Norway banks rally around payments app to fend off foreign competition

Sparebanken Sor

13/02/2017 10:20

OSLO, Feb 13 (Reuters) - More than 100 Norwegian banks will 
become co-owners of the Vipps electronic payments app in a bid 
to fend off competition from Nordic rivals and the likes of 
Facebook, Apple and Google, the banks said on Monday. 
    ** Vipps allows individuals to make free money transfers up 
to a certain size, and can also be used to make online and 
in-store payments for goods and services, while companies pay a 
fee to use it for transactions 
    ** Initially developed by Norway's biggest bank DNB 
 DNB.OL , which retains a 52 percent stake, Vipps competes with 
MobilePay, developed by Denmark's Danske Bank  DANSKE.CO  and 
which is also backed by top Nordic bank Nordea  NDA.ST  
    ** "This cooperation better prepares us for winning the race 
against Nordic and international players," DNB Chief Executive 
Rune Bjerke said 
    "There is an ongoing global revolution in payment services. 
While we were ahead in the 1980s, that's no help in countering 
the competition from Facebook  FB.O , Google  GOOGL.O  and other 
platforms," Bjerke added 
    ** The Sparebank 1 alliance of medium-sized savings banks 
will take a 25 percent stake in Vipps, while the smaller banks 
of the Eika alliance will hold 10 percent. Independent savings 
banks will own 12 percent and Sparebanken Moere 1 percent. 
    ** Sparebank 1's mCASH payment solution, a competing app, 
will be folded into Vipps along with its existing customer base, 
DNB said 
    ** Vipps has about 2.15 million individual users in the 
country of 5.3 million people, and more than 30,000 corporate 
customers. On average 204,000 transactions are carried out 
daily, DNB said. 
    ** Danske Bank last October said it had more than 3.1 
million users in Denmark, which has a population of about 5.7 
million. Its app had been downloaded some 300,000 times in 
Norway at the time 
 
 (Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord, editing by Terje Solsvik) 
 ((terje.solsvik@thomsonreuters.com; +47 918 666 70; Reuters 
Messaging: terje.solsvik.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: DNB BANKING/