That's a wrap on Season 13 | Nordic Fintech Highlights Summer 2026

Your favorite fintech nerd hosts Pål Krogdahl and Ville Sointu are joined by Janne Salminen from Helsinki Fintech Farm to close out the season before heading off to their summer holidays. We skipped the standard news roundup this time to reflect on the season, make some bold predictions, and let Pål shamelessly plug his upcoming book.

Here’s what the guys daydreamed about in our season finale:

🤖 The Robots Are Paying: "Professor" Ville breaks down Nordea’s massive milestone with Mastercard: executing the first real, live agentic card payment transaction in the Nordics.

🏥 The Ultimate Book Launch: Pål’s new book on progressive modernization, Rip Out the Core, drops in July. Join the launch event on August 13th at Maria 01 - a former hospital, which is beautifully ironic for an event about performing surgery on legacy core systems! (Check the links below for the registration link to snag a free copy!)

🏆 **Season Highlights:**The trio looks back at their absolute favorite moments, giving flowers to Aleksi Grym for his masterclass on the Digital Euro vs. Stablecoins (you know how much Ville and Pål love those) and exploring the Vipps MobilePay interoperability journey with Baard Slaattelid.

🌍 Tech Sovereignty: A deep dive into why European institutions have to obsess over AI and payments independence before the "excrement hits the fan".

💻 Ransomware Ramblings: We wrap things up with a genuinely terrible IT joke from Janne, which naturally leads to a completely unhinged tangent about Pål’s home server being held hostage by Bitcoin hackers.

Have a fantastic, relaxing summer, and we’ll see you right back here for Season 14! (Like, subscribing, and leaving a 5-star review is basically implied at this point).

Links mentioned in the episode:Sign up for “Rip out the core” book launch: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/Rip_Out_the_Core_Book_Launch_0627

Read Mobey Forum’s latest report “Payment is not just a Payment”: https://mobeyforum.org/payment-value-chain-mobey.html

Episode hosted by Pål Krogdahl & Ville Sointu

Episode produced and edited by Fintech Daydreaming

- Email us on Hello@FintechDaydreaming.com

- Fintech Daydreaming home page - https://www.FintechDaydreaming.com

- Fintech Daydreaming on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintech-daydreaming

- Pål Krogdahl - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krogdahl/

- Ville Sointu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ville-sointu-54682b/