Autoneum had a history with the Swiss service bureau Fides for daily collection of MT940 and MT942 statements. Furthermore, Fides is offering for payment execution a hybrid approach: either a connection to the banks via SWIFT, via EBICS, H2H or any alternative Channels.
EBICS member countries include Germany and France, Switzerland and other countries most likely will join soon. Using EBICS doesn’t lead to additional transactional fees, as is the case by using SWIFT, has lower implementation costs for the banks involved and lets Autoneum get payment files forwarded within the banks to other countries outside of EBICS, e.g. UK or China. On top of that, Autoneum has found that so far EBICS projects seem to be by far less complex to get established.
Autoneum decided to use Fides as a hybrid service bureau solution. That means AP and treasury payments go via SAP’s Bank Communication Manager to the middleware and from there via Fides out to banks via SWIFT or e.g. the EBICS network.
The payment factory was rolled out in Switzerland in 2013. In 2014 the payment factory was rolled out to the US and Canada and in 2015 in France. Spain and Portugal will also follow in 2015. All entities were connected via Fides, three Swiss banks and one Euro bank via EBICS and US/Canadian bank via own Autoneum BIC, also hosted by Fides.