Banks have a major responsibility to protect their customers’ money. For example, a bank may be required to reinstate an account if a consumer has been defrauded. This depends on how the consumer has acted. According to a 2022 judgement by the Supreme Court, which was the first of its kind, a bank was obliged to reinstate a consumer’s account after they had given their BankID code and the response codes from their bank PIN pad to a fraudster. The Supreme Court did not consider that the consumer’s behaviour made them liable for the entire loss from the fraud.

New rules to prevent fraud in online invoice purchases

As of January 2023, new rules came into force requiring strong customer authentication for online invoice payments, such as for buy-now-pay-later services, to prevent fraud. The requirement was already in place for payments using, for example, debit or credit cards, Swish and bank transfers.

Consumer protection is still weak on the crypto market

Finansinspektionen and other European supervisory authorities have repeatedly warned about the risks of cryptoassets. At present, the crypto market is unregulated and therefore there is no supervision or consumer protection rules. However, the EU has adopted a new regulation to govern the crypto market in the Union. It is called MiCA and will apply from December 2024. You can read more about this in the box “New rules can contribute to payments market objectives” in Section Are payments in Sweden accessible?.