Questions and answers

As a general rule, the master data uploaded to UBS determines which notes and reports are created for a pain.001 order.

If other notes and reports are required in an individual case, you can issue the corresponding instruction directly in the pain.001 order. In this case, the settings in the master data will be superseded by the instructions in the pain.001.

You can find more precise information on managing debit notes in the UBS Implementation Guidelines.

The software manufacturers only automatically offer new functionalities like ISO 20022 to clients with a valid maintenance contract. If you don’t have a maintenance contract, you have to actively contact the manufacturer and apply for a software update, which usually involves a charge.

For entering payments, your software must support the QR-bill together with its additional volume of data. It must also be able to generate payment order pain.001 for all three variants of the QR-bill. This is the only way to make trouble-free payments. You can look up recommendations for bill recipients and billers in the UBS handbook for QR-bills.

Please contact your software support service to find out the exact reason. Alternatively, UBS clients (even in the case of proprietary developments) can access the UBS ISO test platform. This platform will help you to test your payment files for potential errors in the new format. If the test platform detects an error, the payment file used must be corrected.

If the test platform does not return any errors either, please contact the E-Banking support team (0848 848 064) and provide them with the test platform findings.

A brief guide on the exact procedure is available at:

If you access the UBS E-Banking OFX data interface using suitable software, the software will receive a pain.002 status report and the findings will be displayed directly in your software.

When manually uploading in UBS E-Banking under “Payments >Transferring and paying bills > Reenter > File transfer,” no pain.002 is sent back. Once the files have been uploaded, the status of the payments can be viewed directly in the E-Banking screen under “File transfer.”

Navigate to “Payments > Transferring and paying bills > Entered files” in UBS E-Banking. Here, you can select the “Display orders” menu for the uploaded payment file on the right-hand side. You will receive the detailed error message for the respective payment by clicking on the pencil symbol next to the respective transaction. This displays the details of the respective payment with the error message above.

The following limitations exist for manually uploading a pain.001 payment message:
Number of transactions per file: 9,999
Maximum file size: 50 MB

The following limitations exist for uploading a pain.001 payment message over the direct interface OFX:
Number of transactions per file: 9,999
Maximum file size: 20 MB

The cut-off times for each currency and payment type are listed in the following fact sheet:

If a pain.001 message has been uploaded in UBS E-Banking and an employee who has partial signatory authority deletes an individual payment, this payment will now be assigned the status “part signed.” This means that this individual payment will not be executed upon reaching the execution date. To completely delete the payment, a second signatory authority with at least partial signatory authority has to confirm the deletion of the individual payment.

A QR-bill is an invoice with an integrated payment part and receipt. The upper section of the QR-bill corresponds to a normal invoice, and the lower section contains the payment part including receipt, which will be used simultaneously with the existing orange and red payment slips before replacing them altogether on 30 June 2022. The phase-out date for the orange and red payment slips will be defined by the financial center in due course.

You have been able to bill with QR-bills since 30 June 2020.

There is a transitional phase with parallel use of QR-bills and orange and red payment slips. PostFinance has announced that the old payment slips will be discontinued by 30 September 2022. As of this date, it will no longer be possible to pay red and orange payment slips.

We recommend that you start planning the switch to the QR-bill as soon as possible.

Reconciliation takes place using the structured reference.
In the case of QR-bill variant 1, a QR-IBAN and QR-reference are used. For QR-bills variant 2, an IBAN and creditor reference are used. 

For details on reporting options, see the following link:

Yes, when invoicing with the existing orange payment slips, clients have the option to obtain the BESR credit memo data in the ISO 20022 standard as a camt message or, as in the past, as a v11 ESR credit memo file. However, we recommend switching to camt format at an early stage.

The following combinations are available, with variant three being recommended:

1. Only v11 ESR credit memo file is keyed in: client receives v11 for BESR receipts and no reporting for QR receipts (this means that this scenario should be avoided as otherwise no notification is provided of some receipts).
2. v11 ESR credit memo file and camt are keyed in in parallel: client receives v11 and camt for BESR receipts as well as camt for QR receipts (this means that for this scenario it is important that BESR is settled only with v11 or only with camt).
3. Only camt is keyed in: client receives a camt message for BESR receipts and a camt message for QR receipts (this means that this scenario requires camt-capable software even for BESR settlement).
   

Our price list for private clients can be found under the following link:

Our price list for companies can be found under the following link:

The UBS handbook on QR-bills or the QR-bill processing rules published by SIX are helpful for this.

The Swiss QR Code specifies two fields for possible alternative procedures. They are available for other payment solution providers. Any provider who wishes to use an alternative procedure must also provide the appropriate specifications.

Until then, eBill will be the only alternative procedure available for QR-bills. The “Alternative procedure” field can be filled out according to the eBill specification when creating the QR-bill. To do so, the biller must have its client’s eBill information. This is then used for triage in order to send bill effectively. You either send an eBill to the client if the client’s data are filled out in it or a physical QR-bill. This information is not of use to the payer when paying the invoice.

Clients with their own software and software partners can create a test QR-bill with the UBS test platform from the QR-biller view, and from the QR-bill recipient view they can thoroughly test whether the QR-bill is entered and whether the payment of the QR-bill via pain.001 was made.