Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Only 3% of Norwegians used cash for their most recent purchase in a shop, Norges Bank reported in its Retail Payment Services 2025 report. Most of the rest paid by card, and almost half of all Norwegian card payments, 46% in 2025, still ran on BankAxept, the domestic debit scheme run by Stø AS, which the banks own through Vipps Holding. At payment terminals in Norway its share was 70%. For a Norwegian business that matters more than anything else on this page, because BankAxept is far cheaper than Visa or Mastercard and many of the simplest card readers cannot take it.
Here is what each option costs, read from the scheme's, banks' and providers' own Norwegian pages on 24 October 2026, and the rules on surcharges and cash. Prices exclude VAT unless stated.
A business pays for BankAxept in three parts. It signs an acquiring agreement with its own bank, accepts BankAxept's terms online, and needs a terminal that supports it. BankAxept's own price, valid from 1 July 2026:
These rates went up on 1 July 2026. The list valid from 1 July 2025 started at 0.151%. Every tier rose by 0.01 percentage point, matching a rise from 0.02% to 0.03% in the part of the price, included in each tier, that covers mobile payments tapped on a terminal.
Your bank then charges for acquiring BankAxept, per transaction: NOK 0.15 at DNB and SpareBank 1 Østlandet, NOK 0.18 at Handelsbanken, NOK 0.20 at BN Bank, and NOK 0.22 plus NOK 25 a month at SpareBank 1 SMN. On top of that comes the terminal. Nets, which runs many Norwegian terminals, has begun charging a fee per transaction on its terminal agreements, starting at NOK 0.35 and falling with monthly volume; if Nets is also your acquirer, it applies to BankAxept payments only. BankAxept says the money reaches your account the day after the sale.
Adyen (our grade: A-) also offers BankAxept in person, at a processing fee of $0.13 a transaction plus a direct contract with BankAxept.
Norway applies the EU Interchange Fee Regulation through a 2019 regulation, so on consumer cards the issuing bank can charge the merchant's provider no more than 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit. Visa's Norwegian domestic schedule, dated April 2025, uses exactly those figures. Company cards are not capped: on Visa business cards, interchange is 1.30% in store and 1.65% online, rising to 1.65% and 2.00% on Visa Infinite Business cards. Scheme fees and the provider's margin come on top.
Most Norwegian bank cards carry both BankAxept and Visa or Mastercard. Finanstilsynet's view is that a shop may pre-select which brand a co-badged card uses, but the customer has the final choice. Norges Bank's Financial Infrastructure 2026 report says most co-badged payments at terminals are likely made through BankAxept, as it is the least expensive option for the shop in many cases.
None of the flat-rate providers below lists BankAxept on its Norwegian pricing page. With them, a customer's co-badged bank card is paid through its Visa or Mastercard side, at the flat rate:
Two bank-channel packages bundle the terminal. Nets, part of Nexi (B), advertises its SmartPay package from 1.29% with a smart terminal included, but publishes no monthly fee. Worldline (B-) One, sold through Nordea, is listed by Nordea at 1.50% on EU and EEA consumer cards and 1.75% on other cards, from NOK 199 a month including the terminal, on a 24-month agreement; Worldline's own Nordea page quotes from 1.30% and from NOK 299 a month. Neither page mentions BankAxept, so ask whether it is included.
Take a shop that takes NOK 50,000 a month in 200 sales of NOK 250. If every sale ran on BankAxept, the scheme would charge about NOK 80.50 in turnover fees plus the NOK 150 subscription, about NOK 230.50, or NOK 250 on the 0.5% package where it is offered. A DNB acquiring fee adds NOK 30, and a Nets terminal agreement about NOK 70 more in per-transaction fees at this volume, before terminal rent. The same takings on Norwegian consumer cards cost about NOK 645 at myPOS, about NOK 744 to 745 at SumUp on either plan, about NOK 845 at Viva.com, about NOK 875 at PayPal and about NOK 900 at Stripe, hardware aside.
So the flat-rate readers cost roughly two and a half to three and a half times BankAxept's scheme and bank fees, and less than that once terminal costs are counted, but they come with no bank agreement, no terminal rent and no contract. A shop with low volumes or a market stall may still find that worth paying. A shop with steady counter sales, most of them on Norwegian bank cards, should get a BankAxept quote from its bank and compare the total, including terminal rent and Visa and Mastercard rates, before choosing.
Vipps, now part of Vipps MobilePay (our grade: B), had 4,687,845 Norwegian users at the end of 2025, and 170,004 places in Norway take it, according to the company. It is bought from Vipps MobilePay directly. Its standard Norwegian prices in October 2026:
There is a cheaper way to take Vipps in a shop. When a customer taps Vipps on a card terminal, it is a card payment: SpareBank 1 says a tap with the BankAxept card in Vipps costs the same as an ordinary BankAxept card payment, while a Visa or Mastercard in Vipps costs the card rate. Norges Bank found mobile payments made up 27% of payments at terminals in 2025, up from 12% in 2024, and that a third of those used BankAxept cards.
Vipps MobilePay's help pages say payments received on a Monday are paid out on the Wednesday and payments received on a Friday on the following Tuesday, and businesses can choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts.
Section 2-6 of the Financial Contracts Act says a payee may not charge a fee for using a payment instrument covered by chapter II of the EU Interchange Fee Regulation, which is the consumer card rules, where both the payer's and the payee's payment providers are in the EEA. Where a fee is allowed, section 2-4 requires the payer to be told before paying, and caps a fee charged to a consumer at the business's actual cost. A fee the payer was not told about does not have to be paid.
Since 1 October 2024, section 2-1 of the Financial Contracts Act has required a business that sells to consumers from fixed premises to accept cash wherever it accepts other ways to pay, and to give change if it has it, unless the note is clearly out of proportion to the amount. The exceptions are vending machines, unstaffed premises, premises open only to a limited group and amounts over NOK 20,000. Since 1 January 2025, a breach that is substantial or repeated can be fined. The Consumer Authority, Forbrukertilsynet, supervises the rule.
Norway's BankAxept and Denmark's Dankort are the Nordic exceptions: domestic debit schemes far cheaper than Visa or Mastercard. Our guide to Danish card and MobilePay fees covers the Danish version, which is price-regulated, and our guide to Swedish card and Swish fees covers a market that has no domestic card at all. In Norway the choice comes down to whether a business wants BankAxept's low price through its bank, or the convenience of a reader that charges every card the same.
