SIX Ties with Swisscom to Accelerate Open Finance in Switzerland

SIX, a leading operator and developer of infrastructure services, announced its partnership with Swisscom in a bid to improve the interoperability of their complementary offerings. 

Both companies already have developed open finance solutions that can be used independently in the market. Swisscom has focused on integration, while SIX has specialized in a uniform participation contract and in structured and standardized auditing of third-party providers.

According to the official press release, the latest collaboration is expected to make the implementation of open finance in Switzerland easier, strengthening the innovative capacity of the Swiss financial center.

With the technical cooperation, the two companies aim to increase the compatibility of their hubs to offer the market an interoperable and holistic end-to-end solution for the implementation of open value networks in the open finance context.

Both companies are addressing two key challenges: the lack of standardization when it comes to integrating third-party providers into the systems of financial services providers, and the inability to connect multiple third-party providers for the same use case in a scalable manner.

Swisscom offers an integration layer to support this, which companies can use to connect their systems efficiently with Swisscom’s Open Business Hub (OBH) – and in the future, therefore, with bLink of SIX as well. The Swisscom OBH is also supplementing its offering with the bLink digital consent management tool, which handles the technical process via which end-customers give consent for their data to be used. In this cooperation, bLink takes care of the standardized verification and connection of third-party providers.

The medium-term goal is for Swisscom and SIX to further strengthen interoperability between their respective hubs. This will give banks and third-party providers easy and standardized access to an even broader network of potential partners from the financial industry and beyond.

Both companies are certain that open finance is making a decisive contribution to the formation of ecosystems through standardization and scaling. By joining forces, they are creating the basis for simplifying cooperation and interoperability within the Swiss financial center and thus promoting the competitiveness and innovative capacity of Swiss financial actors over the long term.

Earlier this month, SIX has published its financial results for 2020​, showing solid growth across all key metrics.