Swish

Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Länsförsäkringar, Nordea, SEB, Swedbank and the savings banks known as Sparbankerna own Getswish AB, the company behind Swish, and further banks have connected since the launch. Each bank decides on the offer, the terms and any charges for the Swish services it sells to its own customers. The board of Getswish has one member from each of six owner banks under the chair Anna Bäck, and Urban Höglund leads the company as chief executive officer.

The Swish system is open, so a credit institution, payment institution or e-money institution licensed in Sweden can sign an agreement with Getswish and offer Swish under its own name. A firm without its own connection to the Swish infrastructure can offer Swish to its customers as an indirect participant. Getswish runs the clearing of Swish payments, holds a license from Finansinspektionen as a clearing company under the Swedish Payments Clearing and Settlement Act, and is monitored by the Riksbank.

Swish went live on 12 December 2012 as a service for payments between private persons, and it passed 3 million active users two and a half years later. Since 2020 a user has been able to send a request that reminds a friend to pay, and since May 2026 one request can go to several people at once to split a bill. Of the 8.8 million private users, 93 percent send or receive at least one payment in a normal month.

The Riksbank asked 2,008 people aged 18 to 84 about their payment habits in September 2025, and 91 percent had used Swish in the past month, up from 82 percent in 2023. No other payment method had been used by as many people in Sweden during the 30 days before the survey.

Companies and organizations have been able to receive Swish since the summer of 2014, and Swish Commerce and the Swish QR codes followed in 2017 for payments in web shops, in apps and at the till. A merchant signs a Swish Commerce agreement with its bank and connects Swish through a technical supplier or its own integration. The customer pays without typing card details and signs every payment with Mobile BankID. A PostNord report from spring 2026 found that Swish had overtaken cards and invoices as the most used payment method in Swedish e-commerce.

In a store, the customer scans a QR code at the checkout terminal and confirms the payment in the Swish app. ICA, the largest grocery chain in Sweden, takes Swish in its stores, and IKEA uses Swish in all of its Swedish stores after a test with the checkout supplier Yabie. In 2024 Swish added self-scanning in stores and payment cards in the app, together with recurring payments for subscriptions and bills. The payments provider PPRO connected its merchants to Swish business services in August 2026.

Behind each Swish payment, money moves between the accounts of two banks, and that interbank leg settles in RIX-INST, the instant payment system of the Riksbank. Until early 2024 Swish payments ran through BiR, the real-time system of Bankgirot, and in February and March 2024 they moved to RIX-INST. The move changed nothing in the app, and the banks now settle Swish payments in central bank money, which the Riksbank says reduces their settlement risk.

RIX-INST is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and Getswish is the agent for Swish payments in the system. Since 2022 RIX-INST has been connected to TIPS, the platform of the Eurosystem that also settles instant payments in euro.

Swish was a founding member of the European Mobile Payment Systems Association, EMPSA, together with Vipps from Norway and MobilePay from Denmark. In a staff memo of January 2026, Fredrik Rydbeck and Anders Mølgaard Pedersen of the Riksbank write that Swish has not decided to join the work of the European Payments Alliance, in which Vipps MobilePay takes part. That alliance connects national apps such as Bizum from Spain with each other and plans a common hub with the operator of Wero.

Vipps MobilePay opened its own Nordic transfer service to Swedish users in September 2024, and it runs on the near real-time transfer services of the international card schemes. The authors argue that a direct link between Vipps MobilePay and Swish would make Swedes reachable for their Nordic neighbors from the first day. They want that link built on account-to-account payments and name the TIPS cross-currency service for euro, Danish kroner and Swedish kronor as one possible base.

A user activates Swish through a participating bank, links a mobile number to a bank account and installs the Swish app on a phone. To pay, the user enters the number of the recipient or scans a QR code and signs the payment with Mobile BankID. The money then reaches the account of the recipient in real time, at any hour and on any day.

Swish keeps working when a Swedish user travels abroad, apart from possible charges for mobile data. Signing up requires an account at a bank or payment institution that offers Swish in Sweden, and each bank sets its own rules for registering a foreign mobile number. Swish has no connection to the mobile payment apps of other countries, so a payment to a user of Bizum or Vipps MobilePay is not possible.

Swish is free for private persons, and sending or receiving money never costs them anything. Companies pay the prices that their bank sets for Swish Business, Swish Commerce and the other services, because each bank decides on its own offers, terms and charges.

A company with a Swish agreement can create QR codes in the QR generator of Swish and print them on its own. It can also order a free kit with an A4 poster, four A6 cards and stickers that carry its QR code. The customer scans the code with the Swish app to start the payment and then signs it with Mobile BankID.