Nordic Banks Embrace CaaS to Combat Rising Fraud
The Nordic region is at the forefront of the global trend towards cashless transactions, with cash accounting for under 5% of all transactions in Norway and Sweden, and slightly fewer than 10% in Denmark. While this digital evolution offers numerous conveniences, it has simultaneously positioned the region as a prime target for fraudsters. In recent years, there have been unprecedented spikes in attempted fraud, raising significant concerns among financial institutions.
Tieto, a company offering diverse solutions within the financial services sector, recently examined how Nordic banks can effectively reduce compliance costs while enhancing card security. Their insights highlight the financial strain that compliance with regulations like PCI DSS, DORA, and PSD3 imposes on these institutions.
The magnitude of the fraud issue is alarming. Last year, Norwegian banks successfully thwarted approximately NOK 2.3 billion in attempted fraud, while Danish banks reported preventing a record DKK 500 million in fraudulent activities in 2025. Interestingly, the number of customers impacted dropped by 7% compared to 2024, as reported by Tieto.
Nikolai Kjaersgaard Andersen, Tieto Banktech’s director of sales for the Denmark region, emphasized that the challenges for Nordic banks extend beyond just preventing fraud. The costs associated with maintaining regulatory compliance can reach millions of dollars for each institution. This financial burden is compounded by increased competition from digital-first FinTech firms, which benefit from the absence of legacy systems and are encroaching on traditional banks’ market share.
In light of these challenges, more banks are turning to Cards as a Service (CaaS) to streamline compliance efforts and enhance fraud prevention. Unlike conventional in-house card management solutions, CaaS providers undertake a significant portion of the operational and regulatory workload. This shift allows banks to enjoy predictable costs and reduced internal complexity, while a multi-tenant model distributes the financial burden of security and compliance across multiple participants. This approach enables banks to access customized services such as card personalization, virtual cards, and multifunctional card offerings without the overhead of traditional systems.
Tieto Banktech boasts a solid track record, having collaborated with over 250 financial institutions across Europe and beyond. Their CaaS platform currently supports more than 14 million active cards, maintains an impressive 99.99% uptime for authorization availability, and processes over 11 million transactions daily, handling thousands of transactions per second.
The company also underscores its competence in portfolio migration, highlighting its ability to reissue hundreds of thousands of cards within weeks with a near-zero error rate. Additionally, Tieto manages a single multi-country portfolio with over five million cards for one of its clients, showcasing its scalability and efficiency.
For banks of various sizes, CaaS offers a promising pathway to launching and managing card programs faster and with greater flexibility. This model allows financial institutions to remain secure and compliant while prioritizing growth and enhancing customer experience in an increasingly competitive landscape.