With a thriving fintech scene and almost cashless societies, Scandinavia has long been a global leader in financial innovation. Back in 2012, for instance, Sweden became the first country in Europe to launch digital payments. And more recently, the Nordic governments have signed a partnership known as Vision 2030, to position the region as a leader in digitisation, ethical AI, and open finance.

One of the biggest innovations in payments is open banking, the initiative that allows for financial data to be shared between banks and third-party service providers. So, what is the state of open banking in the Nordics?

In this article, we answer some of the questions you might have if you’re looking to implement open banking in the region.

We cover:

• What’s the state of open banking adoption in the Nordic region?
• What’s the future of open banking adoption in the Nordics?
• What are the top open banking providers in the Nordics?
• Why use Yapily as your open banking provider in Scandinavia
• How Sweden’s Juni uses Yapily for open banking technology across Europe

Are you looking for an open banking provider in the Nordics? Yapily could be the perfect fit. Book a call with an industry expert to find out more.

What’s the state of open banking adoption in the Nordic region?

Each of the Nordic countries—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland—has its own specific character, industries, and economic strengths. But, when it comes to technology, if there’s one thing that ties them together, it’s a trust in digital infrastructure.

“The Nordics have adapted to open banking quickly,” Rune Mai, former CEO of Aiia (which was acquired by Mastercard), commented back in 2020.

“This can be attributed to a number of things: the region is already digitally advanced, there’s a real desire from the banks to be open in order for progress to be made, and unlike many parts of Europe, the Nordics very much take a collaborative and thorough approach. All of this contributes to creating the perfect environment for open banking innovation.”

The data speaks for itself. Across the Nordic region, digital banking now has a penetration rate of over 92% (according to a 2023 study by Mastercard). And in the 2020-22 period covered by the study, each Nordic country saw a growth in the number of licensed third-party providers (TPPs).

Most significantly, in Norway, the number of open banking licences for payment initiation service providers (PISPs) and account information service providers (AISPs)grew by over 2000%. It shows an extremely active market, powered by high levels of competition.

Nordic consumers are embracing open banking technology too. According to Deloitte’s Data Ethics Consumer Research Report, Scandinavian consumers are confident about sharing data with businesses. The data suggests that Danish and Swedish consumers, for instance, are 33% more likely to share their data than their German counterparts.

But how do the different Nordic countries compare?

• Sweden, a nation on track to become the world’s first cashless society—is the Nordic country that stands out when it comes to open banking. In 2022, we ranked it third in our European open banking league table, behind just the UK and Germany.

• Denmark is one of the region’s most active nations when it comes to fintech. According to the Digital Economy and Society Index, it ranks first in the EU for digital connectivity and second for the integration of digital technologies and public services. These are the ideal conditions for open banking adoption.

• Finland, like Denmark, has high levels of digitisation in its economy. While its open banking ecosystem is not quite as advanced, it continues to grow, with new PISP and AISP licenses being issued.

• Norway was home to the first euro-area central bank to open its payment system to non-bank financial services providers. Plus, the introduction of digital identification solutions like BankID has bolstered consumer confidence in digital financial services.

• Iceland may be small, but it’s highly technologically advanced. In 2023, Iceland’s largest bank, Landsbankinn, became the first bank in the country to offer PIS and AIS services.

What’s the future of open banking adoption in the Nordics?

With the region’s proactive approach to digital transformation and widespread adoption of digital finance, the future is bright for open banking in the Nordics.

One of the most important initiatives for open banking adoption here has been Vision 2030. In 2019, the prime ministers came together to announce this plan to make the Nordic region the most sustainable and integrated in the world. Part of the vision was to drive progress in open finance and open data, including the development of an open banking system to make “companies’ financial data available throughout the Nordic Region”.

It’s another sign of the continuation of the strong tradition of collaboration between government bodies, financial institutions, and the technology sector—-which has characterised the Nordic region in recent years. These collaborations are likely to make open banking adoption increasingly widespread.

Another positive step was taken in February 2024, when Sweden joined the Eurosystem TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) scheme. This enabled PSPs to settle instant payments in central bank money with the euro and Swedish krona. We may likely see the remaining Nordic countries follow suit.

Why use Yapily as your open banking provider in the Nordics

If you want to take advantage of Scandinavia’s maturing open banking market, you’ll need a platform that’s able to support you across the region and beyond.

Yapily is an open banking solution that connects you with nearly 2,000 banks and financial institutions across Europe. Our technology has coverage in 19 countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland—and other key markets such as Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK.

We’re not like other basic open banking solutions, however. Instead of simply selling a rigid, predesigned user interface,** Yapily specialises in providing the infrastructure of open banking**. We build the API infrastructure on which you can develop your own applications and products, so you can best serve your customers—wherever they’re located.

