In September 2024, VIPP’s mobilepay was launched in Sweden.
Vipps, which comes from Norway from Norway, is just like Swish a mobile payment service for direct payments between private individuals and companies.
What makes Vipps unique is that it lets Swedes also send money to people in Norway, Denmark and Finland.
At the time of writing, over 12 million users in the Nordic countries have flipped.
But the entrance in Sweden has not been easy.
Vips Mobilepay has problems with the Swedish Verification Service BankID – which can force the company away from the country.
“The Norwegian equivalent of Swish, Vipps, is threatened by being excluded from the Swedish market as a result of competition law obstacles from BankID,” VIPS writes in a press release.
Right now, BankID verification is required for Swedes to be able to acquire a Vipps account, according to an agreement with BankID, which Vipps needed to sign to launch in Sweden.
BankID verification is also required every time the user must log into the app or send a payment-something that Vipps does not want to accept.
The company writes that it “would mean a significantly different service structure, higher costs” and a “impaired user experience” if they were to agree to the requirement.
Instead, vips want to use their own biometric solution, but it is not allowed according to the agreement.
Vipps thus chooses to report BankID to the Swedish Competition Authority.
NYheter24 have emailed Charlotte PatakyPress manager BankID, which shows the company’s response to Vipp’s complaint. It was sent to the Swedish Competition Authority in February and in that BankID writes that they dispute the complaint.
“We welcome VIPPS, but on the same terms as all other e-services that use the BankID service, they must also pay. We together with the banks have set this model for all e-services to participate and finance the costs of the infrastructure in a fair way,” the answer states, among other things.