A market with a gap on both sides of the counter
Netgíró set out to close a real tension in Icelandic payments. Consumers wanted a flexible, secure way to pay without handing sensitive card details to every retailer they bought from. Merchants wanted to accept payment without buying POS hardware or absorbing card-scheme fees. Serving one side well is a product; serving both at once is a payment method.
In 2013, three engineers took on that idea as Moberg's first client engagement. It became Iceland's national payment method — and we have built and run it every year since, which makes it the longest relationship in the company's history and the reason there is a company at all.
Why both sides say yes
For the consumer
Nothing to hand over
A phone number is enough. No card details spread across every shop you have ever bought from, and the option to spread a larger purchase over instalments rather than putting it on a credit card.
For the merchant
Conversion without hardware
Thousands of Icelandic retailers carry Netgíró because it converts: a fast checkout, no POS terminal to buy, and no card-scheme fee on the transaction. The merchant is paid; Netgíró carries the credit risk.
For the lender
Risk priced by evidence
Credit limits and terms are set by machine-learning scorecards rather than by a bureau score and a judgement call — which is what made lending at national scale defensible in the first place.
What holds it up
Real-time payments and billing
The core
Authorisation at the moment of purchase, then monthly consolidation, instalment distribution and settlement — banking's accounting rigour with an application's user experience. In payments, latency is not a comfort question but a trust question, and it is treated that way.
The credit decision engine
The intelligence
Since 2017, scorecards have set limits and terms in seconds. Five model generations have run on one operating layer, each defended in board presentations rather than in isolated notebooks — and the first rollout cut risk losses by nearly half.
Modern after more than a decade
The longevity
The platform runs on .NET 9 today, having been modernised continuously rather than rebuilt. Payment splits of up to 24 months and real-time credit capacity assessment were absorbed without a wholesale redesign, because the architecture was chosen with that in mind.
The risk modelling grew into a practice of its own — IFRS 9 expected credit loss, budget projection, customer segmentation. That story is told in the credit decision engine.
“Netgíró achieved an important milestone in 2022 when it successfully lent 10 billion kr. Moberg deserves a lot of credit for this accomplishment, and for all that we have been through together.”
What a decade of it produced
Netgíró is Iceland's leading buy now, pay later platform. More than 2,000 merchants accept it across retail, services and online, and it has operated continuously since 2012. That reliability is not incidental — it is what more than a decade of disciplined engineering on one codebase buys.
It also changed our own business. Kvika acquired Netgíró in January 2021 and, with it, a 40% stake in the company that had built it — a bank choosing to own its engineering partner on the strength of what that partner had already shipped. The platform that started as one client's idea is the reason Moberg has an Icelandic half.
Team
- —Mirko Budimir
- —Kristijan Babić
- —Jurica Leljak
- —Karlo Dragović
Key objectives
Let a consumer pay without handing card details to every retailer they buy from.
Let a merchant accept payment without POS hardware or card-scheme fees.
Decide credit in seconds, explainably enough to defend to a board and a regulator.
Keep the platform modern for a decade without ever stopping to rebuild it.
Services
- —Backend development
- —Mobile development
- —Web development
- —API development
- —Software architecture
- —Credit risk modelling
- —Performance optimisation
- —Maintenance
Technology
Numbers
2,000+
Merchants accepting Netgíró
10bn kr
Lent in 2022
24mo
Maximum payment split
2012
Live continuously since
