Comment by sschueller
7 months ago
In Europe at least Switzerland instant IBAN to IBAN costs money. This is because they want to protect the similar payment service called TWINT which charges a high percentage to vendors and is owned by a group of banks. The conflict of interest is a huge issue.
These middle men are not needed and their fees especially not. If I taxes pay for the SNB which is supposed to guarantee that payments can be made then they should also do that for digital transactions, not only cash.
Instant IBAN to IBAN in Switzerland doesn't inherently cost money, the cost is just a cash grab by the banks.
BEKB offers a free account with free instant transfers. Hypothekarbank Lenzburg offers free instant transfers on their standard paid account.
Outside of Switzerland, instant SEPA transfers are typically free.
According to the regulations, https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa... , equality of charges must be implemented before 9 January 2025 for member states and before 9 January 2027 for non-member states. And SEPA is a euro only. So conversion fees will apply for Switzerland.
There is also another thing in the works based on SEPA instant payments - Wero ( https://wero-wallet.eu/ ) but it will take some time to implement all functionality and roll it out.