Management and technology consulting company BearingPoint and the Swiss financial market infrastructure operator SIX are partnering to develop a fully integrated invoice-to-payment service. The service will digitalize the entire value-added chain from the issue of the invoice to its payment: invoice issuers will send invoices directly and securely to their customers’ online and mobile banking applications. Customers can verify all the information online and then approve payment of an invoice at the click of a button. This service will also support the SEPA Request-To-Pay (SRTP) functions.
The platform is based on the eBill processing infrastructure of SIX, as this is already well established in Switzerland and will be rolled out in Europe with BearingPoint’s industry experience. The goal is to offer banks in Europe a model that has been tested in Switzerland and that enables the receipt of invoices and the release of payments directly through those banks’ electronic banking platforms. A key advantage is the ease of integration into the banks’ environments, thereby enabling fast and cost-effective implementations. The timing for the rollout of the solution depends on the participation of banks and invoice issuers in the respective countries. BearingPoint and SIX are currently planning for the first applications in the European market by 2023.
”With eBill, SIX has established a successful solution for digital invoices in the Swiss market. It is used by around 100 financial institutions and already reaches more than half of Swiss households. In our next step, we want to implement this innovative solution across Europe in partnership with BearingPoint,” emphasizes Marco Menotti, Head of Banking Services and Member of the Executive Board of SIX.
”The role of the bank account in payment processing is undergoing a fundamental change. Banks need to address how they will position accounts with their customers in the future. Our joint solution offers banks a way to link accounts with additional services that are related to invoice receipt and payment, and creates an overall win-win-win situation for banks, consumers and businesses,” adds Thomas Steiner, Global Leader Banking & Capital Markets at BearingPoint, explaining the motivation for the initiative.
”With our innovative solution, we can help invoice issuers achieve significant cost savings when processing transfers. It also massively improves the user experience for debtors, as they receive invoices and initiate payments in a single step and within the familiar digital environment of their own bank. For banks, this will result in a strengthening of their customer relationships and – through the reductions in paper invoices – also contribute to environmental protection,” notes Stefan Schütt, head of the RtP initiative at BearingPoint.