Payment Transactions News from our Blog

E-Commerce: How Swiss Online Shops Benefit from eBill

06 Jan 2025 6 minutes

In the e-commerce market, administrative costs, security considerations, and complicated processes are putting pressure on margins of Swiss online shops. Read on to discover why eBill E-Commerce can be an efficient, secure, and user-friendly alternative for Swiss e-commerce merchants, and how it contributes to customer loyalty.

eBill: The Secure Way to Issue – and Pay – an Invoice

20 Nov 2024 5 minutes

eBill is gaining popularity: just six years after debuting, 3.5 million users already utilize this digital billing channel. Discover in this blog post why eBill is also held in very high regard by invoice issuers and what makes this payment method so secure.

What the Discontinuation of LSV+/BDD Direct Debits Means for Invoice Issuers

18 Oct 2024 3 minutes

Another milestone in the harmonization and digitalization of Swiss payment transactions is approaching: LSV+/BDD direct debits will be discontinued at the end of September 2028. Read what invoice issuers need to know about the changes.

Payment Enrichment: The Key to Precise Transaction Data

22 Aug 2024 4 minutes

Transaction data are often unstructured and hard for people and machines to decipher. This causes a variety of problems. Discover below how payment enrichment can solve them.

Are ATMs Unprofitable? How Banks Can Continue to Satisfy the Swiss Public’s Fondness for Cash

04 Jul 2024 4 minutes

Although cash transactions have been sharply on the decline in recent years, people in Switzerland still want to continue to use cash. But the decreasing number of cash transactions makes operating automated teller machines (ATMs) unprofitable for many banks. What can they do to change that?

Embedded Finance: What Banks Need to Know Now

06 Jun 2024 9 minutes

Embedded finance and banking-as-a-service are driving forward a transformation in the financial industry by allowing banks to integrate their services into third parties’ product offerings. What opportunities and challenges does this present for traditional banks?

Smart Payments: Wearables as an Extension of Mobile Wallets

11 Jan 2024 4 minutes

Banks in Switzerland can now allow their customers to pay with their debit cards via wearables. Read in this blog post what wearables and mobile wallets are, how they work, and how you can use them to make payments.

Branch Automation for Banks, Including Five Reasons Why You, Too, Should Bank on It

22 Aug 2023 4 minutes

Digitalization – and by extension automation – is the dominant trend shaping the banking industry. It is also changing the bricks-and-mortar face of banking: bank branches. Read below what branch automation means for banks and what future developments hold in store.

eBill: A Digital Invoice Is More Than a PDF via Email

21 Jun 2023 4 minutes

Invoicing in Switzerland is increasingly moving away from paper. But not every invoice that comes to us electronically offers the same degree of added value. Read on to discover how eBill takes advantage of the possibilities offered by digitalization.

How Secure Is Open Banking?

02 Jun 2023 5 minutes

Open Banking is hailed as a revolution in finance. It allows bank account information to be shared with verified third-party providers. Read on to find out why, despite its open character, it’s totally secure.

Financial Parenting: How Parents Influence Their Children’s Financial Behavior

16 Mar 2023 5 minutes

Children first have to learn how to handle money responsibly. Parents play an important role here. Read about what financial parenting means in the following interview with Andrea Schmid-Fischer. The head of budget counseling and the advisory office for financial support for young adults at the Frauenzentrale Luzern explains how parents can help their children acquire financial literacy.

Finance for Kids: Inspired by Shelley Zalis – A Podcast on the Foundations of Financial Confidence

07 Oct 2022 18 minutes

Mara Harvey has made it her mission to teach children – and their parents – the basics of successful wealth building. In our podcast, learn about the importance of starting early to talk to your kids about money and the role gender equality fighters like Shelley Zalis have in this.

The End of Swiss Payment Slips: How to Keep Your Standing Orders Activated and Working

30 Aug 2022 3 minutes

The payment slips customarily used in Switzerland will be definitively replaced by QR-bills on September 30, 2022. This has a number of repercussions, including for your standing orders. Find out in our blog post what you have to do now to ensure that all of your payments continue to arrive at their destination.

