22.05.2023
Do you have international business partners and want to transfer money abroad or receive money from other countries? Our professional advice reveals the key points when making international payments.
Swiss companies engage in a great deal of international commerce. But what do SMEs need to know when they are paying a supplier invoice from a foreign business partner for the first time or if they want to receive a payment from abroad? Our expert Sandro Corsellini, Offering Management International & FX at PostFinance, gives us some great advice for efficient and favourable payment transactions with your business partners outside Switzerland.
Sandro Corsellini has worked at PostFinance since 2009 and headed Front Office International Payments for four years before moving to Product Management for international payments.
The information you need to successfully make an international payment depends on whether the payment is made in the SEPA area or worldwide with or without IBAN. Entering complete and correct information avoids unnecessary delays or rejections (e.g. because the BIC is entered in the account number field instead of the account number) and avoid painful losses as a result of currency conversions.
In Europe, the IBAN has become established for designating the beneficiary account for payments. So if your company want to make a payment to Europe, we always recommend using the InternationalBankAccount Number (IBAN) of the beneficiary business partner. IBAN payments are particularly advantageous in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the payment transaction area in which the EU states, the EEA countries, as well as Switzerland and Monaco participate. PostFinance does not charge you for SEPA payments that can only be made in EUR. In rare cases, foreign banks charge credit fees for SEPA payments from Switzerland. Whether a payment is executed according to the SEPA standard is recognized automatically and displayed in e-finance and in the PostFinance app.
Many countries outside of Europe do not use IBAN. If no IBAN is available for payments outside Europe, the following information is required:
IBAN enables automatic and so extremely efficient processing of transfers in international payment transactions. If there’s no IBAN, the correct account number and bank details (in most cases this is the eight or eleven-digit BIC) are relevant. If you are entering the payment into your software, always enter the name and address of the recipient bank as well, just to be on the safe side.
As a PostFinance customer, SEPA payments are free of charge for you; for all other payments to foreign accounts, we charge you a basic fee of CHF 2. In addition to these costs, third-party fees may be incurred from the forwarding banks. With the shared cost option, these third-party fees are deducted directly from the transfer amount and charged to the business partner receiving the payment; with the our cost option, you accept all third-party fees at a flat rate of CHF 22. Please note that even with the our cost option, the recipient bank may still charge credit fees to the recipient on the incoming amount. This is beyond PostFinance’s control.
So if you’re uncertain, check the fees and charges in advance – especially if it is important for a transaction that the entire amount reaches the recipient business partner at a certain time or where large amounts are involved. Our specialists for international payment transactions will be happy to assist you with your queries. If you have any unanswered questions about fees charged by the recipient bank, we advise that you ask your business partner to make further enquiries with their bank.
As a company, you can track all international payments except SEPA payments in e-finance. This works in a similar way to parcel tracking, although tracking is only possible to the extent that the banks involved are connected to SWIFT’s Track & Trace system. Worldwide, all large financial institutions and a total of around 50 percent of all financial institutions are already participating.
You use tracking by viewing the desired payment in e-finance and clicking on tracking. With Track & Trace, you can view the status of your payment at any time and always see the current status of fees as well as the amount actually credited to the recipient bank abroad.
Would you like your international transfer to be credited as quickly as possible?
Do you frequently conduct transactions in a specific currency? In this case, it may be worthwhile to open an account in the corresponding currency so that you can feed it by buying foreign currency at favourable exchange rates. In this way, you reduce your own currency fluctuation risk while using the ups and downs of the exchange rates to your advantage. With foreign exchange transactions (spot, forward and swap transactions), PostFinance gives you the opportunity to trade in foreign currencies in a simple way. Our specialists would be happy to advise you personally on trading with foreign currencies. Contact us by phone at +41 58 448 14 24.
Contact us if you have any questions – for example, if you are unsure which details of a supplier invoice belong in which field of the payment screen or if you are dealing for the first time with a supplier from a country that does not use IBAN. You are welcome to contact us at +41 58 667 97 67.
