Six Nordic banks are part of the P27 project, and will be the owners of the resulting infrastructure: SEB, Handelsbanken, Nordea, Swedbank, OP och Danske Bank. Swedish business paper Dagens Industri has published an interview with the entity’s new CEO Lars Sjögren, who shifts employer after 20 years at Danske.
Simplifying cross-currency payments between companies in different Nordic countries is one key purpose. For consumers there is also the view that real-time payment apps, such as Sweden’s widely-adopted Swish and Denmark’s Mobilpay, could be used across borders. The interoperability is currently hampered by lack of integration between separate clearing systems.
Investing half billion SEK
“I expect that we will make it. We are talking about an investment of over 500 million SEK for the structure, and we plan to perform the first transaction before 2020 is over,” says Lars Sjögren to Dagens Industri.
At the beginning of the P27 collaboration, DNB was also involved, but the Norwegian bank has left the group.