The banks in Norway are joining forces to make it easier to switch banks. The main problem of switching banks today are moving AvtaleGiro-agreements from one bank to another, and this process is soon going to be more straightforward:

According to EPSI, 49% of those who switch banks in Norway do this because of better terms on the mortgage. This is one of the findings from EPSIs yearly customer satisfaction survey in the banking market in Norway. As has been common over the last years, Sbanken is still the bank with the most satisfied customers, despite DNBs plan to buy them. DNB on their side is at the bottom, only beaten by Danske Bank. 

The most surprising finding in the study is that customer satisfaction for the corporate market has plummeted for the last two years. The most dissatisfied customers are small to medium-sized businesses (up to 20 persons). Fewer of these have an adviser, and the digital solutions aren’t good enough to compensate for this. This is interesting considering that we’re seeing many bets in the SMB field at the moment, like Aprila, Buffer, Folio, and Astat. 

Seven years after the launch of Apple Pay only 6% of people with iPhones use Apple Pay in the store when they can. Be aware that these numbers are from the US, but I can’t imagine it being much better in Norway considering DNB, Sparebank 1, Eika, SPV, and more of the owners in Vipps don’t support Apple Pay from their cards. I’ve had multiple workshops in banks and fintech companies where I ask how many have an iPhone and regularly use Apple Pay. Even in the industry, the usage seems surprisingly low.

One of the most revolutionizing payment experiences I’ve seen over the last years is Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology, where you authenticate via their app when you walk into the shop. A series of cameras and sensors automatically detect what people pick up off shelves in the store, and when you are done, you can walk out. The money gets automatically deducted from your card. Next year Amazon is bringing the technology to Whole Foods, expanding the reach of this technology.

While we’re on the topic of new payment solutions Mastercard has filed a patent on how they can pay securely via voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. In the patent filing, Mastercard outline how a lot of users of smart assistants don’t trust storing their payment data on them because they are afraid of other people accessing it and making payments. Mastercards solution to this is to get the smart assistant to transmit an inaudible soundwave to a user’s phone to authenticate the payment. However, all of these smart assistants have a wallet or credit card on hand, so I guess the most reasonable solution here is that they notify you on your phone instead, potentially bypassing Mastercard.

This week we could break the news that Stacc has acquired Quesnay which specializes in compliance solutions for the banking and finance industry. We’ve written about Quesnay before in this newsletter when they were one of the few selected companies in the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway’s first regulatory sandbox. The acquisition of Quesnay complements Stacc’s existing software offering in the compliance area. You should btw check out their yearly Nordic virtual conference for compliance and regtech in banking and finance the 15th of October.

Apple has been fighting Epic Games in court for a long time regarding Apple’s stance on in-app purchases. Last week, the court decided that Apple can’t block apps that use other payment mechanisms than Apple’s in-app purchases. Fred Wilson says that this is an enormous breakthrough for the crypto sector. I’m not entirely convinced of the same. As Seth Godin says: 

And this is one of the main challenges for crypto: The technologists forgot about the human issues. I highly recommend reading Seth Godin’s blogpost on hard technology: Gift cards, serial numbers and hard technology

So how should we navigate strange new paradigms that could change everything — unless they don’t? Nathan Baschez has written about dealing with paradigms like web3 and crypto.

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Marius Hauken, partner Stacc X