Riksbank Payment Statistics Reporting: The 1 October 2026 Go-Live

From 1 October 2026 the Sveriges Riksbank starts collecting payment statistics directly from payment service providers and payment system operators, and Riksbank payment statistics reporting becomes a standing filing obligation. The obligation sits in the Riksbank’s regulations RBFS 2025:1, adopted on 25 June 2025. Subject to Section 1’s exclusions, it applies to payment service providers and payment system operators domiciled in Sweden and to foreign payment service providers with a branch in Sweden. The first weekly data reference period opens on the go-live date itself.

The calendar is already tight. Test reporting is running now, and the Riksbank asks every payment service provider and payment system operator to have started their test reporting by 1 September 2026 at the latest. A team that treats 1 October 2026 as the date to begin building will miss the test window and the first live delivery, which for weekly items falls only days after the reference week closes. Reporting runs through the Riksbank’s REST API using item-specific collection schemes. Each submission is a JSON file compressed into its own ZIP archive, and each ZIP archive may contain only one JSON file. RBFS 2025:1 contains 17 legal reporting items for providers and 11 for system operators.

Two features make this harder than a one-off return. The dataset is split between transaction-level records and aggregates, and the go-live is phased: instant credit transfers, card data and cash items start in October 2026, while ordinary credit transfers do not begin until a year later. Getting the scope, the frequencies and the phasing right now decides whether the first files validate or bounce.

Related reading: PSD2 Reporting Requirements

The first reporting dates that bind Swedish providers

Deadline pressure is the reason this topic cannot wait, so the operative dates come first. These are drawn from the Riksbank’s reporting-agents page and from the entry-into-force provisions of RBFS 2025:1.

• 25 June 2025: RBFS 2025:1 adopted.
• 1 September 2026: the date by which every payment service provider and payment system operator should have started test reporting, at the latest.
• 1 October 2026: the regulations enter into force and ongoing collection begins; this is the first weekly reference date.
• 8 October 2026: first weekly report due, covering data as from 1 October 2026 for the items in Section 3(1) and 3(3-6).
• 12 November 2026: first monthly report due, covering data as from 1 October 2026 for the items in Section 3(7-12).
• 29 January 2027: first half-yearly report due, covering the quantity items in Section 3(13-17) as of 31 December 2026.
• 29 January 2027: first reduced-frequency quarterly or annual report due for the items in Section 3(1) and Sections 3(3-12), covering data from 1 October 2026; annual reporters also submit the Section 3(13-17) quantity items as at 31 December 2026.
• 1 October 2027: reporting for the item in Section 3(2), ordinary credit transfers, begins.
• 11 November 2027: first monthly credit-transfer report due, covering data as from 1 October 2027.
• 31 January 2028: first reduced-frequency quarterly or annual report due for the item in Section 3(2), covering data from 1 October 2027.

Payment system operators sit on their own clock. Their reporting under Section 7 is quarterly, and Section 9 requires each report no later than the last business day of the month following the quarter it covers. Read together with the 1 October 2026 start, the first full quarter for operators is the fourth quarter of 2026, with delivery falling at the end of January 2027. Operators that also act as providers file both datasets, on both calendars.

Who the regulation turns into a reporting agent

Section 1 of RBFS 2025:1 fixes the perimeter. The regulations apply to payment service providers and payment system operators domiciled in Sweden and to foreign payment service providers with a branch in Sweden. The regulation gives these entities a defined label, “reporting agents”, and that label carries the correction and verification duties discussed later.

Three carve-outs matter, because they decide whether a firm is in scope at all. The regulations do not apply to payment service providers that are public authorities, to natural persons, or to providers that only provide account information services. A firm whose sole authorised activity is account information services, the read-only aggregation service under PSD2, therefore falls outside the collection. The exemption is based on the services actually provided: it ceases to apply if the firm provides any payment service other than account information services. Section 1 does not state that an unused additional permission, by itself, removes the exemption.

For a reporting agent operating abroad, only activities that take place directly across national borders are covered, and not activities carried on through branches or subsidiaries abroad. A Swedish reporting agent does not include activities carried on through a foreign subsidiary in its Riksbank return. RBFS 2025:1 does not determine whether the foreign subsidiary has a separate reporting obligation under its host-country rules. Teams that map their entire international footprint into the return over-report; teams that ignore direct cross-border flows under-report.

