Pan-European payments processor Equens has won a contract to provide outsourced payments transaction services to Finland's OP Bank Group.
Equens says as of mid-2007 it will process EU regulation payments on behalf of OP Bank on its ZVS processing platform. Non-EU regulation payments will be processed by Equens at the end of 2007.
Equens says OP Bank is the first Finnish bank to outsource payment processing to a foreign service provider.
In order to tap further into the Finnish market, Equens has opened a representive office in Helsinki, which will also target business in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions.
Equens was created last year by the merger of Dutch payments body Interpay and Germany's Transaktionsinstitut and was established in response to Sepa, which aims to dismantle cross-border barriers and reduce costs for non-cash euro payments.