Passengers using public transport across the Swedish capital of Stockholm can now make tokenized contactless payments for single adult fares on metro, rail, bus, tram and boat services by tapping their debit or credit card or smartphone at a ticket reader... More
Estonia is to test digital vaccine passports that will enable residents to prove they have been inoculated against Covid-19 as part of a project to create a globally recognised electronic certification programme... More
The governments of Denmark and Sweden have both announced that they are to develop and introduce digital vaccine certificates that will enable residents to prove they have been inoculated against Covid-19... More
NFCW EXPO: Fidesmo, a contactless platform provider that makes it possible for issuers to connect payment, transit ticketing and access control cards to a wide range of both passive and active devices, has opened a booth in the NFCW Expo... More
Customers of Swedish challenger bank Rocker will soon be able to take part in a proof-of-concept pilot of a biometric debit card that enables them to authenticate contactless in-store payments with their fingerprint... More
Finland’s OP Financial Group is to pilot a biometric payment card that will allow users to authenticate payments over the contactless transaction limit with their fingerprint rather than with a PIN... More
The proportion of in-store purchases made using contactless cards in the Nordic countries has risen from 57% in January this year to 75% in late October, an increase “in part driven by concerns around the potential spread of Covid-19,” regional payments processor Nets reports... More
Some 70% of Swedish consumers would be interested in having a biometric payment card so they can make high-value transactions without having to touch a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a new survey reveals — and 59% would be willing to pay a monthly fee for one... More
Nearly two-thirds of consumers in Europe (63%) have abandoned a digital bank application in the past year, compared with 40% in 2019, according to new research... More
A working group set up by seven central banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has laid out a set of ground rules for the successful issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)... More
Swedish consumers could be able to make and receive low-cost instant cross-currency transactions to and from any euro area country via the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform once the Swedish kronor joins the platform in May 2022... More
Consumers living in remote parts of rural Sweden where conventional stores and supermarkets have closed down can now use their mobile phones to buy goods 24 hours a day at automated, unmanned grocery stores operated by Swedish retail start-up Lifvs... More
Countries with digitised and innovative economies are more likely to be developing central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects while those with a larger informal economy are tending to focus on creating retail CBDCs, a working paper published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reports... More
A new amendment to the Swedish Payment Services Act means that online merchants must now present non-credit options ahead of any options that involve the consumer taking out credit... More
PayPal users in 28 countries across the world are now able to use their PayPal app to make QR code-based mobile payments in stores — and standard seller transaction fees are being waived “for a limited time” for merchants using the new functionality... More
The contactless payments growth rate in the Nordic region has doubled during the first four months of this year, regional payments processor Nets reports, “as social distancing steers Nordic consumers away from chip and PIN”... More
Updated 8 December 2020: Countries around the world are increasing the contactless transaction limit in a bid to combat the spread of Covid-19... More
Mastercard is now working with 29 countries across Europe and central Asia to implement increases to their contactless payment transaction limit, the payments network says... More
Sweden’s central bank The Riksbank has begun testing a digital currency designed to enable consumers to store an electronic version of the Swedish krona in a digital wallet and make payments, deposits and withdrawals using a mobile app... More
Data on the latest adoption rates for contactless transactions, tokenization, transit payments and secure remote commerce has been made available by Visa CEO Al Kelly — along with details of the revenue model to be used by Plaid, which Visa is to acquire for $5.3bn... More
