calculated excluding cash withdrawals and excluding cashbacks.
Note: values calculated in euro equivalent.
Source: calculated using Norges Bank data and ECB exchange rates.

Digital & Card Payment Yearbooks