Twenty-seven million people live in the five Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland.

Yet despite their geographic proximity and cultural affinities, each country uses a separate currency: the Danish kroner, the Icelandic krona, the Swedish krona, the Norwegian krone, and in Finland, the euro.

This situation imposes challenges and costs for cross-border transactions in the Nordics, which has high levels of regional trade and travel. That’s why banks in Denmark, Sweden and Finland started P27, a joint initiative by Danske Bank (Denmark), Handelsbanken (Sweden), Nordea (Denmark), OP Financial Group (Finland), SEB (Sweden) and Swedbank (Sweden).

P27 aims to build the world’s first real-time, cross-border payment system to support multiple currencies in multiple countries. Within the Nordic countries, P27 will enable integrated payments for domestic and cross-border payments. Also, P27 will support transactions throughout the eurozone in harmonization with Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) standards.

Read how TCS BaNCS for Payments will be a perfect fit for banks in Nordics to build the world’s first real-time, cross-border payment system in multiple currencies.