Walley Is the First Payment Services Provider In Sweden To Receive the Safe Pay Certification

Being part of Collector Bank, Walley follows all the strict guidelines and rules of the payments industry.

“We have long experience in the payments industry and on top of that we are a bank, so security and data protection is part of our organisation and built into our processes,” says Walley’s Product Manager Philip Winberg.

“When we develop new products, it's security by design. But communicating about security is another thing.”

Everybody claims that their product is safe to use, so the real safe ones have a hard time standing out. With a certification from a neutral partner, Walley hopes to make it easier for customers to see and check that the payment method is safe.

Safe Pay certification covers security from multiple angles

During the Safe Pay certification, Qvik examines the applying company’s data processing practices and the security of its systems and processes. The main concern is the security of processing and handling the consumer’s personal data.

“Applying felt like a good way to ensure that we have done the work well. Being certified proves the high standard of our product”, Winberg says.

Without the certification, it is next to impossible for consumers to know which online shops are safe to use.

One minor bump was all we found

In the end, Walley needed to make only one minor change to their payment flow. Our Senior Payments Consultant Mikko Vahter, who issues the Safe Pay certifications, informed Winberg about the required changes on Friday, and the team at Walley had already fixed the problem by Monday.

“I’m very proud of how we operate – we are really fast in making changes”, Winberg says. 

This is not always the case. Especially if the provider has legacy systems, they might only be able to deploy new features once a week or even once a month. 

“In our team we have deployments several times a day. If there is a problem or something that needs to be fixed, it’s important to me that we can do that in a really short time.”

More than 25,000 merchants are now certified, making Buy-Now-Pay-Later safer

After it’s launch in February 2021, Safe Pay certification has covered most of the Finnish payment scene.

“For instance, Buy-Now-Pay-Later is an increasingly popular payment method. Regulation however does not treat it as a payment method, because actual payment takes place after purchase”, says Mikko Vahter from Qvik. 

Buy-Now-Pay-Later means that the customer can purchase goods and services and split the payment in one or multiple instalments post purchase. From a regulatory point of view, the actual payment is made when the customer pays the invoices.

The Safe Pay certification shows that Walley is a safe and responsible payment services provider that has taken all the necessary steps to protect consumers and merchants from fraud.

UK shows the way in regulation?

Authorities in the EU, Australia and US are looking into regulating the Buy-Now-Pay-Later sector, but the first concrete actions are likely to be taken in the UK.

“UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) announced in February 2021 that it will regulate Buy-Now-Pay-Later agreements as soon as possible”, Vahter says. “It will still take some time for this regulation to take effect, we expect that it could be late 2022 or 2023 before it is in place in the UK.”

The UK is usually one step ahead of the EU when it comes to payment regulation, so it’s likely that the EU will soon take action as well. Until then, at least there’s Safe Pay certification.