Nordea joins European instant payment service

The new pan-European Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) instant payments scheme has made the dream of lightning fast transfers a reality.

By making instant Euro transfers available to its customers in Finland, Nordea has become the first bank in the Nordics to offer this breakthrough service.

Modern consumers increasingly expect to be able to make purchases at any time of the day and for their goods and services to be delivered almost immediately. In the Nordic region, adoption of local instant mobile payment services such as Siirto in Finland, Swish in Sweden and Mobile Pay in Denmark, has become the norm.

Until now, SEPA payments between banks have been processed during normal banking days, leaving customers often waiting hours or a whole weekend to receive payments. With this new service from Nordea, transferring Euros between banks is as quick as receiving a cash payment from a person standing next to you.

Nordea is the first Nordic bank and one of the first banks in Europe to offer SEPA instant credit transfers, with its customers in Finland able to receive instant Euro payments from other European banks that have adopted the service.

For Nordea, the next step in making instant payments standard is to enable its customers to send payments using a variety of existing and new channels. Whilst adopting SEPA is currently optional for banks, it is estimated that by 2020 most European banks in the SEPA area of 34 countries will have joined.