We caught up with Dr Hubertus von Poser, a member of the management board at PPI, who will be speaking on the panel ‘Cross border payments and opportunities beyond the payment’ at NextGen Nordics.

Speaking about payments technology in the Nordics, von Poser commented that innovation is “improving competitiveness for the Nordics, because it makes their cross-border payments, more efficient, cheaper, faster. That’s a benefit for the economy but it also benefits things like inclusion, so that all people can participate. This is for e-commerce business especially, because internet related business is dependent on an efficient cross border payments technology.”

Dr von Poser added that cross border payments technology reinforces sovereignty in the Nordics and to be “independent from other payments technologies is also a benefit.” He continued and asked: “what happens if a US president uses the stock listing of certain companies to put pressure on Europe, including the Nordics.”

Looking at some of the benefits of modernising payments systems, von Poser argued that “more modern systems are more secure from an IT perspective, but also more secure from a compliance perspective. The modernisation is an opportunity to be more resilient to cybersecurity threats and to compliance threats.

“There’s one place I think the Nordics are ahead of the rest of the market,” von Poser stated. “Across the cross-border and modernised payments landscape, the Nordics stand out. First, for the usage of non-cash payments instruments worldwide per inhabitant, the Nordics are one of the leading regions.”

Another area Dr von Poser highlighted where the region stands out is with P27. “We have seen many initiatives in the world, but P27 is cross-currency. If you look at the SEPA region, it is cross country but not multicurrency, it’s just in Euro.”

He went on to say that there are “similar initiatives in Asia, for example in Singapore and Thailand have connected their systems. That is something different, just connecting systems compared to building a complete infrastructure that P27 does. I would say that globally, the Nordics stand out as a kind of blueprint.”

Dr von Poser concluded by emphasising that “payments is always at the end of everything […] the last step of every commercial transaction is the payment. Therefore, anything that makes payments more efficient, more resilient, and more competitive is very important.”

Register for NextGen Nordics here.