Terms in the regulation are not defined from scratch. Section 2 borrows the meanings used in Chapter 1, Sections 3 and 4 of the Payment Services Act (2010:751) and Chapter 1, Section 2 of the Electronic Money Act (2011:755). A payment system operator is defined in the regulation as the person legally responsible for managing a payment system; materially the same definition appears in the ECB payments-statistics regulation. Classification must be checked against the incorporated definitions in the Payment Services Act and Electronic Money Act and the separate RBFS definition of a payment system operator.

What the two datasets actually contain

RBFS 2025:1 runs two separate collections with two separate annexes, and conflating them is a fast route to a rejected file. Providers report the attributes in Annex 1 for the items in Section 3; operators report the attributes in Annex 2 for the items in Section 7.

The provider dataset has 17 items: instant credit transfers, credit transfers, card-based payment transactions, ATM cash withdrawals, cash advance at a POS terminal, ATM cash deposits, direct debits, money remittances, e-money payment transactions, payment initiation services, over-the-counter cash deposits, over-the-counter cash withdrawals, cards, payment accounts, POS terminals, e-money card terminals and ATMs. The split inside that list is the part to internalise. Items 1 to 6 are reported at transaction level. Items 7 to 17 are reported at an aggregated level. Items 13 to 17 are the quantity items: counts of instruments and infrastructure such as cards, payment accounts, POS terminals, e-money card terminals and ATMs, reported as stock figures.

RBFS 2025:1 limits transaction-level recording to the first six items; direct debits, money remittances, e-money transactions and the rest are submitted as aggregates. Building a transaction-level pipeline for an aggregate item exceeds the Riksbank’s specified reporting model, while building an aggregate for a transaction-level item fails the reporting specification.

The attribute matrices in Annex 1 add a second layer that a naive build will trip over. Each item does not carry every attribute, and some attributes are directional. In the transactional matrix for the items in Section 3(1-6), an attribute marked S is reported only for sent or outgoing transactions and an attribute marked M only for received or arriving transactions, while an X applies to both. Amount in account currency, for example, is a sent-side attribute for instant credit transfers, and the SNI code that classifies the enterprise receiving a payment is a received-side attribute. A pipeline that populates every attribute for every direction produces data the schema does not expect, so the mapping has to be built attribute by attribute against the annex, not item by item.

The operator dataset is shorter and entirely aggregated. Section 7 lists 11 items: direct participants, indirect participants, card-based payment transactions, credit transfers, direct debits, e-money payment transactions, ATM cash deposits, over-the-counter cash deposits, ATM cash withdrawals, over-the-counter cash withdrawals and cash advance at a POS terminal. Annex 2 asks operators to distinguish cross-border transactions from domestic ones and to report them by the residency of the sending and receiving participants, broken down by country. The operational schema uses the payment-system-metric attribute to identify transaction data, concentration ratios or participant information; transaction values are expressed in SEK. An operator that reports only aggregate throughput and omits the concentration dimension gives the Riksbank half the picture it asked for.

RBFS 2025:1 anchors its item definitions in Annex II of the ECB Statistical Regulation, with the items in Section 3 (from item 2 onward) and the items in Section 7 defined in accordance with that framework. That anchor keeps the Swedish series comparable with the euro-area payments statistics collected under Regulation (EU) No 1409/2013 of the European Central Bank on payments statistics, which the regulation names directly.

Instant credit transfers first, ordinary credit transfers a year later

The phasing is easy to miss because both items read like the same product. Item 1 is instant credit transfers, which the regulation defines as account-based payments that take place immediately. Item 2 is credit transfers, the ordinary account-to-account push payment. They start on different dates.

Instant credit transfers fall into the weekly cohort and begin with the 1 October 2026 go-live. Ordinary credit transfers sit in the monthly cohort, and the entry-into-force provisions delay them: the provisions relating to reporting for the Section 3(2) items apply from 1 October 2027. A provider that maps both to a single “credit transfer” feed and switches it on in October 2026 will over-report ordinary credit transfers by a full year, and one that delays both to 2027 will miss the instant-payment series entirely.

For teams still building instant-payment rails, the reporting timeline runs alongside the operational one, and our explainer on the SEPA Instant Payments Regulation sets out the parallel instant-payment obligations that many of the same providers face on the euro side.

How often Riksbank payment statistics reporting must happen

Section 4 sets the standard frequencies for providers. The items in Section 3(1) and 3(3-6) are reported every calendar week. The items in Section 3(2) and 3(7-12) are reported every calendar month. The quantity items in Section 3(13-17) are reported each calendar half-year. There is no single “payments return” with one deadline; a provider runs three standard cadences across item-specific collection schemes.

