P27 Nordic Payments Platform announced the acquisition of Bankgirot, Sweden's clearing house for mass payments. The merger will create a single clearing and settlement platform across the Nordic region, according to a report in FinExtra.

P27 expects to close the acquisition in Q1 2021, depending on regulatory and merger approval by the European Commission and ownership assessment by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.

Bankgirot, a 60-year old company, launched a mobile payment system, Swish, in 2012, in cooperation with the Central Bank of Sweden. The launch broke records and made over one million Swish payments in a single day on Sept. 25, 2020.

Lars Sjögren, CEO of P27 Nordic payments platform made a statement in the report that there will be no changes made to Bankgirot services in the short term as the "stability of the Swedish payment system remains the main priority."

He also said that with Bankgirot, P27 will be able to "take the lead in building the world's first integrated cross-border and cross-currency payments region, facilitating the needs of banks, consumers and society at large."

Backed by Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, OP Financial Group, SEB and Swedbank, P27 will be connecting 27 million people with Bankgirot, that handles more than six million transactions a day.