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The Most Boring Article About EBICS You’ll Ever Read

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I must admit, i haven’t worked with EBICS at all and in recent days have been on a mission to find out as much as possible about the EBICS connectivity method. In this post i share some of the things i learnt about EBICS.

1. What is EBICS?

EBICS is the Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard, and is widely used in Germany and France. Essentially EBICS is a secure corporate to bank delivery channel that enables files (for example payment files) to be sent to and recieved (bank statements) from multiple banks. As such EBICS is an alternative to Host to Host (H2H), manual file uploads and SWIFT

For further information refer to the EBICS website

2. EBICS History

3. EBICS Benefits

EBICS is a solution that offers:

4. Which Countries Support EBICS?

Germany, France and Switzerland have adopted the EBICS standard.

But the bigger point here is that many banks supporting the EBICS standard in Germany, France and Switzerland also operate globally, and so you can start to leverage the EBICS solution internationally. For example, you could send the payment file (in ISO 20022 XML, of course) through the EBICS channel and have the bank route it through its internal network to the appropriate processing branch in Asia, Africa, North America, South America – wherever it needs to be processed.

You would work with the bank to implement a similar solution to receive bank statement information. Keep in mind that EBICS connectivity within a bank may be restricted outside of the EBICS countries (Germany, France & Switzerland), so you will need to check and partner with a bank that is able to support you.

5. How is EBICS setup?

The most important step here is to work with your bank to guide and support you with your EBICS implementation. The following is very high level, but it gives you an idea of the main steps. EBICS customers will need:

6. What File Formats does EBICS Support

EBICS can support industry standard formats such as SWIFT MT messages (MT101 and MT940) and ISO20022 XML. But you should check with you partner bank if the particular format you’re working with is supported.

7. How Can i Send my Payment Files Through EBICS?

Once you have gone through the above mentioned setup, you can use the banks website to manually enter transactions or upload payment files and sign them within the banking software.

Alternatively, you can implement an automated solution that delivers the payment file from your ERP software through to the bank using some middleware technology components such as TIBCO.

8. EBICS versus SWIFT

This is the big question, eh? Of course, this entirely depends on your organisation and to help you get to the right solution, i would recommend reading Corporate to Bank Connectivity – 10 Questions YOU Need To Ask.

From reading around some recurring considerations include:

ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. Still awake…? Does the above sound right to you? What have i missed? I would appreciate any feedback/corrections in the comments below.

 

References:

Related posts:

  1. Corporate to Bank Connectivity – 10 Questions YOU Need To Ask
  2. I’ve Got 99 Problems But SWIFT Connectivity Ain’t 1
  3. 9 Interesting Payment Factory Insights from Sungard
  4. 10 Reasons Why SWIFT Connectivity Is Not a Magic Bullet
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