SIX may be the crucial infrastructure provider for the Swiss financial market – but Swisscom is a giant in disguise. SIX is owned by 125 banks and guarantees for the flow of information and money between banks, traders, investors and service providers. Swisscom meanwhile counts more than 200 lenders among its clients. And quite a few among those have already outsourced their entire IT to Swisscom, which is majority-owned by the government.

The rivalry between the two large infrastructure firms is becoming ever more tangible. The latest move has come courtesy of SIX, which plans to launch its own open banking platform during the second quarter. The company confirmed a report about its plans in «NZZ» newspaper (behind paywall).

In the Run-up for PSD2

The platform will be open to banks, fintechs, advisers and compliance experts alike. Five lenders currently are preparing their interfaces for the link up to the SIX platform. The company emphasizes that all Swiss financial market firms are welcome to participate.

The project comes as the European Union is about to introduce the Payment Services Directive 2, making open banking the big issue in finance this year.

SIX, Swisscom, Hypi Lenzburg...

The SIX project is pitching the Zurich-based firm against its main competitor Swisscom, which has its headquarters in the capital of Bern. The latter announced the launch of its own open banking hub already in November 2017.

Fintechs and banks looking for an open-banking solution will be faced with the choice between two dominant players. Other, smaller providers, such as Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, are completing the line-up in Switzerland. The industry association meanwhile is busy standardizing the banking interfaces (APIs).

The move by SIX comes two months after Swisscom ventured into SIX territory, announcing its own eco-system for crypto-investments, a project it pursues with partners.

The Race Is On

But the choice of its collaborators led to some raised eyebrows in Switzerland: after all, the German stock exchange is a rival of SIX. And SIX is working on its own trading platform for digital securities.

Swisscom said at the time that it was open to discussions with all potential partners for the business with the crypto ecosystem. Still, it is an open secret that the giant in Bern likes to compete with SIX for the business with the financial market. In other words, the race between the two large players in the financial infrastructure industry is far from over.