QR-bill — the QR-Rechnung since 30 June 2020

The QR-bill (QR-Rechnung in German, facture QR in French, fattura QR in Italian) is Switzerland's most visible payment innovation. At the foot of every invoice, a Swiss QR Code embeds all payment data — creditor, amount, currency, reference, debtor. Live since 30 June 2020, it replaced the orange and red payment slips that had paced Swiss payments since the 1970s.

History — from the orange slip to the Swiss QR Code

For half a century, paying an invoice in Switzerland relied on two pre-printed paper slips. The orange slip (payment slip with reference number, BVR; ISR in English) carried a structured reference number: the creditor's bank read it optically and automatically reconciled the incoming payment with the invoice. The red slip (BV / IS) had no reference — reconciliation stayed manual.

With the migration of Swiss payment traffic to the ISO 20022 standard (pain.001 for orders, camt.05x for reporting), SIX designed the QR-bill as the consumer-facing presentation layer of that new backbone. The QR Code is not just an image: it is a standardised payment-data container that feeds directly into a pain.001 order.

Before 2020 | Two paper slips coexist: the ORANGE slip (BVR / ISR in
           | English, carrying a structured reference number for automatic
           | reconciliation) and the RED slip (BV / IS, no reference, manual
           | entry). Pre-printed, OCR-scanned at the foot of the invoice.
           |
2017-2019  | SIX, mandated by the Swiss financial centre, designs the
           | QR-bill as a presentation layer on top of the ISO 20022
           | migration of Swiss payment traffic.
           |
30 Jun 2020 | Official launch of the QR-bill (QR-Rechnung). Transitional
           | coexistence with the old slips to let software and printers
           | migrate.
           |
30 Sep 2022 | Final withdrawal of the orange and red slips. The QR-bill
           | becomes the only structured paper/PDF payment means in
           | Switzerland.
           |
2023-2026  | Maintenance of the Swiss Payment Standards (SIX). The QR-bill
           | coexists with eBill (purely electronic invoice pushed into
           | e-banking) for full dematerialisation.

Governance — SIX and Swiss Payment Standards

The QR-bill is governed by SIX (the operator of Swiss financial-market infrastructure, which runs the Swiss stock exchange and the SIC/euroSIC payment systems). SIX publishes the Swiss Payment Standards, including the QR-bill Implementation Guidelines and the QR-bill Style Guide that fix the visual template (positions, fonts, Swiss cross, perforation line).

This private but consensual governance (banks, PostFinance, software vendors) is typically Swiss: no law mandating the QR-bill, but a market standard the whole ecosystem adopts because it replaces an obsolete infrastructure. Trilingualism (DE/FR/IT) is built in: one template carries all three official languages.

Technical schema — the Swiss QR Code

The content of the Swiss QR Code is a sequence of fields separated by line breaks (CR+LF), UTF-8 encoded. The fixed header SPC (Swiss Payments Code) and the trailer EPD (End Payment Data) delimit the block. Here is a typical QR dataset structure:

SPC                         ← QRType: Swiss Payments Code (fixed header)
0200                        ← Version (02.00)
1                           ← Coding type (UTF-8)
CH4431999123000889012       ← Creditor IBAN or QR-IBAN
S                           ← Address type (S = structured)
Robert Schneider AG         ← Creditor name
Rue du Lac                  ← Street
1268                        ← Number
2501                        ← Postal code
Biel                        ← Town
CH                          ← Country
                            ← (final creditor address block – empty here)
1949.75                     ← Amount
CHF                         ← Currency
S                           ← Debtor address type (S = structured)
Pia-Maria Rutschmann        ← Debtor name
Grosse Marktgasse           ← Street
28                          ← Number
9400                        ← Postal code
Rorschach                   ← Town
CH                          ← Country
QRR                         ← Reference type (QRR = QR reference; SCOR = RF; NON)
210000000003139471430009017 ← Reference (27 digits for QRR)
Invoice no 3139 / subscription ← Unstructured message
EPD                         ← Fixed trailer (End Payment Data)

QR-bill vs eBill vs ISR/IS slips

The QR-bill remains a paper/PDF support. Alongside it, eBill (operated by SIX) is the purely electronic invoice pushed directly into the debtor's e-banking. The two coexist and complement each other.

Adoption — full switchover 2022

• Market-level switchover: with no legal mandate, the QR-bill was adopted by 100% of the ecosystem simply because the old slips stopped being processed by banks after 30 September 2022.
• Every Swiss ERP / accounting package (Abacus, Bexio, Sage, localised SAP) generates the Swiss QR Code as standard since 2020-2021.
• eBill growing: SIX reports continuous growth in eBill invoice volumes, the e-banking push channel being favoured by large issuers (insurers, telecoms, energy).
• Trilingual by design: the same template serves German, French and Italian — an asset for a country with four national languages.

Common pitfalls

• Confusing IBAN and QR-IBAN. The QR reference (QRR) requires a QR-IBAN (IID 30000-31999). Issuing a QRR with a regular IBAN is rejected by banking software.
• Wrong reference type. QRR (27 digits + recursive modulo-10 check digit) ↔ SCOR (RF + ISO 11649) ↔ NON. Mixing the three breaks automatic reconciliation on the creditor side.
• Forgetting the Swiss cross. The Swiss QR Code is distinguished from a generic QR Code by the 7×7 mm Swiss cross at its centre. Without it, a banking scanner may reject the code.
• Assuming the QR-bill carries detailed VAT. The QR dataset only carries payment data — no line detail, no VAT breakdown. For that you need eBill, a Swico/ZUGFeRD-like attachment, or the customer's structured invoice (PEPPOL on the EU side).
• Mis-cropped payment part. The Style Guide mandates margins, a perforation line and an A6 layout. Printing off-template prevents detaching the receipt.

Cross-links

• Switzerland hub — full view
• ISO 20022 — Switzerland early leadership
• No mandate — voluntary adoption via providers
• UID / IDE — business identifier
• Financial centre — SWIFT, SIX, ISO 20022
• SIX — QR-bill specification
• Swiss Payment Standards (SIX)