Scandinavia’s reputation as a global leader in digital payments is well established. Cash now represents fewer than 5% of transactions in Norway and Sweden, and less than 10% in Denmark — figures that place the region at the forefront of the global shift away from physical currency.
But that same cashless maturity has a darker side: it has made Nordic markets an increasingly appealing target for cybercriminals.
Tieto, which offers a variety of solutions across the financial services sector, recently delved into how Nordic banks can cut compliance costs and keep cards safe.
Norwegian banks blocked NOK 2.3bn in fraudulent transactions last year, whilst across the border, Danish banks stopped a record DKK 500m in fraud during 2025, Tieto said. Despite the volume of attempts, the number of Danish customers directly affected fell by 7% year-on-year.
Yet fraud is only one part of the pressure bearing down on Nordic financial institutions. A tightening regulatory environment — encompassing PCI DSS, the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and the forthcoming PSD3 — means compliance costs are rising sharply, with individual banks facing expenditure running into the millions, it said.
At the same time, a new generation of digital-first FinTech challengers, free from the constraints of legacy systems and traditional branch infrastructure, is intensifying competition across the region.
Tieto Banktech said it is within this context that Cards as a Service is gaining serious traction among Nordic banks. Rather than bearing the full weight of technology investment and compliance management in-house, institutions are increasingly opting to outsource these functions to specialist CaaS providers, unlocking more predictable cost structures and significantly reduced operational complexity.
The model works on a multi-tenant basis, meaning the costs associated with security infrastructure and regulatory compliance are distributed across all clients — making enterprise-grade protection accessible even to smaller institutions. Banks can also select only the services relevant to their needs, from virtual and multi-function cards through to full card personalisation programmes.
Tieto Banktech points to its own CaaS platform as evidence of what the model can deliver at scale. The company works with more than 250 financial institutions across Europe, supporting more than 14 million active cards, processing upwards of 11 million transactions per day, and maintaining 99.99% authorisation uptime.
It also cites a strong migration record, having re-issued hundreds of thousands of cards within weeks at a near-zero error rate, and currently managing a single multi-country portfolio of more than five million cards on behalf of one client.
As fraud threats show no sign of abating and regulatory demands continue to evolve, CaaS is fast becoming the model of choice for banks seeking to remain competitive, compliant, and secure — without diverting resources away from growth and customer experience.
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