Category: News

News published by other companies, often with added comments by us.

Transformation of the Financial Market Infrastructure in Switzerland: The Role of Stablecoins and Deposit Tokens

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Stablecoins and Deposit Tokens are transforming financial market infrastructure and are rapidly gaining momentum in Switzerland. In our latest article, we unpack what these forms of tokenized money mean for payments, settlement, and the broader banking ecosystem.
What truly distinguishes stablecoins from deposit tokens in practice? Which Swiss milestones matter most for moving from pilots to production, and what can we learn from recent bank and industry initiatives? Most importantly, what steps should banks take now on strategy, processes, and technology to stay compliant and competitive?

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All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Regulations, technologies

Open Finance in International Comparison – Insights for Switzerland

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Open Finance is transforming the global financial industry and is becoming increasingly important in Switzerland as well. In the first part of our blog series, Stefan Knaus exam-ined the current state of Open Finance within Switzerland. In this second part, Friedrich-Philipp Wazinski takes the discussion beyond national borders.
How far have other countries come in implementing Open Finance? What lessons can be learned from international initiatives? And what steps must Switzerland take to ensure it remains competitive in the global marketplace?

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All, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Open Finance, OpenBankingProject, Regulations, technologies

A current look at Open Finance in Switzerland

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Open finance is becoming increasingly important in Switzerland, but is still at an early stage compared to other countries. A recent survey by OpenBankingProject.ch shows that the maturity level of open finance in Switzerland is currently rated as low to medium. At the same time, pressure is growing due to new European regulations (including PSR, PSD3, FIDA) and innovative business models, which will also influence the Swiss market in the long term. In this article, Stefan Knaus provides an overview of the current status, key challenges and the opportunities that open finance presents for the Swiss financial industry.

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All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Open Finance, OpenBankingProject

AI Radar 2025: Why technology alone is not enough – insights from banks and IT providers

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The first version of our AI Radar for the DACH region from fall 2024 clearly showed how intensively banks are already using artificial intelligence (LINK). Based on publicly available information, we analyzed the largest banks in the DACH region to determine which AI use cases they have already implemented and systematically structured them according to various criteria.
But how has reality changed since then? Stefanie Auge-Dickhut describes our current AI Radar survey, in which we conducted qualitative interviews with partner banks and IT providers of the Competence Center Future Financial Services to identify deeper insights, experiences and new strategic challenges in dealing with AI in the financial industry.

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Understanding Regenerative Finance (ReFi): Concepts, Principles, and Real-World Applications

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The environmental and social challenges of our time clearly show that conventional economic activity is not enough. We need new ways of doing business that not only avoid damage but also actively contribute to building and renewing our natural and social foundations. Regener-ative finance, or ReFi, is such an approach which is not a passing trend from the tech world, but a movement that aims to fundamentally rethink and redesign financial systems.
In today’s blog post, Friedrich-Philipp Wazinski provides an overview of ReFi and outlines how digital technologies can be linked to the principles of regenerative economics to enable new forms of common good-oriented economic activity.

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All, Ecosystems, News, Nicht kategorisiert

“Work smarter” – Business process automation for optimizing workflows and increasing operational efficiency (Part 2)

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In this concluding article of a two-part blog series on business process automation (BPA), Din Hida builds on the basic knowledge of BPA provided in the last post. Here, he introduces readers to the concept of hyperautomation, its areas of application, and its benefits. Hyperautomation offers enormous potential for optimizing business processes and remains a promising field that continues to gain importance and deserves ongoing attention and strategic investment.

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“Work smarter” – Business Process Automation for optimizing processes and increasing operational efficiency (Part 1)

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In this first blog post of a two-part series, Din Hida provides a clear introduction to the topic of business process automation (BPA). He shares fundamental knowledge about the development of BPA, introduces key technologies, and explains the different types of automation. This provides a structured foundation for a deeper understanding of modern process automation.

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Identifying the right data and AI use cases – the Assessment Framework

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Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) in particular. Beyond the hype, executives have agreed for some time that data and its analysis (such as through AI) play a key role in the transformation of entire business models (Gartner, 2018) and are seen as an in-vestment focus for companies worldwide (IBM, 2023) . However, to date, many companies have struggled to successfully implement their data and AI activities due to a variety of associated chal-lenges. Due to the complexity of the perspectives to be considered, companies are constantly faced with the challenge of identifying the specific use cases that are best suited to them and promise the most value potential, whether classic AI, GenAI or data sales.
Accordingly, one research focus of the Competence Center Future Financial Services (CC FFS) is to provide companies with guidance on how to create value from data and AI. This blog post is dedi-cated to the decision factors that support the choice of the right data and AI use cases and presents excerpts from a scientific paper that was written as part of the CC FFS research (see Kakuschke et al., 2025) .

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Potentials and challenges of the Swiss E-ID (2/2)

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Switzerland will provide electronic proof of identity (E-ID) for Swiss citizens in spring 2026. The underlying trust infrastructure is based on the Self-Sovereign Identity architectural approach. These developments offer significant opportunities but also challenges for the various economic sectors in Switzerland.
In this second part of a series of blog posts, Stefan Knaus describes the proof of value of the OpenBankingProject.ch on the topic of “Use of Swiss E-ID”. The focus of this article is on the business implications of using the Swiss E-ID for the business architecture of the project participants and the options for Swiss banks regarding participation in the Confederation’s trust infrastructure.

