P27 connects the Nordic payments market

P27 withdraws its clearing license application

P27 have withdrawn its clearing license application from Finansinspektionen due to changed conditions for P27s operating model. P27 will, together with us owner banks, evaluate the best options forward for the industry.

The owner banks take full responsibility to ensure a resilient and future proofed payment infrastructure in Sweden. Current payment infrastructure will remain operational as long as needed.

The change to ISO20022 format continues as planned and is not impacted by this change.

For more information go to P27 Nordic Payments webpage: P27 Nordic Payments

About P27

The market for payments in the Nordics is already one of the most advanced in the world. With the P27 platform transactions, it will become even more transparent and efficient.

P27 is a partnership between SEB and several other leading Nordic banks with the joint goal of creating the world’s first multi-currency and multi-country clearing platform. It will enable domestic and cross border real-time payments on a secure and flexible platform. The new platform will be accessible for the 27 million inhabitants in the Nordic countries, hence the name P27.

Denmark, Finland and Sweden are starting out, and Norway is involved in planning for the next steps.

Prepare for ISO 20022 format

For the platform to work, all involved parties must use the same payment format. This is the reason for changing to ISO 20022 – it is a step towards making your payments faster, smoother and more secure.

Changes for corporates, ERPs and service agencies

Corporates

All corporate customers need to move from the old Swedish Bankgiro file formats into ISO 20022 for Swedish payment files. Corporate customers that have direct communication access with Bankgirot - via file transfers - will need to integrate directly with SEB instead.

Payments are often managed in the accounting or ERP systems, and in such cases, it is the ERP vendor that needs to prepare. We recommend that you contact the ERP vendor to ensure that a migration into ISO 20022 is possible.

After contacting your ERP vendor, reach out to your SEB contact and together we can plan for a successful migration. To be finalized well before end of June 2023.

ERP providers and service agencies

When P27 launches, all file communication will be in the ISO 20022 format, and file communication will be directly with the bank. Today’s payments and balance reporting will be replaced with new products using the ISO 20022 standard. It is important that ERP vendors and service agencies can support this new format as of 2022 to enable migration to ISO 20022 of underlying corporate customers.

Changes to ERP vendors and service agencies
About File Integration Service Providers

Future payments and the effect of ISO 20022

Find out more about the challenges and opportunities when migrating to the new payment format ISO 20022.

Scania, MEKO and Nomentia shares their experience and advise in this webinar.

Recorded October 2022

What is P27?

P27 is a digital payment platform that will enable a multicurrency clearing for cross border and domestic payments. P27 will enable instant credit transfers to and from corporates and private persons via their banks or payment service providers. The payment formats will be based on the same standards as used in the European region for SEPA payments and thereby contribute to streamlined and efficient payment processes, e.g., reconciliation of payments and simplifying error handling of payments independently of currencies – EUR, DKK and SEK. The rulebooks used in P27 are kept and governed by Nordic Payment Council. By aligning standards with those of Single Euro Payments Area and applying to payments in the eurozone, P27 will bring further harmonization to the European payments landscape.

To fully benefit of the new payment infrastructure the legacy payment infrastructures in the Nordics need to be replaced. More information about the payment platform is available on the website https://nordicpayments.eu/

One payment format – ISO 20022

The Nordics will in the future have one common payment standard. It is called ISO 20022 and is a standardized format for electronic payment information. ISO 20022 is becoming a global language for payments messaging, used by payment systems in over 70 countries. According to the International Standards Organization, ISO 20022 will in the next few years be supporting around 80 % of global volumes and around 87% of value of transactions worldwide.

In Europe ISO 20022 is used for European SEPA payments end-to-end. This is not the case for domestic payments in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, which have local standards and a more fragmented payments structure, hence not yet an ISO 20022 standard end-to-end.

ISO 20022 will be the standard for all payments on the new Nordic payments platform, regardless of whether payment is made via file transfer, an online bank, or Swish (or equivalent services in the other Nordic countries).

By producing a common standard and model for payments data, ISO 20022 substantially improves the quality of data across the whole payment infrastructure. ISO 20022 gives possibility for richer data end-to-end, the data in turn is structured and more relevant. It allows for quality data which means quality payments. Quality together with meaningful data will improve user experiences, while also improving compliance and efficiency. This means more transparency and more remittance information for the users.

Frequently asked questions: Corporations

Credit transfers, corporate customers via the bank’s online service

Banks are obligated to specify a name in connection with a transfer, and thus the recipient’s name is required in the planned Nordic payment infrastructure.

Yes. What’s new is that the recipient’s name will be required, and it will be possible to include a longer message (remittance information). In addition, payments will be executed faster than before (bank specific).

Messages can be 140 characters long (remittance information). This can be compared with 12 characters for a transfer in the current format (can be bank specific).

The format standards that will be used in the planned Nordic payment structure are the payment and payment reporting formats within the ISO 20022 standard. This standard will gradually replace the existing formats. This also means that the same type of format can be used for all payments regardless of whether they are domestic or foreign transactions.

Yes, these will work. In addition, payments will be completed faster and have a better cut-off time than before.

Yes, this will be possible. The sender will be able to make payments to your Bankgiro number. When you are notified about an incoming payment, the Bankgiro number will be provided in a reference field.

Yes, this will be possible. The sender will be able to include an OCR number as a reference (remittance information).

For customers that today have paper-based reports for details of payments, file-based reporting in the ISO 20022 format or other format offered by the bank will be required.

Yes.

Money orders

If the planned new payment infrastructure does not offer money orders, your method of handling/administrating new registrations (your processes) will need to be changed so that you obtain account information for payees or, alternatively, contact a bank that offers the money order service.

FAQ: Private persons

Credit transfers

Banks are obligated to specify a name in connection with a transfer, and thus the recipient’s name is required in the planned Nordic payment infrastructure.

Yes, these will work. In addition, payments will be executed faster and have a later cut-off time than before.

In the future messages can be up to 140 characters long (remittance information).

Yes, as long as BG and PG payments continue to be used, OCR references will exist.

Envelope payments

Yes, you will be able to continue using it.