Regardless of whether they’re issuing or receiving invoices: with e‑bills, companies can simplify their payment transactions. PostFinance business customers can now access a new eInvoicing portal to send invoices digitally to their customers with just a few clicks or receive invoices electronically themselves. We talk to product manager Adrian Sem about useful functionalities and planned further developments.

Why is PostFinance offering business customers the new eInvoicing portal?

As a competent partner, we want to make e‑bills as easy as possible for our business customers to handle. The platform has been technically reconfigured and is now modern, user-friendly and up to date for planned further developments. This innovation also highlights the strategic relevance of the e‑bill for PostFinance. Customers benefit from one-stop solutions, as PostFinance operates as both a bank and a service provider for e‑bills.

What specific advantages does the new eInvoicing portal offer for customers?

Existing features that have proven successful have been carried over from the previous solution, but they are now easier to use. And many new features have been added. For example, customers can register online independently – without any paper forms whatsoever. Customers also benefit from self-service features that allow them to manage users and configure settings independently. And, last but not least, they have access to improved monitoring, with the ability to search, filter and evaluate incoming or outgoing e‑bills using a range of different criteria.

What other innovations are there?

The new registration features for eBill are particularly useful: they enable invoice issuers to query eBill recipients independently or customers to sign up for eBill directly with the invoice issuer. New web services are available for both. Querying of eBill recipients can also be done directly in the eInvoicing portal. And there’s also another new feature: it is now possible to submit QR-bills in PDF format. PostFinance converts them into e‑bills using the data in the QR code and forwards them in this format either to the eBill system or directly to B2B recipients.

Are there any further innovations planned in the area of e-bill solutions and eBill at PostFinance?

PostFinance is strongly committed to the consistent further development of the e‑bill. We want to use our aforementioned dual role as both a financial institution and a provider of e-bills to make a portal available to our customers that offers them the best possible support with accounts receivable and accounts payable management – now and in the future. This is in response to the great potential of electronic invoicing: more than two million customers in Switzerland already use eBill. And it is a strategic goal of the Swiss financial center as a whole to increase the market share of electronic invoicing to around 60% to 80% by 2028. PostFinance also supports achievement of this goal.

Where do you see further potential for e-billing?

In the business-to-business (B2B) sector, millions of e‑bills are also already being exchanged electronically. This market is growing very strongly worldwide, with the coronavirus situation causing a real additional boost. The goal in B2B is to enable invoice recipients to receive as many of their supplier invoices as possible electronically with high data quality. This will allow recipients to import, book and archive these invoices automatically, and hence to automate the entire procurement process from ordering a service to archiving the invoice. There is great potential here for everyone involved.

What role does PostFinance play in B2B e-billing and what are its goals?

PostFinance has been offering B2B e‑bills for many years now and is one of the leading providers in Switzerland in this area. The eInvoicing portal is an ideal basis for further improving our existing services. For example, we plan to use the portal to hugely simplify the networking of senders and recipients, making it more or less as easy as finding new friends on a social network. With the additional expansion of supported formats and standards, and through our cooperation with partners at home and abroad, we want to make it possible for our business customers to send e‑bills to all of their customers and receive e‑bills from all of their suppliers, regardless of where they are or which provider they work with.