Section 6 fixes the timing. A weekly reporter files no later than the fourth business day following the calendar week the report relates to. A monthly reporter files no later than the ninth business day of the month following the reporting month. A quarterly, half-yearly or yearly reporter files no later than the last business day of the month following the period. Those windows are short by supervisory standards, and the weekly one in particular assumes an automated pipeline rather than a manual close.

Section 5 opens a reduced-frequency route, but it does not establish an individual provider market-share test. The Riksbank may notify a provider that it may report items 1 to 12 quarterly where the provider belongs to the group whose combined value per payment service represents more than 5 per cent but no more than 15 per cent of the annual total for all providers. It may notify annual reporting where the provider belongs to the group whose combined value per payment service is no more than 5 per cent, with items 13 to 17 still reported annually with a breakdown by calendar half-year. The Instructions describe the intended cumulative coverage as 85 per cent at the standard weekly or monthly frequencies, 95 per cent after quarterly reporters are included and 100 per cent after annual reporters are included. The Riksbank reviews coverage and contacts the affected providers; a provider cannot self-select a reduced frequency.

Operators have a single cadence. Section 8 requires reporting under Section 7 every calendar quarter, with the Section 9 timing of the last business day of the month following the quarter. An operator does not get a weekly obligation, and a provider does not get to fold its operator data into a quarterly-only file.

Building the API integration and the JSON model

Section 12 says only that reports are submitted to the Riksbank in electronic form in the manner the Riksbank specifies. The operational detail lives on the reporting-agents page: reporting runs through the Riksbank’s API portal, and providers call a REST API for Payment Statistics. The content of what is reported is set out in a separate document, “Instructions for reporting payments statistics”, which sits alongside the regulation.

Getting onto the API is a three-step onboarding, and each step has an artifact. First, a reporting agent submits the “Registration of authentication information for Payment Statistics” form with its authentication details, built according to the Riksbank’s “API Authentication” document; the Riksbank confirms once the information is registered. Second, the agent downloads a subscription key from the developer portal, which is required on every API call. Third, the agent can post test files to the API. To see the Payment Statistics API in the portal at all, an agent has to create an account and sign up.

The Riksbank has published Pydantic schemas for validating reported payment statistics in a public GitHub repository, riksbanken/payment-statistics. A reporting team can validate its JSON against those schemas before it ever calls the API, which turns a slow submit-and-reject loop into a local check. Building that validation into the pipeline early is the single most useful thing an engineering team can do before the 1 September 2026 test deadline. Test reporting is the mechanism the Riksbank expects every agent to have exercised before live collection starts.

The Riksbank has put more than the schema in reporting agents’ hands. Alongside the instructions and the authentication documents, the reporting-agents page publishes example files for each part of the reporting as a downloadable set, a question-and-answer file that records the interpretation points other agents have already raised, and a list of Swedish monetary financial institutions that includes payment service providers. Working through the example files against the schema is the fastest way to see how the transaction-level items and the aggregates are expected to look on the wire, and the Q&A file often settles a scoping question before it has to be sent to the Riksbank’s payment statistics mailbox.

Corrections, verification and the two-year look-back

The obligation does not end when a file validates. Section 10 requires a reporting agent, at the Riksbank’s request, to submit corrections for incorrect or incomplete information for up to two years back from the date of the report. A reporting agent that itself discovers significant errors in previously submitted data has to contact the Riksbank to assess whether corrections should be made. That two-year window means a provider cannot treat a filed period as closed and archived; the data has to stay reproducible and correctable across two years of history.

Section 11 adds a data-quality duty that is easy to underestimate. At the Riksbank’s request, a reporting agent has to promptly verify and explain any major changes and deviating values in a report. From an analyst’s seat, a sudden jump in a card-transaction aggregate or a swing in cross-border credit transfers is exactly what triggers a query, and the reporting team is expected to explain it against its own books quickly. An institution that tracks unusual changes in its own data can respond to such a request promptly.

Section 13 requires each reporting agent to give the Riksbank a named contact person or function and to keep those details current. Section 14 leaves room for exemptions in exceptional circumstances, which the Riksbank grants at its own discretion. None of this is a substitute for the data itself; it is the accountability wrapper around it.

