27 January 2014

EBICS as the communication standard for electronic payments in Switzerland

The Payments Council Switzerland (PaCoS) has developed Swiss Implementation Guidelines to adopt EBICS as the communication standard for Swiss banks

The Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) is an open standard for the fast and secure communication between banks and corporate customers in Germany and France. The EBICS SCRL, a joint organization of the The German Banking Industry Committee and the French CFONB, continuously develops EBICS to adopt it to the requirements of banks and enterprises.

Already for several years some Swiss credit institutions provide EBICS as a secure communication channel to their customers. Now it is planned to elevate this technology to the national standard in Switzerland. To achieve this a few Swiss specific features need to be considered, especially regarding proprietary payment types like ESR.

For this purpose the Payments Council Switzerland (PaCoS) has set up an EBICS task force and commissioned the preparation of implementation guidelines for Switzerland. Within one year the task force developed the EBICS Swiss Implementation Guidelines, which were already submitted to the EBICS SCRL.

Like with the French version, the products of Business-Logics will also be available for the Swiss standard, as soon as the Swiss EBICS specification is published.