The story
Postfinance traces its origins back to 1900, when the "Postcheck and Giro Service" was launched in Switzerland to enable the supply of cash via the network of the Swiss Post. Six years later, the processing of payment transactions via the post office network began. Between 1928 and 1997, the Swiss Post was part of the Post-, Telefon- und Telegrafenbetriebe (PTT). When PTT was dissolved at the end of 1997 as part of a postal reform, the former payment transactions department became the Swiss Post subsidiary Postfinance. In the years that followed, Postfinance experienced strong growth.
In 2001, Postfinance was connected to the domestic payment system Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC) of the banks. Postfinance emerged from the 2008 financial crisis without any adverse effects and was able to offer low interest rates, as a result of which the customer base increased and customer assets doubled within a few years. However, Postfinance had problems with the temporary negative interest rates in the 2010s, as the negative interest rates led to falling interest income.
In 2013, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) awarded Postfinance a bank licence. In 2015, Postfinance was declared a "Systemically important financial institution" in Switzerland by the Swiss National Bank, which means the bank must follow special regulations with regard to liquidity and equity. At the same time, obtaining the banking licence meant that the state guarantee was finally abolished in 2017.
In 2016, Postfinance started to levy a 1% annual fee on deposits that exceeded 1 million francs. Over the Easter weekend of 2018, Postfinance switched to the core banking system of the Indian provider Tata Consultancy Services. For corporate customers, the changeover meant adapting payment transactions to a new data format for the exchange of payment data in accordance with the ISO 20022 standard. In 2020, Postfinance profits fell to 131 million Swiss francs (from 246 million in 2019 and 229 million francs in 2018) and its customers to 2.69 million (from 2.74 million in 2019). 129 jobs were cut to adjust to the revenue drop (500 jobs were also cut in 2018).
In early 2021, the Swiss government was considering the privatization of the bank to allow it to act like a regular private financial institution (including granting mortgages and loans). This process would however imply changing the Postal Act and have the government back the bank's capital during a transition phase. The proposal was not able to gain acceptance within Swiss politics for the time being. In February 2022, the Russian oligarch and resident of Switzerland Viktor Vekselberg won a lawsuit against Postfinance after the bank had closed his account in 2018 following sanctions imposed on him by the US authorities.
In 2022, the cash deposit machines were abolished. The ATMs, which were introduced from 1978 under the name Postomat, have also already been reduced. While Postfinance still operated 975 ATMs at the end of 2019, this figure had fallen to 892 by the end of September 2021.
In April 2023, it was announced that Postfinance will provide its customers with access to cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The project is being implemented in partnership with the Sygnum cryptobank. The decision was made against the backdrop of a massive flow of customer funds into cryptocurrencies.
From Wikipedia’s article on PostFinance, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5