EXCLUSIVE – Norwegian bank Nordea will now let customers use Facebook Messenger to pay bills via e-invoice.

According to a statement sent to Bank Innovation today from Nets, the payment services powering this Facebook Messenger feature, John Sætre, head of consumer market services at Nordea Norway, stated:

This is a new way for customers to pay, and if customers respond positively it will be natural for us develop this further… With this service, Nordea wants to make banking easier for customers. Now, they can pay their e-invoices at any time and from anywhere, without leaving their favorite social media platform.

In order to use the service, Nordea customers will have to enroll using their bank ID number and mobile banking PIN. Once their ID is confirmed, they can use the invoicing option in Facebook Messenger to pay their bills.

Nets’s Senior Vice President, Tom Scharning, said:

It is important to us that we are available on all platforms. We continually work to develop our solutions, so they are available on the platforms where the consumers are.

Facebook’s messaging platform has been gaining momentum in the payments space recently.

Just last week, U.S.-payment company PayPal announced that it was adding an invoicing feature to its existing P2P capabilities within the social media platform. This feature enables user’s sellers to create and send a PayPal invoice to the buyer directly within Facebook Messenger.

As for Nordea, the Norwegian-based bank is one of many in the country that has been focused on ramping up its digital payment services. Last month, Nordea announced it would offer rival bank DNB’s mobile payment app Vipps to its customers.

The Vipps app currently has 2.6 million users, and expects to reach 3.5 million next year. The app started gaining importance after a deal earlier this year between DNB and 100 local Norwegian banks to acquire a 48% stake in the mobile payments service and then spin it off as an autonomous joint venture.

The combined goal of these major Norwegian banks to create a unified and comprehensive payment systems is to combat competition from the more popular payment solutions around the world … (hint hint: PayPal).

To learn more about the latest developments in P2P payments and mobile banking, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to register.