In spring 2024, the Riksbank commissioned an independent expert with extensive international experience of payment issues to assess the Swedish payments market. A key conclusion of the evaluation is that Sweden needs to take a new approach to developing instant payments. According to the evaluation, Swish was a success and made Sweden a pioneer in the use of instant payments. However, in order not to fall behind, Sweden should now further develop instant payments for more uses (e.g. corporate and government payments), ensure that payments can be made in different interfaces in addition to Swish (e.g. in online banking), and finally enable new operators to offer instant payment services. The Riksbank's settlement system RIX-INST and the new requirements for the system's participants to be able to receive instant payments, in accordance with the Nordic common framework NCT-INST (which was produced by the Nordice Payments Council), are an important catalyst for such a development.

Another key conclusion of the evaluation concerns the system of governance and development of the Swedish payments infrastructure in order to incorporate more public interests into an infrastructure that is central to Swedish society. The evaluation mentions that Sweden should consider the following proposals, among others:

• Give a greater role to governmental actors to provide high-level strategic guidance on priorities in the payments industry and represent the interests of end-users, i.e. companies and citizens, in the payments system.
• Establish some form of national comprehensive payments organisation with a role for smaller banks, other payments market stakeholders such as payment service providers, consumer organisations, retailers and possibly also the Riksbank, complementing existing stakeholder organisations.
• Regulation that imposes some form of explicit social mission on private operators of key national payments infrastructure.