How the Riksbank collection differs from ECB and Finansinspektionen reporting

The legal basis is domestic, and that is the first thing to get right for a non-euro country. RBFS 2025:1 is a Riksbank instrument made pursuant to Chapter 13, Section 1, paragraph 11 of the Sveriges Riksbank Act (2022:1568) that borrows EU definitions rather than a directly applicable EU regulation. The ECB’s payments statistics regulation, Regulation (EU) No 1409/2013 of the European Central Bank, applies to payment service providers and payment system operators resident in euro-area Member States, and it was amended in 2020 by Regulation (EU) 2020/2011 to widen the dataset. Sweden is outside the euro area, so the Riksbank collects the comparable data under its own national instrument while aligning the item definitions with the ECB’s Annex II. The filing obligation and the operative reporting specification come from RBFS 2025:1 and the Riksbank’s current reporting instructions. RBFS 2025:1 uses Annex II of the ECB payments-statistics regulation to define the specified provider and operator items, but the Riksbank states that its instructions take precedence where they do not correspond with ECB guidance.

The second distinction is which authority receives what. This is a Riksbank statistical collection, separate from any Finansinspektionen supervisory return. Any separate reporting that a provider is required to submit to Finansinspektionen remains governed by the applicable FI requirements and timetable, and readers weighing the wider 2026 Swedish reporting load can see that supervisory side in our note on Finansinspektionen’s 2026 AML and sanctions reporting priorities. Feeding Riksbank payment statistics into a Finansinspektionen channel, or the reverse, sends the data to the wrong place.

National central banks have taken different routes to the same ECB-aligned dataset, which is why a group operating across the Nordics and the euro area cannot assume one national template fits the next. The Deutsche Bundesbank runs its own payment-behaviour and payment-statistics work, as our piece on Bundesbank payment behaviour and PSP reporting in Germany describes, and the Riksbank’s move to a JSON API with weekly transaction-level items for some series is its own design choice. For providers watching where EU payments law heads next, PSD3 and the proposed payment services regulation had reached provisional political agreement but had not yet been finally adopted as at 31 July 2026. If adopted, they would reshape parts of the underlying payments framework, a prospective shift we cover in our guide to PSD3 for payment institutions and electronic money.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a Swedish branch of a foreign payment institution have to report to the Riksbank?

Yes. Section 1 of RBFS 2025:1 extends the collection to foreign payment service providers with a branch in Sweden, alongside providers and payment system operators domiciled in Sweden. The branch reports the Swedish activity; it does not pull in the parent’s payments carried on abroad through other branches or subsidiaries.

We are authorised only for account information services. Are we in scope?

No. Section 1 states that the regulations do not apply to providers that only provide account information services, alongside public authorities and natural persons. The exemption is tied to providing only account information services. It ceases to apply if the firm provides any other payment service; an unused additional permission is not the test stated in Section 1.

Why do instant credit transfers and ordinary credit transfers have different start dates?

They are separate items. Instant credit transfers are item 1 and fall in the weekly cohort that begins on 1 October 2026. Ordinary credit transfers are item 2, and the entry-into-force provisions apply reporting for the Section 3(2) items only from 1 October 2027. A single combined credit-transfer feed will over-report or under-report unless it is split.

Which items are transaction-level and which are aggregates?

For providers, items 1 to 6 are reported for each individual payment transaction, and items 7 to 17 are reported at an aggregated level. The quantity items 13 to 17 are stock counts of instruments and infrastructure. For payment system operators, every item in Section 7 is aggregated.

Can a small provider choose to report annually?

Reduced frequencies are available only through a Riksbank announcement. Section 5 lets the Riksbank announce quarterly reporting where a provider belongs to the group whose combined value per payment service represents more than 5 per cent but no more than 15 per cent of the annual total across all providers. It may announce annual reporting where the provider belongs to the group whose combined value represents no more than 5 per cent. These are cumulative coverage groups, not an individual provider market-share test.

How is the data actually submitted?

Through the Riksbank’s API portal, via a REST API, using JSON files each compressed into their own ZIP archive. Onboarding runs through a registration-of-authentication form and a subscription key downloaded from the developer portal. The Riksbank’s published Pydantic schemas allow validation before submission. Section 12 leaves the exact manner to the Riksbank, and the reporting-agents page carries the current mechanics.

How far back can the Riksbank ask us to correct data?

Up to two years. Section 10 requires corrections for incorrect or incomplete information for up to two years back from the date of the report, at the Riksbank’s request, and requires a reporting agent to raise significant errors it finds itself. Filed periods have to remain reproducible across that window.

Do payment system operators report the same items as payment service providers?

