Norges Bank publishes financial infrastructure and retail payments reports highlighting need to strengthen payment system preparedness

Norges Bank has published its annual Financial Infrastructure 2026 and Retail Payment Services 2025 reports, concluding that Norway's payment system remains efficient and secure, with stable operations, rapid payments and low costs, but now faces a more serious and complex threat landscape. The central bank says continued systematic work is needed to reduce vulnerabilities and ensure sufficient resilience, particularly as geopolitical tensions rise and technology develops rapidly, including in artificial intelligence. A range of measures to strengthen payment system contingency arrangements are already being followed up jointly by authorities and the financial industry, and the reports stress that implementation should remain a priority. Resilience improves when alternatives exist if a bank, infrastructure component or user channel fails, with robust digital solutions as the main safeguard, while cash remains important for contingency purposes and for users who cannot or do not want to pay digitally. The analysis also finds that stablecoins are growing in some payment niches but still play a limited role in ordinary payments, and that regulation may make them more attractive without giving them all the characteristics of general means of payment. Retail Payment Services 2025 also updates annual statistics on electronic payment use, cash withdrawals from shops and ATMs, and household cash use.