Payments in Sweden 2020

Swedish payments to be integrated internationally

Download PDF

New solution for instant payments in kronor

Published: 29 October 2020

Instant payments are expected to become increasingly common in the future, and are expected to have more areas of use. Perhaps, for example, households may want to be able to pay for a car or redeem a mortgage and see that the payment has been executed directly. Today, almost all payments in Swedish kronor are settled between financial institutions in the Riksbank’s RIX payment system, that is, in central bank money. Settlement in central bank money entails lower risks for the financial system. At present, it is only instant payments that are not settled in the Riksbank’s payment system. These are instead settled on a private technical platform and thus not in central bank money. In the long run, instant payments are expected to become an increasingly important part of the Swedish payment market, which means that some of the payments currently settled in central bank money will be migrated to instant settlement on a private technical platform.

To ensure that settlement between financial institutions continues to take place in central bank money, the Riksbank therefore made an agreement with the ECB in the spring of 2020 to make it possible to pay in Swedish kronor via the ECB’s system for instant payments, the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service. Sharing the platform with other central banks allows economies of scale to be attained, entailing lower costs for society than would be the case if the Riksbank were to develop its own system. The Riksbank’s new service, RIX-INST, is expected to be ready in the spring of 2022. The Riksbank is now continuing the work of implementing the new service in close collaboration with banks and other actors on the payment market. RIX-INST will make it possible for the actors on the payment market to continue to provide Swish, but will also mean that other payment services will have better opportunities to establish themselves. In this way, RIX-INST can contribute towards a broader supply of instant payment services and increased competition. As RIX-INST will be based on a harmonised regulatory framework, it will be easier for new types of payment to be settled instantly.