Europe & Central Asia · GDP rank #22
SE · SEK @ 0.1069/USD
Sweden is Europe's most mature cashless economy — cash is below 8% of POS volume, Swish exceeded 1.1bn transactions in 2025 and is used by ~86% of adults, and the Riksbank has paused the e-krona project in favour of private instant rails. The 2026 conversation has shifted to resilience (cash-preparedness, offline payments) and to the Riksbank's increasingly explicit criticism of Swedish banks for not yet offering customer-facing instant services beyond Swish.
Key figures
Swish transactions (2025)
Source: Swish / Getswish AB
Cash share of POS volume (2024)
Source: Sveriges Riksbank
BankID digital identity active users (2024)
Source: BankID
Riksbank policy rate (May 2026)
Source: Sveriges Riksbank
Strategic openings
Wero / pan-EU instant interoperability — Sweden sits outside the EPI founding circle. The 2026 Riksbank Payments Report explicitly criticised Swedish banks for not offering customer-facing instant services beyond Swish, with a March 2027 target. Cross-border SEK/EUR A2A and Wero acceptance are the live operator questions.
2-year horizon
Cash-preparedness as policy — Riksbank's March 2026 recommendation that households hold ~SEK 1,000 in cash, combined with the Payment Services Act 2025 cash-access requirements, opens a regulated market for cash-acceptance-as-a-service (Loomis, G4S Cash360, ATM-network outsourcing).
2-year horizon
Offline-capable payments — Riksbank-led mandate that essential goods can be paid for offline from 1 July 2026 creates a procurement window for terminal vendors (Verifone, Worldline) and acquirers building offline-fallback into ISV bundles.
2-year horizon