Peter Fischer
Principal Consultant
SIX - Easy digital payment of bills thanks to eBill
By opening up the eBill market, SIX has created a solution with which even more invoices can be paid digitally in the future.
June, 2020
By merging the two «e-bill systems» of PostFinance and SIX Paynet AG into a central e-bill platform for all banks, many synergies can be exploited. This merger also involved a re-branding of the old term «e-bill» to «eBill».
The opening of the market for so-called network partners enables additional billers (from village associations to telecom providers) to deliver their bills digitally. The network partners form the interface between the biller and SIX.
The continuous further development of eBill ensures that the product is future-proof. For example, it is possible to easily create an eBill from a QR invoice.
Challenges
Although e-bill was a successful product, it was operated in parallel by two companies. As a result, and because of the close coupling of the existing SIX system with the banks, market development had come to a standstill in recent years.
These were three of the biggest challenges facing SIX:
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There were two e-bill systems for the end customer area with many different formats and specialities.
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Innovations and further development in the existing SIX system were difficult to achieve. On the one hand, the existing system was getting on in years, and on the other hand there was a very close link to the banks.
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New digital solutions would exert increasing pressure in the future, as is already the case in the banking world through FinTechs in many areas.
Impacts
If the SIX and the Swiss financial centre had ignored the above-mentioned challenges, this would have led to the following consequences:
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Market development would have continued to stagnate because it would have been difficult for new partners to enter the market. Operating two almost identical solutions would have led to ever higher costs.
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It would not have been possible to react to the market stagnation, as product innovation would hardly have been possible.
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The risk of being overtaken by new, open digitisation solutions would have increased. This would ultimately have led to a loss of customers.
Solution
The new eBill platform offers a standardized solution for electronic invoices in the Swiss financial center. ipt has supported SIX in creating a solution that works with the latest technologies and is constantly being improved and developed.
Thanks to a simple format and well-defined interfaces, the many stakeholders can be easily connected to the platform.
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Simple usability
Release invoices in online banking conveniently and securely with just a few clicks.
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Saving costs and resources
There are no shipping costs and nature is spared by the digital transmission.
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Transaction based accounting
SIX earns from transaction fees of the parties involved
Business Value
The following business value was generated by the solutions used.
Click here for an explanation of the ipt Value Spider – Make technology valuable
In figures - this was achieved
The following could be achieved with the solution.
Transactions processed in 2019
Active users of eBill
Connected billers
Tech Box
The following is required from a technological point of view
- Application based on stable, modern technologies
- Use of state-of-the-art web technologies in eBill portal development for a consistent customer experience
- Expandable architecture with standardized interfaces and proven communication patterns with banks and network partners
The following was used
- Applications based on Spring Boot Microservices
- Frontend with Angular and ngrx store
- Communication via REST-API with the network partners, defined as OpenAPI-Specification
- Communication via SOAP services for web communication and JMS for payment orders (ISO-20022) with the banks
We are/were on the project
Please contact us if you have any questions.
