We sat down with our Managing Partner Richard Lindblom and Partner Niclas Lindblom to discuss the key developments shaping the payments industry in 2025. Here’s what we’ve gathered.
Major Changes in the Payment Ecosystem
2025 will be a pivotal year for Swedish banks as they prepare for Bankgirot’s overhaul, set to complete by the end of 2026. This transition will modernize Sweden’s payment infrastructure, aligning with the EU’s Wire Transfer Regulation, which will impact the entire payment chain. While banks of different sizes will be affected in varying ways, all must invest in infrastructure and adapt their systems to comply with these changes.
As part of this transformation, Bankgirot is transitioning into a thin clearinghouse and stepping away from payment processing. This means banks will take on direct responsibility for managing the high volumes of batch payments and alias-based transactions that will be affected. Given the scale of this change, close collaboration between banks, Bankgirot, and regulators will be essential to ensuring a structured migration that minimizes disruptions.
Simultaneously, Riksbanken is exploring further structural changes that could take shape in the coming years. Discussions are ongoing about potentially replacing the existing PERAGO system in RIX-RTGS with the European Central Bank’s (ECB) T2 platform, while Sweden’s securities settlement system may transition to T2S (TARGET2-Securities). The ECB is also working on integrating TIPS users to enable seamless FX conversion for instant payments across multiple currencies using the TIPS platform. Additionally, the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) will become mandatory for all banks offering SEPA payments, requiring them to meet compliance standards. All this raising significant awareness among various market participants.
The Looming Fraud Question in an Evolving Payment Landscape
With RIX-INST expanding beyond SWISH last year, payments are becoming faster and more accessible, raising concerns around fraud prevention. For example, Sweden has seen a surge in organised crime, with payment fraud becoming a key funding source. While real-time payments themselves are not the root cause of fraud, they provide criminals with the opportunity to move illicit funds quickly before detection, reducing the window for intervention and complicating anti-money laundering (AML) efforts.
The primary concerns are identity theft, authorized push payment (APP) fraud, and increasingly sophisticated social engineering tactics. This issue was also raised by the Swedish government when they convened a meeting with bank CEOs in early 2024, urging immediate action in response to the growing fraud problem. Following this, Finance Sweden presented a comprehensive plan to combat fraud, particularly focusing on social engineering scams.
Looking at UK’s Faster Payments rollout in 2008 it provides a cautionary example, highlighting the challenges of real-time payment systems. While speed improved, fraud rates initially increased as criminals exploited the shorter window for security checks. This underscores the need that we see today for proactive fraud prevention, ensuring financial institutions adapt their detection capabilities to the realities of instant payments.
Further strengthening these efforts, the European Commission’s 2023 proposals for PSD3 and PSR aim to enhance fraud prevention by reinforcing Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and introducing more flexible multi-factor authentication measures. These regulatory developments, along with broader concerns about fraud, will be further explored in future articles—an issue that both Richard and Niclas are particularly eager to follow.
ISO 20022 Migration: A Critical Milestone
The transition to ISO 20022 represents one of the most significant shifts in global payments, enabling richer transaction data, improved automation, better reconciliation, and greater interoperability.
However, this change goes beyond simply adopting a new messaging standard. Banks must modernize multiple processes, upgrade infrastructure, and align with evolving regulatory requirements. This demands a fundamental rethink of legacy infrastructure, enhancing automation, managing compliance risks, and ensuring interoperability to support structured, data-rich transactions.
For banks operating internationally, the transition presents added complexity. With different countries following their own regulatory requirements and migration timelines, banks must adapt their real-time gross settlement (RTGS) flows across multiple jurisdictions. Ensuring compatibility between legacy systems and the new ISO standard—while running MT and MX formats in parallel, will require rigorous testing, extensive risk mitigation, and consume significant resources this year.
As central banks complete their migrations, market participants face increasing pressure to harmonize internal processes, testing environments, and compliance strategies to avoid disruptions in high-value transactions. The deadlines set by SWIFT and individual central banks serve as critical milestones, demanding thorough certification and testing from all participants.
More than just banks, businesses, ERP providers, and payment processors must also align their systems. Failure to do so could lead to reconciliation issues, settlement delays, and compliance bottlenecks. Ultimately, the success of ISO 20022 depends on a coordinated transition across the entire payment chain.
Little Time Over for Innovation
Significant changes lie ahead, requiring banks and financial institutions to adapt. At the same time, Finance Sweden (Bankföreningen) has ramped up pressure on banks to strengthen fraud prevention and security. With regulatory requirements and mandatory changes taking priority, innovation in new payment products will likely take a backseat this year.
However, fintechs and niche players—unburdened by legacy systems—may find opportunities to explore new areas within the evolving payments ecosystem. That said, true market-wide innovation will still depend on larger banks driving the necessary changes, many of which will be tied up with these regulatory demands.
Ultimately, 2025 will be a year defined by mandatory changes in the payments landscape. The ISO 20022 transition, Bankgirot’s overhaul, and heightened regulatory compliance will dominate the focus of major banks, while smaller players may have more flexibility to seize new opportunities.
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