How to automate the payment of your Swiss bills?

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 a feature designed 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 keeping control of your exchange rate. When you trigger the exchange manually, you can check the market rate with our converter before converting your remaining salary balance at the moment that suits you.

1. Why pay your Swiss bills directly from your salary?

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 method: Your salary arrives on your ibani IBAN. The system detects your configured health insurance bill. It sends 200 CHF to your Swiss insurer as soon as your salary arrives (cost of the operation: 0 CHF). All that's left is to handle the balance according to your preferences.

2. How do you set up a bill step by step in the ibani app?

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 Do not forget to provide the QR-bill reference number (the QR-bill took over from the BV and BVR payment slips, withdrawn on 30 September 2022) in the communication so that the company recognizes your payment.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. Which payment date should you choose for your bill?

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!

4. Which bills should you automate?

This feature is not reserved only for health insurance. Here are some common uses:

• The KVG/LAMal premium: This is the most widespread use. Swiss insurers (Helsana, Swica, etc.) are very strict on payment deadlines: an unpaid premium leads to a reminder, a formal demand and then debt enforcement (KVG/LAMal, art. 64a).
• 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, within the annual deduction ceiling (BVV 3/OPP 3, art. 7).
• Rent or parking space: If you rent a parking space near the border or the train station (P+R) on the Swiss side.