Plusgirot

The Swedish Post Office built Postgirot so people could pay bills at the post office without owning a bank account. Every account holder got a number, and payments moved from one postal giro account to another in a central register. For decades it was the country's payment infrastructure, and the banks' own Bankgirot, founded in 1959, was explicitly a response to that head start. Postgirot was also early with computers, processing large volumes in machine-readable form well before the banks did.

Postgirot Bank was sold to Nordea, which took over in 2002 and renamed the service PlusGirot. The numbers still appear on invoices and fundraising appeals, including the "90 accounts" assigned to vetted charities by Svensk Insamlingskontroll. Volumes have nonetheless shrunk year by year as businesses moved to bankgiro.