The Swedish Bankers’ Association launched a joint initiative in 2009 to work together to stop the purchase of child pornography on the internet on Wednesday.

In cooperation with ECPAT Sweden (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes) and the National Criminal Investigation Department (Rikskriminalpolisen), the banks will engage in crime prevention with the aim of preventing payments for pictures, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote on Wednesday.

“As a bank, we do not want to contribute to payments made for illegal activities,” Skandiabanken’s communications director told newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

Commercial sites that sell images of child abuse victims have declined sharply in number, the banks announced on Wednesday.

Separately, police believe that the market has become less attractive to criminals. Cooperation and contributions from other global players have resulted in credit card purchases over the internet of child sexual abuse images increasingly becoming rare.

The banks that are participating in the initiative include Danske Bank, Forex Bank, GE Money Bank, Handelsbanken, ICA Bank, Ikano Bank, Länsförsäkringar Bank, Marginalen Bank, Nordea, SEB, Skandiabanken, Sparbanken Öresund and Swedbank.

The industry association’s board decided in February 2009 to form a financial coalition in Sweden to prevent and obstruct the Swedish payment system from being misused for buying and selling child pornography.

The coalition’s mission is to develop and coordinate measures to obstruct and prevent child pornography trafficking. Banks began close cooperation with the National Criminal Investigation Department to help identify the companies that sell images of child abuse and to stop the transactions.

Banks work with ECPAT Sweden, a non-profit organization that works to prevent and stop all forms of the child sex trade, including pornography, trafficking and child sex tourism.

In October 2009, European ministers of justice and the interior decided to give political support to the further development of financial coalitions, both nationally and at EU level, to combat child pornography on the internet.

The ministers also gave their support to methods to track and stop payments. The Swedish initiative has been a model for other EU countries in combating child pornography.

The global child sex trade has grown sharply in recent years and is estimated to be worth billions of dollars. It is the third most profitable criminal activity after drugs and arms trafficking.

UNICEF estimates that over 1 million children become victims of sex trafficking around the world every year. Much of the trade is done through the internet, where buyers and sellers try to use traditional payment channels to transfer money to each other.

According to police, 50,000 attempts to reach illegal websites with abusive images of children are prevented in Sweden every day.