No. Operators report the 11 items in Section 7 through Annex 2, which centre on direct and indirect participants and on the transactions processed through the system, all at an aggregated level and every calendar quarter. Providers report the 17 items in Section 3 through Annex 1 across weekly, monthly and half-yearly cadences. An entity that is both a provider and an operator files both datasets separately.

Related Articles

• PSD2 Reporting Requirements: how payment service providers and payment institutions are defined and what the directive already requires them to report.
• SEPA Instant Payments Regulation: the parallel instant credit transfer obligations facing many of the same providers on the euro side.
• Riksbank Cross-Currency Instant Payments on TIPS: how the Riksbank is connecting SEK instant payments to the euro-area TIPS platform.
• Bundesbank Payment Behaviour and PSP Reporting: how another national central bank runs its ECB-aligned payments data collection.
• Finansinspektionen 2026 AML and Sanctions Priorities: the supervisory reporting that Sweden’s financial supervisor collects, distinct from the Riksbank’s statistics.
• PSD3 for Payment Institutions and E-Money: how the next EU payments framework will reshape the definitions these statistics rely on.

Key Takeaways

• Riksbank payment statistics reporting under RBFS 2025:1 begins on 1 October 2026, with test reporting expected to have started by 1 September 2026 at the latest.
• Reporting agents are payment service providers and payment system operators domiciled in Sweden, plus foreign providers with a Swedish branch; public authorities, natural persons and account-information-only providers are out of scope.
• Providers report a 17-item dataset in Annex 1, with items 1 to 6 at transaction level and items 7 to 17 aggregated; operators report an 11-item aggregated dataset in Annex 2, quarterly.
• Instant credit transfers (item 1) start weekly in October 2026; ordinary credit transfers (item 2) only begin from 1 October 2027.
• Standard provider frequencies are weekly, monthly and half-yearly under Section 4; the Riksbank may announce quarterly or annual reporting for smaller providers under Section 5, using 5 per cent and 15 per cent value thresholds.
• Submission is via the Riksbank’s REST API, with each JSON report compressed into its own ZIP archive, validated against the published Pydantic schemas, after a registration form and subscription key onboarding.
• Section 10 lets the Riksbank require corrections up to two years back, and Section 11 requires prompt explanation of major changes and deviating values.
• The legal basis is the Sveriges Riksbank Act (2022:1568); the data definitions follow Annex II of the ECB payments statistics regulation, but the filing goes to the Riksbank, not to Finansinspektionen.

Sources and References

• Sveriges Riksbank, For reporting agents (statistics on payments): https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/statistics/statistics-on-payments/for-reporting-agents/
• The Riksbank’s regulations (RBFS 2025:1) on reporting payment statistics (English translation, adopted 25 June 2025): https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/riksbanken/forfattningssamling/lista-rbfs-eng/2025_1-the-riksbanks-regulations-on-reporting-payment-statistics.pdf
• Riksbank Instructions for reporting payment statistics (v1.4.0, 24 April 2026): https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/statistik/betalningsstatistik/for-rapportorer/instructions-for-reporting-payment-statistics.pdf
• Sveriges Riksbank, New regulations on reporting payment statistics (notice): https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/press-and-published/notices-and-press-releases/notices/2025/new-regulations-on-reporting-payment-statistics/
• riksbanken/payment-statistics, Pydantic validation schemas (GitHub): https://github.com/riksbanken/payment-statistics
• Regulation (EU) No 1409/2013 of the European Central Bank of 28 November 2013 on payments statistics (ECB/2013/43): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32013R1409
• Regulation (EU) 2020/2011 of the European Central Bank amending Regulation (EU) No 1409/2013 on payments statistics: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32020R2011

Getting the 1 October 2026 filing right

The work that decides whether Riksbank payment statistics reporting goes smoothly is happening now. The Riksbank says all payment service providers and payment system operators should have started test reporting by 1 September 2026; it does not state that testing closes on that date. A reporting team that has mapped its products to the 17 provider items, split instant from ordinary credit transfers, wired the three frequencies to one data model, validated its JSON against the published schemas and named its Riksbank contact will find the first live weekly file on 8 October 2026 uneventful. A team that waits for the go-live date to start will meet the two-year correction window from the wrong side. The regulation is short; the build behind it is not, and the calendar has already started.

Disclaimer: The information on RegReportingDesk.com is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, tax, or compliance advice. Always consult your compliance officer, legal counsel, or the relevant supervisory authority for guidance specific to your institution.