Finland

ACI’s Take

Mobile commerce adoption in Finland remains the lowest in the Nordic region (33% of total Finnish eCommerce), allowing huge space for growth in this area if neighboring markets are a guide to what’s possible. And in physical stores, the population is happy to rely on traditional near-field contactless (NFC) payments via card, with mobile phone payments only representing 10% of the grand total.

In common with most of its regional neighbors, the Bank of Finland is also keeping a close eye on developments around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). In an analysis bulletin on the topic, it concluded that CBDCs require “…extensive analysis and also value choices. The Bank of Finland is participating in this work in the Eurosystem, but no decisions have been made on the introduction of a digital euro.”

Despite the regular celebrations of interconnectedness in the region, fraud prevention and management has historically been fragmented due to locally owned approaches. But stronger collaboration between the markets’ various financial intelligence units, built around centrally hosted data, is transforming risk management and AML monetary disclosure reporting.

Developments such as this and the ongoing P27 cross-border initiative can only benefit Finnish banks and payment players, as they enjoy greater interoperability between domestic, regional and international schemes. But its banks must ensure that their requirements are accurately reflected in joint projects, if they are to truly benefit from greater choice and lower costs.

While the ideal state for banks to aim for is relatively simple — a common and uniform set of gateway services that can provide multi-scheme access — there will be important decisions to make each step of the way around what resides in the cloud, either on hosted infrastructure or as managed services, and what remains on premise.