Nordea and OP form a joint venture to enhance payment services in Finland

OP and Nordea are establishing a joint venture to create Finnish solutions for payment challenges. The idea is to develop new solutions for phone-number-based payments and e-invoice management, benefitting consumers and businesses alike. The solution will also be open to other market participants. 

The joint venture will make sending and receiving e-invoices easier as well as enable consumer-to-consumer payments and online payments using a phone number. The goal is to provide simpler ways to make payments in the banks’ own channels. 

“With this joint venture, we are preparing for the future transformation of payments in Finland and will be able to provide better solutions to merchants faster. We want merchants to be able to send e-invoices to their customers using just the customer’s phone number. Collaboration is the natural way forward in the financial sector, and we have seen examples of similar collaborations in the other Nordic countries, too,” says Jani Eloranta, Head of Personal Banking Finland at Nordea.

“Finnish society needs more domestic solutions to further improve payments. We hope that as many market participants as possible will join our network and efforts to develop a new operating model and services. We want to offer businesses better account-based payment services, while creating an even smoother customer experience for consumers,” says Masa Peura, Senior Vice President of Everyday Banking at OP. 

Nordea and OP aim to move the current Siirto merchant services under Siirto Brand Oy, a company which the two banks own with equal shares and whose operations they hope to expand. The arrangement will only concern solutions offered to businesses and merchants. At the initial stage, the plan is to create services around a joint beneficiary register. Other account-based payment solutions will also be developed further down the line. The goal is for the company to start its operations in 2024. Until then, customers will be able to continue to use the current Siirto service as before.

The arrangement is pending approval from the competition authorities.

For further information:

Communication FI, 09 4245 1006 or media [at] nordea.com (media[at]nordea[dot]com)