Mobile Payment: Swish Expands In-Store Service

FACTS

• The Swedish P2P account-to-account m-payment app Swish hit success on their home market and announces that their credit transfer service is now aiming for brick-and-mortar locations.

• Goal: let users rely on contactless mobile payment for in-store transactions.
• Their in-store payment solution has been designed in partnership with the Danish payments specialist Nets.
• How it works
  • Swish connects to a Bluetooth module developed by Nets.
  • This module processes (“NFC-like”) contactless payments via Swish enabling the users to rely on a “tap and pay” checkout option.
  • Merchants add a Bluetooth box to their Nets terminal; they don’t have to change their existing equipment to accept payments.
• This solution is currently tested with two restaurants from one of the leading Swedish corporates Cantina. It is expected to be expanded in the months to come.

Swish: Key Figures

• Formal launch: 2012
• 11 partner banks
• June 2019: 7.2M users performed over 45M transactions, roughly 224B Swedish kronor processed

CHALLENGES

• Logical step. Swish already became popular among Swedish consumers. Over 7 million Swedish people are using the app to transfer money. Their addition of in-store face-to-face payments seems logical especially as more customers want the payment step to become easier to handle in-store.
• Disproving customer experience. The payment process can be compared to a typical contactless payment. And consumers are already familiar with this method. Countries including Sweden show high penetration rates when it comes to digital payments. Based on Bluetooth technology, this feature also enables merchant partners to feature location-relevant discount offers in real time.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Swish is mostly used in P2P transfer contexts, and started aiming for the e-commerce sector, too. This Swedish service now tries to gain momentum among brick-and-mortar retailers: last step of their multichannel rollout.
• Nets’ technology is already used by merchants in Denmark, providing them with a means to accept in-store payments based on local wallets.
• Just like Swish in Sweden, or Bizum in Spain, Paylib aims at becoming a viable local alternative to the US “Big Four”. In Nordic countries, 50% of the population regularly rely on apps that can be compared to Paylib. This French player hopes they can achieve large scale rollout in France by 2025.