Sweden's Nordiska Cuts Out the Middleman in Bank Payments

Challenger bank Bankaktiebolaget Nordiska has signed Finastra to gain direct access to Sweden's central payment rails, ending its reliance on partner banks to reach central bank money. The Stockholm lender will use Finastra's Swift Service Bureau to connect straight to the Swift network and to Riksbank's RIX real-time gross settlement system, with instant payments via RIX-INST to follow as regulation allows.

For a bank that only secured its full banking licence from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) in December 2024, the move marks a meaningful step toward operational independence.

Why is Nordiska doing this now?

Until now, Nordiska has routed payments and accessed central bank money through partner banks, a common arrangement for newly licensed institutions that have not yet built their own settlement infrastructure. That setup adds cost and cedes control over liquidity timing to a third party.

Direct RIX access changes the economics. Nordiska will manage its own transaction flows and intraday liquidity rather than paying another bank to do it. Jonas Hultin, the bank's chief product officer, framed the shift as removing dependence on partner banks so the lender can deliver faster service at lower cost while concentrating on its core business.

The timing tracks the bank's growth curve. Group lending to the public reached SEK 10,904.7 million at the end of 2025, up from SEK 9,129.7 million a year earlier, while operating income rose to SEK 609.2 million from SEK 456.0 million. A bank scaling its balance sheet at that pace has a stronger case for owning its settlement plumbing outright.

What does the Finastra deal actually provide?

Finastra runs one of the largest Swift Service Bureaus globally, with connectivity to more than 15 market infrastructures and over 30 payment rails across 25 countries. The hosted model lets a bank like Nordiska reach Swift and domestic rails without building and certifying that infrastructure in-house, a process that carries significant regulatory and security overhead under Swift's Customer Security Programme.

Barry Rodrigues, executive vice president for payments at Finastra, positioned the deal as a win in both the Nordic region and the challenger bank segment, pointing to the rising complexity of payment infrastructure driven by regulatory change and real-time settlement demands.

How does this fit the wider real-time payments shift?

Nordiska's pathway to RIX-INST sits within a broader European move toward instant settlement. The framework matters: under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, payment service providers in the euro area face phased obligations to send and receive instant credit transfers, and non-euro states including Sweden are aligning their own infrastructure to comparable standards. Riksbank has been building RIX-INST capacity to bring instant settlement onto central bank money rather than commercial bank money, reducing systemic risk.

A bank without direct rail access risks being a step behind on these mandates. By securing the connection now, Nordiska positions itself to switch on instant capabilities when the regulatory timeline permits rather than scrambling to retrofit later.

Nordiska is not a typical retail challenger. It operates an embedded finance platform, Nordiska Embedded, offering savings, lending and payment services under its own brand and through partners, and runs lending operations across Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. It became a principal member of both Mastercard and Visa in recent years. Controlling its own settlement layer strengthens the foundation

beneath that partner-facing model.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

Direct rail access is becoming a competitive line in the sand for challenger banks. Those still dependent on partner banks for central bank money carry higher costs and less control over liquidity, a disadvantage that compounds as instant payment mandates take hold across Europe. Nordiska's move signals that mid-sized and emerging banks increasingly view owned settlement infrastructure, delivered through a service bureau rather than built from scratch, as table stakes rather than a luxury.

For investors tracking the European challenger segment, the readiness to absorb this kind of infrastructure cost is a useful signal of which players intend to scale independently.