Powered payments during the major charity event Musikhjälpen reached a record

How do you get millions of Swedish kronor to move smoothly into a charity’s donation box? During the December 25’ edition, Nordea, with Swish, supports the foundation Radiohjälpen’s efforts kept the intense event Musikhjälpen running without a single disruption.  

Swish operated at 100% availability throughout the entire event, even during peak moments when thousands of payments hit the system within seconds. This solid stability contributed for Radiohjälpen to surpass all previous fundraising records.The result is a historic SEK 74.6 million raised for an important cause: “All children have the right to go to school”. 

"Fantastic feeling"

This outcome reflects a strong support of Nordea and Swish to the Musikhjälpen organisers, as well as Nordea’s strategic push to prioritise resilience and customer experience.  

“Musikhjälpen 2025 can be summed up in one word - success! It feels fantastic that Nordea played a key role in making this record possible,” says Tomas Larsson, Application Owner for Swish at Nordea. 

Proving the value of resilience 

In earlier years, heavy traffic occasionally caused service degradation and rejected payments during peak moments. Throughout 2025, the team had operational stability as its key priority, implementing targeted improvements that strengthened system capacity, improved performance and enhanced recovery mechanisms. Several technical enhancements also increased efficiency, reducing CPU usage and lowering operating costs. These efforts ensured uninterrupted Swish service across all hightrafficperiods.  

"A big part of this progress comes from the team’s strong customer focus. Keeping the customer's perspective close to our daily work helps us spot improvements early and refine the service continuously. That proactive approach has been an important contributor to the resilience gains we’ve seen this year,” says Sravan Madina, Scrum master for the Swish team.  

Hard work that continues to pay off 

During 2025, the Retail & Mobile team implemented multiple upgrades across the Swish infrastructure, from faster timeout handling to more efficient credit processing mechanisms, smarter load balancer tuning, and performance optimisations within key backend services. These combined improvements significantly increased capacity and stability across both private and merchant transaction flows. And the journey continues. With transaction volumes expected to rise again in 2026, further enhancements are already planned to ensure Nordea remains ahead of peak demand moments and continues delivering best in class payment stability. 

“We have invested significant effort into strengthening Swish reliability, and it is great to see those improvements shine during such an important event. This gives us strong momentum as we continue to improve the service”, adds Sravan.