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Settlement access is via the SNB-supervised SIC system: participants (primarily Swiss banks and eligible financial market participants) maintain SIC accounts funded from sight-deposit/reserve accounts at the SNB, with payments settled only when sufficiently covered. Cross-border euro correspondent access runs through euroSIC/SECB into TARGET. FinTech-licensed and (proposed) payment institutions may hold sight deposits at a bank, another payment institution or, where allowed, the SNB. De-risking remains a structural pressure, with FATF flagging correspondent-banking decline and unintended financial exclusion; Swiss PSPs frequently decline crypto/high-risk merchants. Wholesale-CBDC access in Project Helvetia is restricted to RTGS-participating banks/financial institutions.
The access picture is compounded by de-risking. The FATF notes that AML/CFT implementation can lead to de-risking and unintended financial exclusion, including the decline of correspondent-banking relationships, and urges countries to align financial-inclusion and AML/CFT policies. In Switzerland, PSPs frequently decline crypto and high-risk merchants, reinforcing a de-risking pressure that overlaps the FIM illicit-finance surface and is routed via cross-monitor flags.
Outlook
The bank-gated access asymmetry is structural; the FinIA reform partly narrows non-bank access to central bank money, while de-risking and correspondent-banking decline remain recurring pressures on non-bank and crypto firms.
no periodic updates on record for this sub-brief
Sources and findings (4)
- T3https://www.moneyland.ch/en/six-interbank-clearing-definitionretrieved
- T1https://www.snb.ch/en/the-snb/mandates-goals/payment-transactions/swiss-interbank-clearingretrieved
- T2https://www.riskcompliance.biz/news/project-helvetia-iii-the-swiss-national-banks-pilot-for-wholesale-cbdc/retrieved
- T1https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/guidance/Guidance-Financial-Inclusion%20-Anti-Money-Laundering-Terrorist-Financing-Measures.pdf.coredownload.pdfretrieved