Nagging Harald

Some of my readers have probably wondered how this Harald always manages to go on and on about various digital services.

The main reason is that my mission starting in the mid70s at Union Bank of Finland (now Nordea Bank) has been to participate in building digital infrastructures that benefit society-at-large and to promote the actual taking-into-use of new services (only then does an invention become an innovation). Enthusiasm became a habit. It still frustrates me that people so often rush to the next thing before the previous service is taken into use properly...

My arenas include 30 years of banking work in the Nordic countries, speaking at conferences in some 70 countries, in Finextra from the beginning (grateful for over 2 million views), now almost every day in LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bo-harald-4768b51/?originalSubdomain=fi and other social media. 

Briefly, here are the key milestones in my “nagging” history (with years included to show that big things take time).

The first ladder was e-banking

1. TeleUBF e-banking for large companies starting in '79.

2. HomeUBF e-bankingcontracts to all customers starting in '82.  Road to success was the selling work by branch offices - even though some doubted the pass code lists would end up in “grandma's desk drawers in stead of getting usage directly.

3. Expanding workplace e-banking use starting in '84 (not everyone had a PC and modem at home).

4. London branch Instant Cash service for large companies starting in '85.

5. Wider adoption of HomeUBF by adding all banking services—starting with stock trading in the latter half of the 80s. UBF became the world's largest online bank by absolute transaction volumes (until it lost its position to Merita, which lost it to MeritaNordbanken, which lost it to Nordea...).

6. Extensive use of the Solo e-brand starting in '91.

7. Mobile payments and SMS-based balance reporting (a huge success right away) starting in '92.                                                                                                                                                                               The e-banking ladders took us to the interconnecting-customers plateau. Based on secure e-banking and established user habit we could safely start building new services that interconnected customers also with other services than just payments and payment data (account statement debits and credits as sufficient proof in accounting and payment references were btw adopted in Finland first in the world) and also with mobile devices:

1. Rapid and broad implementation of authentication services starting in '93. Citizens use this on average about 70 times a year for public and private sector services. It has been a key, if not the key reason, why Finland has succeeded in international comparisons. And thanks to Nordea, other Nordic countries also boast high usage numbers (the citizen card hasn’t been seriously considered there, and telecom operators there are not involved). This is why the Nordics do not need the EU Digital Identity as much as other countries. Together, we can focus on the rapid issuing of public sector credentials—especially to and from SMEs.

2. Real-time Solo e-payments for online shops (-96) and Solomarket place, where buyers could easily find companies using e-payments and a fairly wide range for products and services before Google's arrival. Direct e-payment is still a more popular payment method than card payments. I still wonder why the public sector didn’t start using this immediately for small service fees. How much money could have been saved and administrative burdens reduced by combining account statement debits without need for other data—long before e-invoicing?

3. E-invoicing for consumers in '98. A major success.

4. E-signatures for loans and contracts between customers - the first one with teleoperator Sonera - 98. I did not succeed in spreading interconnecting customers with e-signing as expected.
5. 5. Mobile services more broadly. WAP, GDPR and browsers - from 99. Together with Nokia and Visa, we founded Mobey Forum. From the outset, it gained membership from the world's most important banks and telephone manufacturers. 
6. E-salary (salary details clickable from account credit) - 00. Good early take-up.
7. Enterprise E-invoicing – 03. Could have gone faster. I still can't understand why accounting firms complaining about labour shortages didn't do much to promote this. Especially after the combined savings potential estimated by the State Treasury, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities and the Confederation of Finnish Industries on the purchase invoice side rose to over three billion €..
   
   The next - Interconnecting customers ladder took us to the Real Time Economy plateau. I'll pick that up later...