Bankgiro is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 giro system

Giro

A Giro or giro transfer is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and instigated by the payer, not the payee...

 used by all bank

Bank

A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...

s in the country, managed by Bankenes Betalingssentral

Bankenes Betalingssentral

Nets Group is the result of the merger in 2010 between PBS of Denmark and BBS and Teller of NorwayBankenes BetalingsSentral or BBS was a Norwegian company that provided centralised management of payment transactions, giro management and bank clearing....

 (BBS). The system allows indiscriminate transactions between private accounts in all Norwegian accounts using Norwegian krone

Norwegian krone

The krone is the currency of Norway and its dependent territories. The plural form is kroner . It is subdivided into 100 øre. The ISO 4217 code is NOK, although the common local abbreviation is kr. The name translates into English as "crown"...

. It is optimised for online banking

Online banking

Online banking allows customers to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by their retail or virtual bank, credit union or building society.-Features:...

, though it is also available via the post

Mail

Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...

 (Brevgiro), using a telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

 (Telegiro) or based on automation, including the services Avtalegiro, Autogiro and eFaktura

EFaktura

eFaktura is a Norwegian electronic billing system issued by Bankenes Betalingssentral . The system involves both business-to-customer systems, branded as eFaktura, and business-to-business branded as eFaktura B2B...

.

The system dates back to 1973 when the commercial bank

Commercial bank

After the implementation of the Glass–Steagall Act, the U.S. Congress required that banks engage only in banking activities, whereas investment banks were limited to capital market activities. As the two no longer have to be under separate ownership under U.S...

s and the saving banks

Sparebank

Sparebank is a Norwegian savings bank without external owners. The Norwegian sparebanks are a separate type of juridical entity that differ from commercial banks. There are a total of 123 savings banks in Norway.- History :...

 created a common system that could compete with the Postgiro system used by the postal bank, Postbanken

Postbanken

Postbanken is a Norwegian bank that is part of the DnB NOR Group. The bank offers its services through the Norwegian post offices.-History:...

. Use of Bankgiro was free until 1985. In the late 1990s Postgiro was bought out by BBS and Postbanken went over to using Bankgiro.