Digital Payments & Fintech - Norway

Finanstilsynet is the financial supervisory authority; it assesses and grants (or recommends to the Ministry of Finance) licences for payment and e-money institutions, with a statutory three-month decision period and an NOK 30,000 application fee.

Payment institutions (full and limited) and electronic money institutions are licensed under the Financial Institutions Act (2015). As at 31 December 2021, 33 payment institutions and 6 e-money institutions held Norwegian licences.

As an EEA member Norway implemented the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) into national law in April 2019 (live September 2019); banks and PSPs provide account-access and payment-initiation APIs, largely on Berlin Group NextGenPSD2 standards, supervised by Finanstilsynet.

A new Financial Contracts Act (finansavtaleloven) entered into force on 1 January 2023, carrying the private-law part of PSD2 plus consumer-credit and creditworthiness-assessment obligations on lenders.

The EU Instant Payments Regulation (adopted March 2024, incl. Verification-of-Payee) has not yet been incorporated into the EEA Agreement or transposed into Norwegian law; incorporation is anticipated around 2026–2027, and a domestic VoP duty for NOK transfers would likely follow only with the future EU Payment Services Regulation (PSR).

Buy-now-pay-later and similar deferred-payment products are treated as consumer credit under the Financial Contracts Act, requiring lender creditworthiness assessment; lending practices are further constrained by the lending regulation (utlånsforskriften), with EU Consumer Credit Directive II tightening rules going forward.