How Do Instant Payments Work in Switzerland?

28 Jul 2022 4 minutes

Fast, secure, and available anytime: Instant payments are revolutionizing the Swiss payment system, enabling real-time transfers — 24/7, 365 days a year. But how does this new payment method work, and what does instant payment mean for our daily lives?

Open Banking: Inspired by Valtteri Bottas – A Podcast on the “Drive” of Innovation

14 Jul 2022 19 minutes

The team of Sven Siat, Head Connectivity at SIX, connects banks with FinTechs through the platform bLink. Find out in our podcast which parallels Open Banking and Formula 1 have and why the Finnish racing driver Valtteri Bottas is an inspiration for Siat.

Payment Preferences in Switzerland: 3 Myths and How They Pass the Test of Data

30 Jun 2022 5 minutes

With card or cash? The question is not only for consumers when paying, but also for the payment industry. Read in this blog post what conclusions can be drawn from millions of transactions about the payment preferences of Mr. and Mrs. Switzerland.

Open Banking: Taking a Wait-and-See Approach Can Get Expensive

18 Jan 2022 6 minutes

The initial obligation to open banking has now turned into a dynamic international competition. Sven Siat, Head Connectivity in the business unit Banking Services of SIX, explains why reluctance will not pay off also for the Swiss banks: Those who do not provide up-to-date programming interfaces in the future will not have a lasting business model in the long run.

Rodolfo Bertassello

Strong Together against Fraudsters

09 Dec 2021 3 minutes

Debit cards are and remain very secure. The previous payment options (e.g. at the sale terminal in shops) have an extremely low fraud rate thanks to the latest technologies. However, the topic of fraud is gaining more and more importance as a result of the increased use without a physical card (e-commerce, digital wallets). Rodolfo Bertassello, Head of Fraud Operations at Worldline, gives us some insights into the methods used by fraudsters and into successfully combating fraud.

Inspired by Daniela Ryf: The Staying Power of Cash

11 Nov 2021 17 minutes

“Cash is King,” is that still true in 2021? One thing is certain: In Switzerland, cash will retain its rightful place. At the same time, many ATMs are no longer being used to their full capacity. Alexander Verbeck, Head Cash Ecosystem in the Banking Services business unit of SIX, is dedicated to provide the Swiss financial center with more efficient options for cash supply. In our podcast, he reveals how he draws inspiration from triathlete Daniela Ryf.

Swiss Instant Payments Service Takes Off Soon

16 Sep 2021 4 minutes

Swiss banks will be able to offer their clients instant payments around the clock starting in August 2024. A transaction’s path from the payer’s to the payee’s account will take only a few seconds. How is the Swiss financial center shaping these innovations in customer payment transactions? What does Hypothekarbank Lenzburg CEO Marianne Wildi have to say about this?

Cash Supply: 4 Strategic Summaries on the Path to the Future

07 Sep 2021 5 minutes

Switzerland is on its way to becoming a cash-light society. The share of card-based and mobile payment transactions is rising rapidly, as it is in all highly developed countries. The Banking Services business unit of SIX takes stock of four things on the path to the future cash strategy.

Shopping Securely with the New Debit Cards

22 Jul 2021 5 minutes

The additional uses of the new debit cards, such as online shopping, are very popular. Stefan Giger, Head of Debit Processes & Fraud Management at UBS in Zurich, explains how card holders can protect themselves against fraud.

OpenWealth: Switzerland’s Financial Industry Defines Standards for Open Finance by Itself

02 Jul 2021 3 minutes

With OpenWealth, the Swiss wealth management industry has agreed – without being forced by the regulator – on a standard for application programming interfaces, the APIs. For implementation, the newly founded OpenWealth Association relies on the open finance platform bLink from SIX.

