UBS can now initiate a payment with CS

The big bank is rolling out its multi-bank for Swiss companies, later than the competition. But UBS relies on a new feature to conquer the important customer interface on its own.

After the pilot test last summer, the “mini rollout” is now taking place in around 100 Swiss companies: UBS has been bringing its new digital multi-bank solution to corporate clients since the beginning of November. Until the first quarter of 2021, all local companies should be able to access the offer, the large bank told the media on Thursday.

The Swiss market leader is late with the offer, as he admits. Several banks already offer their corporate clients multi-banking, with which cash flows can also be traced at competing institutions. Archrival Credit Suisse (CS) launched such a solution three years ago with Direct Business. Accounting software vendors also offer such descriptions.

“I walked the stony path”

“UBS has taken the rocky path and it has taken more time to develop this offer,” it was justified. Andy Colleagues (Picture below), Head of international corporate clients at the large Swiss bank on Thursday. For this, however, you now have a unique selling point among customers. “We assume that the other banks will have to do the same here to stay in the race.”

What is Kollegger’s secret weapon? It contradicts the multi-bank idea for a company to operate several of these offerings: the bank that is allowed to install the instrument first will probably be able to defend the central interface. And it is clear that the financial institution that aggregates a company’s payment transactions is more in touch with it and more likely to offer additional services; The winner takes it all.

Until recently science fiction

When banking becomes a “commodity” in the future and comprehensive advice is what counts, multiple banking becomes a game changer. That said Markus Gygax, the current president of the Bern regional bank Valiant, already at the beginning of 2019 finews.ch: “Anyone who can set up such an offer will have a huge advantage over the competition.” His institute has been managing its own multi-bank for a year.

Kollegger’s digital bankers had to come up with something like this: They also integrated a payment startup with third-party banks. Using the UBS portal, companies of a bank in Asia, for example, can initiate and settle the invoice with a supplier there. According to the institute, this works with more than ten competing banks in Germany. A few years ago it was still science fiction. In Switzerland, practically all banks had their own transmission standard.

The market is not yet distributed

But UBS bankers are now finding entirely new opportunities. The foundation of open banking is established with the b.Link platform of the Swiss stockbroker SIX. Even more important, however, is the gigantic project of converting Swiss payment transactions to the ISO 20022 standard, and therefore to the European standard. This, in turn, facilitates the automated exchange of payment and account data according to the Ebics standard, which is used by more and more Swiss financial institutions and is also widespread in Germany and Austria.

UBS Multibanking relies on the international payment provider Swift to exchange payment data with other countries.

Kollegger and Co look well equipped to start catching up and becoming a “one stop shop” for Swiss companies. Because, says Kollegger: “The market for multi-bank solutions is not yet distributed in Switzerland.”