Can I pay multiple Swiss bills with my ibani salary?

Yes, you can add as many bills as you want (Health insurance, parking, 3rd pillar). The ibani system will pay them all in order of priority upon receipt of your Swiss francs, then manage the remaining balance according to your account preferences (automatic exchange or manual holding).

What happens if my received salary is lower than my bill amount?

If the amount in Swiss francs received on your ibani IBAN is not sufficient to cover the entire scheduled bill, the bill will not be paid. The entire amount received will then be converted or held on your account, depending on your settings.

Which Payment Date should I choose for my bill?

You should always select today's date. This way, the bill is considered 'ready' immediately by the system, and it will be paid without delay upon the next receipt of your salary.

Ibani Champion: Automate your Swiss bill payments

📌 The concept in brief

As a worker in Switzerland, you have local bills to pay in Swiss Francs (CHF), such as health insurance (KVG/LAMal) or a parking spot. With ibani's "Add a bill" feature, the mechanics adapt to your preferences:

1️⃣ Your employer pays your salary to your receiving ibani IBAN.
2️⃣ ibani immediately deducts and pays your Swiss bill in CHF (without any exchange or transfer fees).
3️⃣ The rest of your salary is then either automatically exchanged into your local currency and repatriated, or kept in CHF pending your instructions (if you disabled the automatic exchange).

Paying a Swiss bill from a foreign bank account often involves international wire transfer fees (SWIFT) and requires an extra currency conversion. The ibani app has an extremely powerful feature to avoid this.

Instead of making your money travel back and forth across the border, discover how to optimize your payments upon receipt of your salary, while maintaining absolute control over your exchange rate.

In this tutorial:

🎯 1. The advantages of the "Payment at source" method
🛠️ 2. Step-by-step tutorial: Setting up your payment route
💡 3. The Payment Date trick (The Champion's Secret)
📋 4. Which bills should you automate?

1. The advantages of the "Payment at source" method

Let's take a simple example: you earn 6,000 CHF net per month and you have to pay 200 CHF for your monthly health insurance premium.

The traditional method: You repatriate your entire 6,000 CHF into Euros on your foreign account. A few days later, you ask your bank to make a 200 CHF transfer to Switzerland. You therefore perform two successive currency conversions and risk paying bank intervention fees on the international wire transfer.
The ibani magic: Your salary arrives on your ibani IBAN. The system detects your configured health insurance bill. It instantly sends 200 CHF to your Swiss insurer (cost of the operation: 0 CHF). All that's left is to handle the balance according to your preferences.

Total flexibility: Automatic or manual exchange

What makes this feature formidable is that it perfectly adapts to your ibani account settings:

If you enabled automatic exchange: Once the 200 CHF bill is paid, ibani immediately converts the remaining 5,800 CHF at the best rate and sends them to your main account abroad.
If you disabled automatic exchange: ibani pays the 200 CHF bill upon receipt of funds, then keeps the remaining 5,800 CHF in your account. You are free to trigger the exchange manually on the day the exchange rate seems most favorable to you!

2. Step-by-step tutorial: Setting up your bill

Configuration is intuitive and only takes two minutes from your ibani app.

1 Manage your IBANs (Your payment routes): Go to the "IBAN" section of the app. This is where you manage your receiving IBANs (the ones on which you receive your funds). Pro tip: internally, we call these "payment routes" because we allow you to associate specific actions with each IBAN to automate everything.

2 Select the IBAN: Pick an existing IBAN (for example, the one your employer pays your salary into) or create a new one dedicated to this purpose.

3 Start adding: In the options for this IBAN, click on the "Add a bill" button.

4 Bill details: Customize this operation by giving it a clear Title (e.g., "LAMal Premium"). Enter the exact amount in CHF and choose the recurrence (one-time payment, monthly, or quarterly). Do not forget to provide the reference number (BVR / QR-Bill) in the communication so that the company recognizes your payment.

5 Beneficiary account: Finally, provide the beneficiary account of the bill, whether it is new or existing (Name of the natural or legal person, full postal address, and the Swiss IBAN starting with CH).

3. The Payment Date trick

During the configuration of your bill (at step 4), the system asks you to choose a "Payment Date". This is where many users make the mistake of trying to guess the exact date their salary will be paid.

Example: You think your employer will pay on the 26th of the month, so you select the 26th. But if HR makes the transfer early and your salary arrives on the 24th, the system will see that the bill date has not yet been reached. The bill will not be paid with this salary!

💡 The Champion's Secret: Choosing the date

Simply set today's date.
By selecting today's date, your payment task becomes immediately "ready" in our system. Thus, your bill will be paid as an absolute priority upon receipt of your next funds, regardless of whether your salary arrives early.

4. Which bills should you automate?

This feature is not reserved only for health insurance. Here are the most frequent uses by our most expert clients:

The KVG/LAMal premium: This is the number 1 use. Swiss insurers (Helsana, Swica, etc.) are very strict on payment deadlines.
The 3rd Pillar (3a): To smooth out your retirement savings effort, schedule an automatic monthly transfer of a few hundred francs to your Swiss pension account.
Rent or parking space: If you rent a parking space near the border or the train station (P+R) on the Swiss side.

Ready to automate your finances?

Open your ibani app now and set up your first Swiss bill applying our pro tip.

Open the ibani app

How to automate the payment of your Swiss bills?