Open Finance is seen as the future of finance. Telecom giant Swisscom is a pioneer in this field – and yet it partners with stock exchange operator SIX.

Stock exchange operator SIX and state-owned telecom provider Swisscom are entering into a business partnership in the area of open finance in a bid to make each of the companies' offerings compatible, according to a statement released on Thursday

Together, SIX and Swisscom want to facilitate the use of open finance – the opening of closed banking and insurance platforms to third-party providers. This should also strengthen the Swiss financial center's ability to innovate, the statement added.

Big Bank Backing

Both companies already have open-finance offerings. Swisscom Group is the pioneer in this field. Back in 2017, the «blue giant», which is also turning a big wheel in finance, launched its «Open Banking Hub». This was while SIX was still tinkering with a project that was finally formalized in the b.Link platform in May 2020.

Unlike Swisscom, however, which has been able to attract mainly smaller users to its offering, SIX has the big banks behind it: UBS, Credit Suisse, and, since last fall, Zuercher Kantonalbank (ZKB).

The arms race is now turning into an embrace. Swisscom will provide a so-called integration layer, which companies can use to connect their systems to Swisscom's open business hub and thus, in the future, to SIX's b.Link platform. Furthermore, the Swisscom hub complements its offering with b.Link's digital consent management, which technically handles the process of granting end customers consent for the use of their data. b.Link takes care of the verification and connection of third-party providers.

SIX Included in Daura

The new partnership between SIX and Swisscom follows the exchange operator's inclusion in the Daura consortium, which is issuing the first Swiss crypto share, announced at the end of 2019. Again, Swisscom did the groundwork, but then saw off Deutsche Boerse from the consortium, in favor of SIX. The latter's digital exchange SDX will now begin operations this summer at the earliest. If you can't beat them, join them, seems to be the new motto of Swisscom, which had at times cast itself as a competitor to SIX.

In any case, the new togetherness of the giants should be conducive to the rapid spread of open finance in Switzerland.