20.04.2021
Failing to pay a bill on time means increased workload or even late payment fees. With eBill you always have your invoices under control, because they arrive directly in e-finance. Here we answer your key questions about eBill, such as how eBill works, how secure the service is and how you can easily pay your invoices online with eBill.
Do you keep forgetting bills in your e-mail inbox or under piles of paper on your desk? It's easy to lose track of bills – with unpleasant consequences such as reminders or late payment fees. With eBill, this no longer occurs. Read here how you can set up eBill and always have full control over your current invoices.
eBill is a service that is provided in a standardized form by many Swiss financial institutions, such as PostFinance. As a successor to the previous e-billing system, eBill makes it easy to pay recurring bills, such as electricity, credit card or telephone bills. Because with eBill you no longer receive these invoices by post or e-mail, and they appear directly in your e-finance. You can then check and pay these invoices in just a few clicks. This service is free of charge for customers who use eBill to pay their invoices.
With eBill, you will never lose another bill, because they will be sent directly to your eBill inbox in e-finance. In doing so, you save time when compared to paper invoices and e-mail invoices: you no longer have to look for the bills or switch back and forth between printouts or e-mails and e-finance, let alone type out long reference numbers. All you have to do is approve the bills for payment and you can rest assured that amount will be transferred to the correct recipient. The “Notification” function ensures that you are informed via e-mail or push of every new bill that you receive from eBill. Another advantage of eBill is that you are guaranteed to receive no spam or advertising in e-finance. And last but not least, eBill is also good for the environment by doing away with paper invoices and reducing paper loss.
The same security measures and data protection guidelines apply to eBill as to e-finance. If you use eBill, you enjoy the same level of security when paying on the go as when you pay other physical or digital bills in e-finance, make transfers, account transfers or invest in assets. With eBill, PostFinance is also obliged to keep the stored data confidential. This data is only used to enable you to use eBill. Your e-mail address is used to ensure that you can be clearly identified as the invoice recipient and is therefore communicated to the invoice issuers when you register for eBill. The e-mail address is used exclusively to identify the invoice recipient and is not be passed on.
Log in to e-finance in the usual way and register once for eBill by selecting the accounts you want to use and entering and confirming your address and e-mail address. You must also activate eBill if you used the previous e-billing solution. In both cases, this only takes a few minutes and is very simple.
The eBill portal can be accessed either in the app or on a computer.
All bills from currently over 3,000 invoice issuers in Switzerland that offer eBill. These include numerous health insurance companies, telecom providers and energy providers. As soon as you have activated eBill, you can choose from a list of invoice issuers and add those from whom you would like to receive invoices. The number of invoice issuers that offer eBill is growing rapidly.
E-mail invoices and eBill are not the same thing: if you use eBill, you receive your invoices directly in e-finance. E-mail invoices, on the other hand, are sent to your e-mail inbox. To pay an e-mail invoice, you must enter the details of the payment recipient and the reference number of your invoice in e-finance. This is particularly quick and easy if you scan the payment slip or QR invoice with Scan + Pay, and saves you having to enter the long reference number.
You approve the bill by clicking directly on the eBill tile.
You approve the invoice with a few clicks from the invoice overview on the eBill portal. In this case, the system automatically suggests your default account, the bill amount and the bill due date. But you can also adjust these individually.
You set up an individual standing approval for each invoice issuer and define the conditions under which the bill is paid automatically.
Ideally, you should have a message sent to you either via e-mail or push message on your smartphone as soon as a new bill arrives in your eBill inbox. You can see who sent the bill, the amount, and when it is due. This ensures you are always informed when you need to do something. You can set the notification in e-finance or in the PostFinance App.
The bills remain as a pdf in your eBill inbox for 730 days. If you still need them later, you can download them from there and save them on your computer or print them out and store them in a folder.
With the “Sharing” function, you can assign your eBill inbox to other people. To do this, the other person must also be registered with eBill and have accepted your invitation.
When using direct debit, the invoice issuer debits your account directly; with eBill, you can choose whether to approve the payment individually or set a standing approval. If you choose the independent approval option, you can – in contrast to the direct debit scheme – view the details of your invoice in advance.
It is easier if you always use the same e-mail address. This is the ID for your personal eBill inbox, which gives you access to all your bills in eBill. You can approve and pay invoices at any bank where you have registered eBill. You will see in the eBill inbox of both banks that the invoice has been approved via eBill. The invoice amount is then debited from the account from which you have effectively approved the invoice.
Invoice issuers need different amounts of time to switch from paper invoices to eBill. As PostFinance has no influence over this, please contact the invoice issuer directly in such cases.