Here are three reasons why you should work with Yapily for your open banking needs.

1. Leverage open banking payments and data with a single platform

Typically, most open banking platforms are either a payment initiation service provider (PISP) *or *an account information service provider (AISP).

It means that if you want to offer both account-to-account payments *and *data functionality, you’ll usually need two separate solutions. Inevitably, this means twice the cost—and twice the effort involved in onboarding and integration.

At Yapily, we’re authorised as both a PISP and an AISP, so that you can offer both kinds of service while using just one solution.

We support innovative open banking payment types, including:

• Pay by Bank payments—direct from one account to another
• Sweeping variable recurring payments (VRP), which automate recurring payments of varying value between accounts with the same owner.

Alongside these payment types, Yapily supports a range of data services. Merchants can access information from their customers’ accounts—including account owner and bank names, balances, and transaction histories—for KYC checks, instant account verification, and more.

Plus, with Yapily Data Plus, you can also leverage our data enrichment capabilities too. You can see transaction types broken down into 20+ incoming and 80+ outgoing transactions, and quickly see recurring transactions. It makes it much easier to understand your customers’ spending.

2. Use our white-label infrastructure to ensure your brand takes centre-stage

Most open banking providers offer pre-built flows for payments and data services. While these can be useful, they often limit your ability to customise the user experience.

Yapily takes a different approach. As an open banking infrastructure provider, we give you the tools for you to build seamless, embedded payment and data experiences into your current offerings—without the constraints of off-the-shelf solutions.

With Yapily’s API, your end users no longer need to be redirected away from your merchants’ interfaces to complete payments on unfamiliar platforms. Instead, you can enable merchants to offer a frictionless user journey that enhances trust and boosts conversion rates.

Our white-label infrastructure lets you customise the payment flow to match your merchants’ brand, ensuring a consistent and recognisable experience for their customers.

If speed to market is your priority, you can also use our hosted payment pages—ideal for businesses that want a quick, low-resource solution without compromising on the benefits of open banking. You might decide to start out with our hosted options while you build out your white-label payment experience.

3. Connect with consumer and business accounts across the Nordics and the rest of Europe

A critical consideration when you’re choosing an open banking provider is coverage—i.e. the banks and financial institutions that provider connects with in any given geography.

So, if you’re looking to provide open banking payment solutions or data services in the Nordics, you’ll need to be certain that your provider connects with a sufficient range of banks in these markets.

However, don’t just rely on the brute number of banks a provider claims to connect with. Such connections are often not like-for-like, and a simple number doesn’t give you insight into the kinds of connections and services each provider enables through each bank. For instance, while it may connect with consumer accounts, it may not have any connections with business accounts.

With Yapily, you can reliably connect with banks in the Nordic region, thanks to our coverage for both payments and data. Plus, you can support both consumer and business accounts, so you can serve both B2B and B2C customers. You can get more information on our exact coverage by logging into our API console (it’s free). This also enables you to access an open banking sandbox.

And if you want to expand into other European markets, we can help you too. We have coverage in 19 countries across Europe—including key markets such as Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.

How Sweden’s Juni uses Yapily for open banking technology across Europe

Juni is a fintech platform based in Göteborg, Sweden, that supports ecommerce businesses to manage their finances.

These businesses are typically having to manage multiple bank accounts with huge volumes of transactions—while also juggling ad spend, applying for credit, and much more. As such, it’s a huge challenge for them to get visibility on their finances in real time and to make decisions to maximise their growth.

Juni was built to solve these exact challenges. It does so by aggregating data from businesses’ multiple accounts onto one platform—to give them better oversight of their finances.

To do this, Juni relies on Yapily’s open banking infrastructure. Thanks to Yapily’s broad coverage across Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, Juni is able to aggregate financial data from its users’ various business accounts. And using this data, it’s able to offer its customers tailored lines of credit—which they’re often not able to access from traditional lenders.

What’s more, Juni also leverages Yapily Payments, to enable its customers to top up their Juni wallets and move funds between their bank accounts.

As a result of working with Yapily, Juni has been able to:

• Process over £2 million in open banking payments
• Increase customers’ visibility on spending from three to 18 months
• Provide a more robust credit decision system, based on real-time data.

Read the full case study: How Juni + Yapily support ecommerce businesses through open banking

Reach out to us to get started with open banking in the Nordics

In this guide, we’ve shared some of the key data about open banking in the Nordics, including trends, key players, and forecasts for the future. It’s an exciting time in a rapidly growing market—and if you want to serve customers in the region with open banking, there’s no time like the present.

At Yapily, we can support you to offer open banking across the Nordic region. You can use our robust API technology for data and payments, whether in consumer or business accounts.

Want to see what Yapily can do for you? Reach out to us to speak to an expert.

¹ https://openbankingeu.mastercard.com/