What you need to know
Sweden’s payments are entering the resilience era.
A recent Swish outage exposed how fragile single-rail systems can be. Regulators and merchants are now rethinking reliance on one option.
Using both Swish and Pay by Bank adds redundancy, flexibility and reach while keeping payments flowing even during disruptions.
Zimpler enables this shift with one setup that connects merchants to both rails, strengthening resilience across Sweden’s payment landscape.
Why resilience is becoming a hot topic in payments.
Earlier in 2025, a Swish disruption left thousands of merchants across Sweden unable to accept instant payments for several hours. The outage reminded businesses of something they rarely think about until it happens: when a single rail goes down, commerce stops. It is a sharp reminder that resilience matters as much as speed.
“The Swedish payment market needs to step up around increased competition,” says Elin Ritola, Head of Unit for Payment Analysis at the Riksbank.
Swish has become integral to Sweden’s payment system, with more than 8 million active users in a country of just over 10 million. But as dependence grows, so does concentration risk. A society built on one or two dominant rails may enjoy convenience in normal times but feels exposed when those rails falter.
Regulators, central banks and merchants are starting to ask a tougher question: is relying on one payment rail option enough? As the ECB notes, ensuring alternative payment options builds resilience by providing spare capacity in the system, because relying on a single rail is a single point of failure. True resilience comes from plurality: when merchants have more than one high-quality payment rail to rely on, they gain security, flexibility and the power to adapt as markets shift.
Trend drivers: why plurality is gaining ground.
Several powerful forces are reshaping the payments landscape, pushing the industry toward greater openness, competition and resilience.
- EU policy on open access: The European Commission’s proposals for PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation (PSR) highlight competition and direct access as cornerstones of resilience. The logic is clear. More participants mean less concentration, more redundancy, and more innovation.
- The Riksbank’s focus on stability: In its 2024 Payments Report, the Riksbank emphasized the need for redundancy and plurality in Sweden’s financial infrastructure. With cash use now below 10% of point-of-sale payments, digital payments are a critical infrastructure. A diversified system reduces the risk of disruption from outages or systemic bottlenecks.
- Merchants demanding flexibility: Businesses are increasingly unwilling to be locked into a single payment method. Flexibility brings bargaining power, faster service, and the ability to adapt when costs rise or rails are disrupted. As noted in the Payment Report 2025 from Riksbank, when more payment service providers are part of the market, efficiency improves and innovation accelerates. This delivers clear benefits to end users, from consumers to merchants and beyond.
For merchants, these policy shifts and regulatory strategies translate into very practical benefits.
Merchant value: why diversity pays off.
For merchants, payment diversity is not just about choice; it has far-reaching benefits.
- Business continuity: Outages happen. Having both Swish and Pay-by-Bank gives merchants a fallback option, allowing customers to still complete purchases if one system fails.
- Cost leverage: With multiple rails in play, merchants gain bargaining power. They can compare fees and service levels rather than accept take-it-or-leave-it pricing.
- Conversion lift: Some customers prefer Swish, others prefer direct account-to-account (A2A) payments. Offering both improves checkout completion and reduces cart abandonment.
- Customer reach: Not every customer uses Swish. Some are tourists, some are businesses, and some simply prefer a direct bank transfer. Providing a mix ensures merchants do not lose sales because of payment exclusions.
The upside goes beyond individual merchants.
The societal impact of plurality.
A more diverse set of payment rails offers many benefits and strengthens the entire economy.
- Keeps competition alive: Multiple rails mean no single provider can dominate pricing or terms indefinitely.
- Curbs fee inflation: With credible alternatives, providers must compete on price and quality.
- Encourages innovation: Specialist providers can tailor their services to meet the needs of emerging industries or new consumer segments.
- Strengthens national resilience: A society that relies on more than one rail has built-in redundancy if something goes wrong at the infrastructure level.
The World Payments Report 2025 highlights how payment service providers can exceed customer expectations and grow profit in a rapidly changing market. By embracing open finance, instant payments, agile cloud platforms, and multi-rail value propositions, they can build a resilient system that delivers superior customer experiences. Let’s examine a case study to illustrate how these abstract principles can be applied in reality.
Case in point: Zimpler’s resilience-first approach.
Zimpler illustrates how plurality can be delivered in practice. In 2025, Zimpler became the first payment institution to connect directly with Swish. Merchants could, for the first time, offer Swish without needing to sign individual bank agreements. Zimpler has also expanded its Pay-by-Bank solution, enabling merchants to make direct account-to-account payments across the Nordic banking landscape.
The two options complement each other: Swish offers unrivaled popularity with Swedish consumers, while Pay-by-Bank provides flexibility, lower cost structures, and broader reach, including cross-border commerce.
For merchants, the combination is powerful. With one contract and a single technical setup, they gain access to both Swish and Pay-by-Bank. That means continuity in the face of outages, pricing leverage in negotiations, and more choice for customers.
The lesson is clear: plurality is not a temporary advantage but a long-term necessity.
Looking ahead: dual-rail as the new normal.
Payment resilience is moving from a back-office concern to a boardroom topic. Regulators expect redundancy. Consumers expect reliability. Merchants expect bargaining power. In the coming years, dual-rail setups will likely become the standard in Sweden and across Europe.
Offering both Swish and Pay-by-Bank will not be an optional extra but a baseline requirement for serious merchants. As the Riksbank modernizes its RIX settlement system and EU rules encourage direct access, merchants that prepare now will be ahead of the curve. Taken together, these shifts mark a turning point.
Payment plurality is no longer optional but rather the foundation for resilience in a digital economy.
Final thoughts.
Payment resilience is no longer just about speed or convenience. It is about continuity, competition and choice. Sweden’s reliance on Swish has created efficiency but also highlighted the risks of concentration. As Riksbank Governor Erik Thedéen warned, both public and private actors need to urgently step up their efforts to create a payments market that can withstand disruptions.
A reminder that plurality is not optional but essential.
Adding Pay-by-Bank alongside Swish creates a stronger, more flexible payment stack. Zimpler’s dual offering shows how simple this can be. With one setup, merchants gain resilience, cost leverage and customer reach. More ways to pay mean more ways to thrive. This is not only an upgrade in infrastructure. It is part of a wider payment revolution where plurality replaces dependency and merchants take control of their future. That is the future of payments: resilient by design.
