OP and Nordea are establishing a joint venture whose goal is to solve payment challenges domestically.
The plan is to develop solutions for paying “by phone number and managing e-invoices that benefit both consumers and companies.”
The solution is built to “be open to other market players as well.”
The joint venture reportedly “enables easier sending and receiving of current e-invoices, as well as consumer-to-consumer payments and online payments using a phone number.”
The goal is to “simplify payment through the banks’ own channels.”
With the joint venture, they claim to be “preparing for the future breakthrough of payments in Finland and we will produce faster and better solutions for merchants.” In the future, the merchant could “send e-invoices to his customers using just a phone number.”
This project is described as a natural development “for the financial industry, which we have seen examples of in other Nordic countries as well, says Jani Eloranta, Nordea’s head of personal customer business .”
As noted in the update, Finnish society needs “more domestic solutions for the development of payments.” The teams hope that as many market players “as possible will join the network in the future to develop the operating model and services.”
They reportedly want to “offer companies even better account-based payment services and at the same time streamline consumers’ customer experience,” describes OP’s director responsible for everyday financial services, Masa Peura.
The goal of OP and Nordea is to “expand the operations of Siirto Brand Oy, which they already own equally, where Siirto’s current merchant services would be transferred.”
The planned arrangement concerns the solutions “offered to companies and traders.”
In the first phase, the services are to be “built around a common payee register, and in the future, other account-based payment solutions would also be developed more widely.”
The goal is to start the company’s operations in 2024, and “before that, customers will continue to use the Siirto service as before.”
In order to be implemented, the arrangement “requires the approval of the competition authority.”
