I am using e-bills through my UBS account more and more. I find it very convenient to make one click and it's done.

However, I've had to go back and correct the payment date because the company has put an unacceptable date as the pay date. Saturday, Sunday and public holidays.

Two questions.

The company's should know the rules and shouldn't choose an inadmissible date. Why do they?

Why can't I electronically pay a bill on any day of the year. What is so special about the weekends? No human is involved in the transaction.

Realise this is a first world problem, but I am intrigued.

I´d imagine their systems are set at x days after invoice. I just let UBS change it to whatever date and pay then.

If they can´t be bothered to check, I won´t either :-) So far never an issue.

As to why you cannot pay on a weekend? Old times sake. And in your case the payment will run through but for others their could be a manual check if the balance is not sufficient and that won´t happen on a Saturday.

At work I have an intraday limit for some accounts, and any amount over that needs to be released by the relationship manager.

ebill is operated by six payments. I wouldn't be surprised if some COBOL lines written decades ago are behind the issue

I’m not aware of any legal obligation on companies concerning the due date. It’s your responsibility to ensure you pay on time. On the other hand I always just accept the date suggested by the banking software and have never had a complaint about it.

Of course there are humans involved! Systems have to be written and upgraded, hardware has to be maintained and replaced. There is no magic.

If the due date is a Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday (depends on canton) than the actual due date is the next working day.
See Art. 78 Code of Obligations plus its foot note
I assume the UBS system will fix for that. Doesn't it?

When I select to approve an eBill the date is editable.. If it falls on the weekend it automatically suggests the day before or after or I can always change it myself, even I want to make it late it will allow me.

One strange thing I noticed is that I cannot change the amount.. Even though the field is editable it won't submit.. This only became noticeable last week when I got my quarterly bill from Romadie Energie.. For 2chf . Followed by an email saying oops we made a mistake..

For me the UBS system automatically selects the next available banking day, per the legal rules.

This makes it two clicks - the first one pops up a message saying the date has been changed, the second confirms this.

If it doesn't do that for you, raise a support ticket with UBS.

Remember how if your accommodation contract ends on a Sunday you can move out on a Monday? I suspect it's the same with payments. I've even paid my taxes after the due date on a Monday and there was no problem.


E-bills are OK but I'd rather have direct-debits, which I understand do exist but not for everything and are a bit of a hassle to set up.


In the UK with the Faster Payments Scheme you can make a payments within minutes, if not seconds, in many cases. Here in good *old* Switzerland I imagine that the payment requests get faxed to somewhere then sent by post to a processing centre where there's a few old ladies with half-glasses going through them, "ooh here's one for 1,000 to Mr. X. That's a bit high, I know the payer must have gone through a lengthy verification process for the payment but better not put it through unless they call us to ask about it".

With the BCV if the e-bill wants payment on a weekend or holiday, the BCV automatically proposes the next working day. However I can put in any date I want.

Actually I have changed the amount and it worked. It's been a while though, so maybe things have changed.

If the system tells me the pay-date is not possible, I always pay the next possible day (=always later). According to asitus that's even legal, not that I cared.
Same with my standing orders: One can set whether it should be paid before or after a holiday, if the set date hits one. Always after with me. Never had any problems with anyone either.

I only have two standing orders, and both are set to "earlier" because 1. that's the way my mortgage interest payments work 2. I like my pillar 3a payment to be in the "right" month so the statements are easy to check.

Everything else uses the "later" option - I didn't know it was legally mandated, just assumed that since this is the UBS default it must be normal!

A standing order is different from an ebill, which is more like a direct debit. If you have to pay a certain amount in a certain month, I´d recommend to pay a day earlier as you do.

In this particular case the correct month is very important. The December 31st deadline is sharp. You must have paid before that date.

What puzzles me more is how many companies still use PC-account numbers even within ebill instead of IBAN.
IBAN payments arrive quicker and I suspect, they still pay the post a fee for this unnecessary detour?

It enables them to easily automat the reconciliation process.