Despite signing up 20,000 users, Swedbank will close down its mobile payment service in the Spring because it failed to deliver the take-up that the Swedish bank expected, both in terms of the industry as well as users.

The service, which is called Bart, has not had sufficient pick-up, Carl Molinero (pictured), the Swedish bank’s head of digital business development, told Mobile World Live

“Actors in the market, consumers, merchants and other banks, has not embraced the Bart solution to the extent that was anticipated.”

Molinero added that the current trend is for banks and merchants looking for broad industry-level standards to invest in.

Interestingly, he also said that consumer demand for mobile payment services for the point-of-sale environment alone is “limited”.

“The payment has to be put into a larger context with pre and post payment benefits, like digital receipts, offers, loyalty programs, to move the consumers into a new behaviour,” he said.

The bank will concentrate on joint developments such as Swish where it is working with six other banks in Sweden in offering a P2P money transfer app.

Swedbank trialed its own system with supermarket Axfood before rolling it out across all the retailer’s stores at the end of 2012 but struggled to attract other merchants.

The system used QR codes scanned at the checkout so users can make payments from their mobile devices at existing point-of-sale systems.

Swedbank did not reveal how much it had invested in its mobile payments system. However, Molinero said it was a strategic area to which the bank is committed.