Preventing Card Fraud – The Police Show How

18 Jun 2021 2 minutes

Debit cards are a popular payment means. Unfortunately, scammers exploit this. Rolf Nägeli, Head of the Prevention Department at the Zurich City Police, explains how you can protect yourself against fraud.

Is Decentralized Finance the Future of Open Finance?

15 Jun 2021 4 minutes

Open Finance is considered a significant trend in the financial industry. In parallel, based on technological developments, a trend toward Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has also become established. Due to their similar goals, it is worth considering the concepts of Open Finance and Decentralized Finance in an integrated way. The main differences between the concepts lie in the technology used and the system of governance. Depending on the use case and customer type, the needs for the involvement of intermediaries are different. Therefore, coexistence of the different concepts is expected to be the future, which spurs a focus on their interoperability. Platforms offer ready-to-use solutions and help reduce complexity for market participants.

The Future of Payment Transactions Has Only Winners and 6 Other Fallacies

09 Jun 2021 4 minutes

Digital business models are revolutionizing the financial world. What was once long-established is today undergoing an accelerated structural transformation. Dieter Goerdten, Head of Products & Solutions in the Banking Services business unit of SIX, debunks seven common fallacies about the future of payment transactions in a fictitious conversation with the Swiss financial center.

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What the Future of Retailing Has “in Store”

28 Mar 2021 7 minutes

Digitalization is changing our shopping habits, and not just since the outbreak of COVID-19. Online shopping is the dictate of the moment. Brick-and-mortar commerce must further evolve in order to have a future. What that evolution might look like can already be seen in Düsseldorf and soon also in Zurich.

Great Interest in Implementing OpenWealth API

06 Nov 2020 4 minutes

The participants of the Wealth API Roundtable at the end of October agreed: there needs to be a standardized asset management interface for the Swiss financial center. The first financial institutions are likely to implement the API standard of the OpenWealth initiative as early as next year. There are various questions that need to be clarified before then, including how to securely operationalize and efficiently scale the OpenWealth API.

Wealth API – Swiss Financial Institutions at One Table

14 Oct 2020 3 minutes

Summer holidays have passed, and the Swiss open banking has had a dynamic start into the second half of the year. Particular attention was paid by the media to the definition of an API standard within wealth management at the end of September. Now it’s time to put theory into practice. Therefore, SFTI, OpenWealth (orchestrated by Synpulse) and b.Link of SIX are jointly initiating a roundtable for Swiss financial institutions.

Is Your Bank Ready for Open Banking?

12 Aug 2020 7 minutes

Open banking presents banks with huge opportunities to satisfy their customers’ demand for new digital products. In opening up to third-party providers, they will need to deal with open banking. Are you ready?

4 Reasons Why QR Codes Are Currently Making a Comeback

01 Jul 2020 2 minutes

There’s life in the old dog yet, apparently, in the old “pixel bugs” too. QR codes are everywhere, on posters and pinterest, on parking meters and parcels. And that makes perfect sense.

7 Statements on Open Banking – and Why They are Myths

03 Jun 2020 7 minutes

What’s in it for banks? Is it just a question of technology? And is that even secure enough? Switzerland is still at the very beginning of its Open Banking journey. But by launching bLink, SIX has started to change that – and dispel a few myths.

Open Banking Answers “Standard” Questions

11 Sep 2019 7 minutes

Open banking is a quiet revolution sweeping the financial industry. It gives Swiss banks and insurers an opportunity to succeed in competition against big technology companies.

Terravis – a Building Block for Digitalizing Switzerland

28 Feb 2018 3 minutes

The vision is a textbook example of Swiss moderation and understatement: to digitalize and automate mortgage, notarial and land registry services. In reality, the Terravis platform created by SIX is an essential building block in the process of digitalization in Switzerland. Nothing more, nothing less.

New Articles

eBill: The Secure Way to Issue – and Pay – an Invoice

What the Discontinuation of LSV+/BDD Direct Debits Means for Invoice Issuers

Payment Enrichment: The Key to Precise Transaction Data

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