# Swish payment app

19 Hacker News commenters recommended Swish payment app and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Sweden's widely used mobile payment app for bank transfers between people; praised for free person-to-person payments. Main caveats: occasional downtime and fees.

## Why people recommend it

- Nationwide payments across Sweden (4 comments): "Swish in Sweden, MobilePay in Denmark/Finland, iDEAL in the Netherlands, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48092080)) "the equivalent in Sweden, Swish, is also almost default there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48208255)) "In Sweden we have Swish for domestic transfers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207536))
- Free or flat-fee person-to-person payments (2 comments): "Swish is always 2 SEK not matter the amount, for party-to-party without the "checkout" feature, it's always free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50102760)) "it both enables p2p payments (that Visa/Mastercard doesn't offer)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943641))
- Works reliably for users (2 comments): "BankID, Swish and Swedbank's app work fine for me on GOS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484281)) "works perfectly well for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47486542))

## What people warn about

- Occasional downtime reported (2 comments): "It kind of works and Swish does too, unless they're down which happens every now and then" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48060600)) "Swish (Sweden) sees quite a lot of downtime." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972961))
- Fees seen as high (4 comments): "Usually these systems raise their fees after being established, sometimes even higher than Visa/Mastercard." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059464)) "The Swish system is private, which means that the fees are as high as the market can bear." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059409)) "The fee is 2 SEK ($0.2) per transaction - of course it's for tax evasion reasons" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50085728))
- Operator unwilling to interoperate (2 comments): "So making it compatible would potentially hurt the business of Swish." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48068013)) "But Swish aren't particularly interested in playing an active part." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48208054))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Wero](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wero.md): 84 recommend
- [Apple Pay](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-pay.md): 73 recommend
- [Google Pay](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-pay.md): 26 recommend
- [Google Wallet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-wallet.md): 22 recommend
- [Curve Pay](https://hackerapproved.com/p/curve.md): 22 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Swish payment app", https://hackerapproved.com/p/swish/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).