BNP Paribas are making EBICS (Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard) - the multi-bank communication protocol used by the vast majority of Germany-based companies to send payments/collections to their banks and receive feedback reports/account statements from their banks - available globally with BNP Paribas.

New EBICS functionality

Until now, the use of EBICS has been limited to accounts held in:

• Germany and to German file formats like DTAUS, DTAZV, DK XML
• France, since 2010, when the French banks stopped using Etebac 5.

BNP Paribas have expanded the functionality to accept EBICS across their entire network, so that clients can now use EBICS as the communication channel for their non-German and/or French BNP Paribas accounts (“Global” EBICS).

Paribas have also enabled the use of other international file formats like ISO XML and EPC XML, and local non-German file formats such as CFONB (France), AEB58 (Spain) or RIBA (Italy) to be sent via the client’s EBICS connection. On the reporting side, Global EBICS clients will benefit from value-added services such as full traceability via Payment Status Report messages (pain002 messages, including DK version) and enhanced reporting services for improved reconciliation (e.g. camt054 debit/credit advices for SEPA transactions, virtual-accounts solution, customised end-of-day account statements with enriched information like German GCV codes).

Source & Copyright©2014 - BNP Paribas 

EBICS has evolved from a purely German communication channel to a truly global channel like SwiftNet or host-to-host connections. The new Global EBICS service is available in most BNP Paribas countries world-wide, with the countries marked in yellow to be added in the near future:

Source & Copyright©2014 - bnpp

Corporate benefits and users

German corporates who are used to connecting to their banks in Germany via EBICS, can now leverage EBICS as a single, convenient and familiar protocol for their cash management activities (such as making payments and retrieving bank statements) not only domestically, but wherever in the world they do business with BNP Paribas. It will help BNP Paribas’s clients, who use many (sometimes 80 or more) different e-banking systems, to reduce the number of connectivity systems they have to support. Also many treasury management systems used in Germany, Austria or Switzerland have EBICS as one of the connectivity protocols they already support, so some corporates could use Global EBICS with little change to their existing processes (same signature methods, authorization workflows, etc.).

Another important advantage is that, for many corporate clients, it is cheaper than a SWIFT connection, but it does not provide the ubiquity and coverage that a SWIFT link opens up.

Currently there are 10 companies live on Global EBICS with many more in the pipeline.

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CTMfile take: For German companies already using EBICS this new feature will be welcome, particularly for companies who do not need a SWIFT link. However, for companies who use many different banks around the world and carryout several types of business, a SWIFT link could be more useful. Also many TMS providers, like BELLIN and Kyriba, already provide direct links to SWIFT from within their solution.