Vipps MobilePay, the mobile wallet used in Norway, Denmark and Finland, now holds an equal share in the company that is supposed to connect it to Portugal’s MB WAY. On 30 September, Vipps MobilePay, SIBS (the Portuguese payments company that runs MB WAY), Italy’s Bancomat, Spain’s Bizum and EPI Company, which operates the Wero wallet, announced a new joint entity, the European Network for Payments (ENP), headquartered in Madrid. ENP will operate the common interoperability hub the founders committed to in a memorandum of understanding signed in February 2026, and the five founding partners will be equal shareholders.
Together, the five solutions already serve approximately 130 million users across 13 European countries, which the founders say is more than 70% of the population of the EU and Norway. ENP’s role, in the words of their statement, is “to connect existing European payment solutions through a common technical and operational layer based on European standards, including instant account-to-account payments.” Nobody is asked to switch apps: each solution keeps its own brand and user experience. Vipps MobilePay described the goal for users as making it possible “to use the payment solution you already know and trust when paying or sending money across borders, while the different solutions are connected behind the scenes.”
What is new since February
When NorthSouth HQ wrote about the February memorandum in May, the hub was still a commitment on paper. The partners’ joint statement of 2 February said they would “establish the central interoperability entity by H1 2026”, roll out cross-border person-to-person payments in 2026 and add e-commerce and point-of-sale payments in 2027. The entity has now been set up, at the end of the third quarter rather than in the first half, and the 30 September statements add three things: a name, a seat in Madrid and an ownership structure in which no founder holds more than the others. ENP will “oversee technical coordination and future expansion of both functionalities and participating solutions”, and other established European payment solutions may join over time, “subject to the partners’ agreement and the technical and operational requirements of the network.”
The order of the rollout has not changed. It starts with cross-border payments between people, with e-commerce and in-store payments following in later phases. The Nordic link is not running yet: according to the founders, the participating solutions and ENP “are now preparing the technical implementation of the target set-up.”
The Nordic leg
Vipps MobilePay is the network’s link to the northern end of the corridor. When it published its 2025 results in May, the company reported 12.4 million users across the Nordics. Revenues rose to NOK 2.1 billion, up NOK 381 million from 2024; the pre-tax loss narrowed to NOK 135 million from NOK 751 million; transaction revenues grew by 30%; and the fourth quarter of 2025 was its first-ever quarter with a positive pre-tax result. Finland was the strongest growth market, with e-commerce up 79%. Chief executive Rune Garborg said the company’s ambition was “to become the preferred wallet in the Nordics, and build services that go beyond payments.”
For the Nordic company, ENP is about linking wallets that already work at home rather than building a new pan-European app. “Europe needs to move fast in building strong, independent European payment solutions. At Vipps MobilePay, we are therefore proud to join forces with leading payment solutions across Europe that are already strong in their home markets. Now we are connecting what we have built, turning ambition into action and creating a strong European alternative that is easy for Europeans to use across borders,” said Kim Fuglsang Kristoffersen, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Vipps MobilePay.
The Portuguese end
At the other end is MB WAY, which SIBS said had more than 6.5 million users when it marked the app’s tenth anniversary in October 2025. According to the founders’ joint statement, MB WAY users make more than 70 million transactions a month, across more than 500,000 points of interaction and merchants. MB WAY already has a southern cross-border link: since mid-2025 its users have been able to send money to and receive it from Bizum and Bancomat users in Spain and Italy with a mobile number, Lusa reported. “By joining forces with Bancomat, Bizum, EPI and Vipps MobilePay, we are building the infrastructure that allows MB WAY users to pay seamlessly across borders, while keeping the sovereignty, trust and proximity that define national payment solutions,” said João Mello Franco, chief executive of SIBS.
What it could change for Nordic users and Portuguese merchants
The first phase is the one Nordic visitors and residents in Portugal are most likely to notice. Once person-to-person payments are live, a Vipps or MobilePay user should be able to send money to someone who uses MB WAY, and the other way round, from the app each already has — as The Portugal News put it, without both sides needing to use the same national payment platform. That covers the small, everyday transfers — settling a shared bill, paying back a friend or a colleague, sending money to family — for which each side’s home app currently stops at the border. The later online and in-store phases matter more for business. They would let a Portuguese hotel, shop or webshop take payment from a Nordic customer’s home wallet, and a Nordic merchant take payment from a Portuguese visitor’s MB WAY; as The Paypers noted, merchants would not need to integrate several separate domestic solutions to accept payments from customers in other countries. The founders present the combined user base as “immediate scale and market coverage for both consumers and merchants.”
What has not been decided
Several things that matter to users and merchants are still open. Neither the SIBS nor the Vipps MobilePay statement gives a launch date for any phase, says what a cross-border transfer or a merchant payment will cost, or lists the 13 countries. The timing signals point in different directions: in April, SIBS executive director Teresa Mesquita said transfers to 13 European countries would be possible by the end of this year, according to Lusa, while Telecompaper reported on 30 September that the network will begin operating in 2027. Reuters, as summarised by The Portugal News, noted that the network’s success will depend on shop acceptance, payment regulation and political support. And neither statement explains how Sweden, which appears on the country lists published in the Portuguese press, will be covered; Swish, the mobile payment service launched by Swedish banks in 2012, is not one of the five founders.
Why it matters for the corridor
For Nordic companies and households with a foot in Portugal, Wednesday’s announcement does not change how they pay today. What has changed is the structure. The Nordic wallet with 12.4 million users now sits, as an equal owner alongside SIBS, inside the company that will coordinate how the connection to MB WAY is built, which functions it carries next and who else may join. The details to watch are a launch date for person-to-person transfers and, for the later phases, the terms for merchants — the two things that will decide whether Portuguese businesses serving Nordic customers, and Nordic businesses serving Portuguese ones, have a reason to use it.
Sources: SIBS, “SIBS, Bancomat, Bizum, EPI/Wero and Vipps MobilePay announce the creation of ‘European Network for Payments’” (30 September 2026); Vipps MobilePay, “European payments collaboration takes next step with new joint entity” (30 September 2026); founders’ joint statement as published by KBC Group (30 September 2026); joint MoU statement as published by ABN AMRO (2 February 2026); Vipps MobilePay, “Vipps MobilePay close to profitability after strong turnaround” (12 May 2026); SIBS, “10 years of MB WAY” (October 2025); Lusa via Observador (30 September 2026); The Portugal News (1 October 2026); The Paypers (30 September 2026); Telecompaper (30 September 2026); ZAP (1 October 2026).