Missing the magic step to have actual automated payments

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
1

Hey,

I’ve been trying for years to figure out how I in switzerland can get what I was used to in my home country 15+ years ago: Having regular bills automatically payed rather than having to manually approve them.

I’m on my second bank (first credit suisse and now post finance) and I still have to every week/month go in and approve the bills I receive electronically in webbank - that is truly a waste of time for regular bills like phone, internet, mortgage, taxes etc.

Where I lived before I just signed up the bill for automatic payment and it would happen automatically and I had about ~14 days to react if they for some reason took too much.

In swiss banks (at least postfinance and credit suisse) I’m told I’m to approve all the payments for my own security - which I just find so outdated; I really don’t want to have to spend time on logging in to manage payments UNLESS it is an exceptional/non-ordinary payment.

Any tips much appreciated :slight_smile:

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2

You can have just what you want by using LSV / Direct Debit. For each provider you’ll have to fill a form, send it back to them and they’ll forward it to your bank.

Another option that I like is the automatic payment on the eBill platform. Most banks allow you to automatically pay bills if they are below a certain threshold. That way you have the best of both worlds.

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3

…which works no much different than other European debit schemes (SEPA direct debit, dor instance). Just doesn’t seem very common in Switzerland. And has to be set up through your own bank. The last time I tried to do it, the payee refused to accept the form, saying my bank had made a mistake.

Only for supporting payees. Though it is rather widely supported, especially for the ones expecting recurrent payments.

And you‘ll get to see the invoices as PDFs in your online banking. Saves time to scan them (if mailed to you), look them up in other online portals (credit card bills etc). Very handy.

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4

UBS has these - I am using them for rent, car lease and few other bits.

5

eBill allows you since their remake last year to auto approve bills. For all the others I use LSV.

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6

Okey so I tried doing that in the begining and never succeeded and then later on I much easier got the bills elextronically by just enabling it in webbank.

So what you are saying is that I really have to go through manual paper form filling with every vendor ? Just seems so backwards :slight_smile:

7

Unfortunately, yes.

But there’s always the option of automatic e-bill payment. Works virtually everywhere except for PostFinance if I recall correctly.

8

Well credit Suisse didn’t allow it either. I battled support and they kept claiming it was the law / regulations prevented it.

One of the reasons I moved to Postfinance was that at least PF is/Was way less clicks to process those.

I guess I’ll have a go at lsv again then :confused:

9

They will eventually move to the new e-bill portal managed by SIX and it should be possible.

As for PostFinance I have no idea what their plans are. They’re also my main bank. But at some point they should migrate too. Fingers crossed.

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10

CS is already using the new e-bill portal. I have just migrated from UBS and all my registered payees were sync through the e-bill account. Much to my relief I did not have to set up everything from scratch.