How do people in Norway pay online?
Nearly everyone in Norway buys online. Eurostat puts the share of people who bought something online in the previous 12 months at 92.51% in 2025, against an EU average of 73.56%. Norges Bank counted 940 million online payments with Norwegian cards in 2025, up 12% on 2024, worth NOK 438 billion. Payments to Norwegian online stores made up 64% of card payments for online purchases, and online payments were 28% of all payments with Norwegian cards.
Cards and phones share the checkout. Norges Bank asked people how they paid for their most recent online purchase. In the March 2026 survey, 37% paid directly with a card, down from 54% in 2021, and 37% used a mobile payment platform such as Vipps or Apple Pay, up from 15%. Invoices from providers such as Klarna, Collector and Svea covered 22%, and other methods such as PayPal 4%. Norges Bank notes that a card is usually the funding source behind mobile payments and is often used to pay the invoices too.
BankAxept does not work for regular online shopping. Most Norwegians carry a card that combines the domestic BankAxept debit system with Visa or Mastercard, and online the international part is used. BankAxept made up 46% of Norwegian card payments in 2025.
Vipps is the local wallet. Vipps MobilePay reported almost 4.68 million Vipps users in Norway at the end of 2025 and said Vipps’s e-commerce revenue grew 21% that year. Online, the shopper chooses Vipps at checkout; on a computer they enter their phone number, and on a phone the app opens. They approve the payment in the app, the amount is reserved, and the store captures it when it completes the order. In March 2026 Vipps MobilePay announced the sale of its Vipps Checkout product and related e-commerce merchant relationships in Norway, covering around 3,000 webshops, to Kustom AB.
What rules shape online payments in Norway?
Foreign sellers collect VAT through VOEC. The standard VAT rate is 25%, with 15% for most food. Businesses without a Norwegian address that sell goods worth less than NOK 3,000 per item, or services that can be delivered remotely, to Norwegian consumers must register in the VOEC scheme once those sales reach NOK 50,000 in 12 months. They report and pay the VAT every quarter. Food and goods subject to excise duties are outside the scheme.
Shoppers have 14 days to withdraw. Under the Right of Withdrawal Act (angrerettloven), the period for goods runs from the day the shopper receives them, and it is extended by up to 12 months if the seller did not give the required information. The seller must refund within 14 days of learning of the withdrawal, by the same payment method unless agreed otherwise and without a fee, and may hold the refund until the goods come back or the shopper shows proof of return.
Card surcharges are banned. Section 2-6 of the Financial Contracts Act (finansavtaleloven) says a payee may not charge a fee for using payment instruments covered by the EU rules on card interchange fees. The ban applies when both the payer’s and the payee’s payment service providers are in the EEA.
Card payments need strong customer authentication. Finanstilsynet set 31 December 2020 as the date from which strong customer authentication is required for card payments in online shopping.
How would Omno route payments in Norway?
A merchant would connect once and set routing rules per method, currency and customer group. In Norway:
- Vipps pay-ins would go to a provider connected to Vipps MobilePay, with the hosted checkout sending the request to the shopper’s app and the amount reserved until the merchant captures it at fulfilment.
- Card pay-ins would follow the merchant’s rules by card type, currency and amount, with cascading to the next provider in the rule when a provider is unavailable or rejects the request, until one accepts. Apple Pay and Google Pay would follow the same card rules.
- Invoice could be offered through the merchant’s contracted invoice provider, with the order status set by the provider’s notification.
- Saved cards would let returning customers pay without typing card details again.
Webhooks would report the final status of every payment, the record a back office should trust before shipping an order, and the routing-decision log would show which provider handled each payment and why.
What should merchants plan for?
Plan for cards and Vipps side by side. Each covered 37% of recent online purchases in Norges Bank’s survey, and invoices another 22%.
Plan for reserve and capture. Vipps reserves the amount when the shopper approves and moves the money when the store captures, so order and shipping systems need to trigger the capture.
Plan for VOEC. A seller outside Norway that passes NOK 50,000 of low-value sales to consumers in 12 months registers, charges Norwegian VAT and reports every quarter.
Plan for 14-day withdrawals. Refunds go back by the same payment method within 14 days of the shopper’s notice.