Episode 121 · 2022-02-13 · 01:01:35 · Original in Finnish
Payment Systems | Monika Liikamaa and Kirsi Larkiala | Negotiator 121
Originally published as “Maksujärjestelmät | Monika Liikamaa Kirsi Larkiala | Neuvottelija 121”
Enfuce's founder and co-chief-executive Monika Liikamaa and the finance-sector all-rounder Kirsi Larkiala explain what actually happens behind a card payment. Liikamaa sets out why debit and credit are entirely different products, how a payment travels from the terminal through the acquirer and the card scheme to the issuer, and why a closed ecosystem such as the S Group's is the cheapest way to pay. Larkiala argues that the Nordic P27 project is mostly a soft landing for banks that failed to make strategic decisions in time, and both unpack why payment traffic has never made money in Finland. The episode also covers the risk a central bank digital currency poses to commercial banks, security of supply in telecom connections, the public-cloud breakthrough achieved with the financial supervisor, and Enfuce's road from bootstrapping to a 45 million growth round.
Core theses
- Debit and credit are different products rather than two settings of one, and most confusion about payment costs starts from treating them as the same.
- The cheapest payment is the one that never leaves the ecosystem, which is why a closed retail scheme beats the card rails on cost by construction.
- P27 is read here as a soft landing for banks that postponed a strategic decision, not as an infrastructure project on its merits.
- A central bank digital currency is a solvency question for commercial banks, because it removes the deposit that funds them.
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Summary
Enfuce’s founder and co-chief-executive Monika Liikamaa and the finance-sector all-rounder Kirsi Larkiala explain what actually happens behind a card payment. Liikamaa sets out why debit and credit are entirely different products, how a payment travels from the terminal through the acquirer and the card scheme to the issuer, and why a closed ecosystem such as the S Group’s is the cheapest way to pay. Larkiala argues that the Nordic P27 project is mostly a soft landing for banks that failed to make strategic decisions in time, and both unpack why payment traffic has never made money in Finland. The episode also covers the risk a central bank digital currency poses to commercial banks, security of supply in telecom connections, the public-cloud breakthrough achieved with the financial supervisor, and Enfuce’s road from bootstrapping to a 45 million growth round.
Two products, not one
Debit moves money you have; credit creates an exposure someone underwrites. They travel different rails, cost different amounts and carry different rights, and the habit of treating a card as a card is where most arguments about payment fees go wrong from the first sentence.
The cheapest payment never leaves
A closed ecosystem — the S Group’s being the Finnish example — avoids the acquirer, the scheme and the issuer entirely. That is not a clever optimisation; it is the removal of three parties who each take a margin, and it explains the cost difference without any appeal to efficiency.
What a CBDC does to a bank
If people can hold central bank money directly, the deposit base that funds commercial lending is what leaves. That makes a central bank digital currency a question about bank funding rather than about payments, and it is the most consequential thing in the episode.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Maksujärjestelmät | Monika Liikamaa Kirsi Larkiala | Neuvottelija 121. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
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Guests: Monika Liikamaa, Kirsi Larkiala