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Potentials and challenges of the Swiss E-ID (1/2)

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The Swiss Confederation will provide electronic proof of identity (e-ID) for Swiss citizens in spring 2026. The underlying trust infrastructure is based on the Self-Sovereign Identity architectural approach. These developments offer significant opportunities for the various economic sectors in Switzerland but also challenges in the effective implementation and use of verifiable credentials. In addition to the use of the Swiss e-ID as proof of identification for opening a bank account, participation in the Confederation’s trust infrastructure offers further potential for Swiss banks. The e-ID can be used in other customer processes and significantly improve the customer experience. In addition, banks can also issue their own proof of identity on the Confederation’s trust infrastructure (Source).
This is the first part of a two-part blog post series on the Proof of Value of the OpenBankingProject.ch on the topic of “Use of Swiss E-ID”, which took place from October 2024 to February 2025.

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All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Regulations, technologies

Wealth Management in the Digital Age: Innovation as a Success Factor

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Wealth management is at a turning point. Never before have challenges and opportuni-ties been as closely linked as they are today. While the number of high-net-worth individ-uals (HNWI) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) in Germany and Switzerland continues to grow [1-3], their expectations are also rising: individual advice, the urge for more self-determination, customized investment strategies and digital services are more in demand than ever [3-5].
In cooperation with Commerzbank AG, the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen has published the white paper “Leading with Innovation in Wealth Management”. It high-lights key developments and trends in wealth management with a particular focus on application programming interfaces (APIs) and distributed ledger technology (DLT). This article summarizes the key findings and shows why innovation can contribute to sus-tainable competitiveness in wealth management.

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AI cases in banking – AI radar of the Business Engineering Institute St.Gallen

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The financial industry is beginning to undergo a profound transformation through the use of AI. In particular, the use of generative AI opens up the possibility of creating new content such as texts, images, videos or music. In autumn 2024, we started building an AI radar that systematically analyzes use cases of banks in German-speaking countries. This blog post offers an overview of use cases and maturity levels in the banking sector and provides exciting insights into the status quo.

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AI, All, Data, News, Nicht kategorisiert, technologies

Retrospective of the 11th member event of the OpenBankingProject.ch

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On November 13, the members of the OpenBankingProject.ch met for the eleventh time to discuss current developments in the field of open banking in Switzerland and to take a look into the future together. The event offered exciting insights into the latest advances and chal-lenges in the sector. In this blog post, the most important highlights and insights of the day are described.

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Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, OpenBankingProject, Regulations, technologies

Five Cloud Myths about Core Banking Systems (Article 3)

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In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.
In today’s article, we will address the last three myths. If you missed the last article about myths 1 and 2, check here.
Myth 1: The cloud always saves money
Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals
Myth 3: Once you’ve chosen a cloud provider, there’s no going back
Myth 4: Software in the cloud makes you more innovative
Myth 5: Cloud migration is too complex

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Five Cloud Myths about Core Banking Systems (Article 2)

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In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer the typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.

In today’s article, we will clarify Myth 1 and Myth 2:

Myth 1: The cloud always saves money

Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals

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Understanding Bitcoin as a productive asset: Part 2 

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A Bitcoin-based financial system will necessarily be built in layers. This is because today’s financial system is also multi-layered and recognizes an inherent hierarchy of money-like assets. To properly assess the potential of Bitcoin as a productive asset, it is essential to understand the trade-offs that come with it. In the first part of this two-part blog post, Bitcoin was introduced as a novel monetary asset and the necessity for productive yield generation was discussed so that Bitcoin can take the next step in its evolutionary phase. In the second part, three perspectives on Bitcoin yield products will be evaluated concerning their trustworthiness and the associated risks and trade-offs. Based on these insights, the gold standard of a Bitcoin yield product will be defined and what can be concluded from this for banks and their customers will be explained.

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Workshop series “digital customer proximity”

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OpenBankingProject.ch is currently organising a series of workshops on the topic of “digital customer proximity”. Around 40 participants from 30 companies from the financial sector and beyond are examining various target images and use cases on how banks can use concepts such as open banking or embedded finance to position themselves closer to their customers. The aim is to support end customers with digital service access outside of banking and to assist them with banking data, products or services. In this blog post, Stefan Knaus presents the workshop series, the results of the first events to date and the content planned for the future.

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Data strategy in connected business models

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From 2019 to 2024, the global volume of digital data generated or replicated annually almost quadrupled – a trend expected to persist (Tenzer, 2024). Technology companies are demonstrating how data is being used to generate revenue that often dwarfs physical assets. Neglecting data can put companies at a significant disad-vantage in the future, leaving them behind data-driven competitors. However, many companies do not utilize the majority of their data and face issues such as data breaches and data silos (DalleMule & Davenport, 2017). The key is to develop and implement data strategies. This blog post presents a categorization for data strategies and their relevance for digital companies and banks in particular.

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What is Bitcoin’s next evolutionary step after the introduction of the Bitcoin ETF – and what do banks need to bear in mind?

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Since the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the US in January 2024, Bitcoin has become accessible as an asset to a broad institutional investor base. This marked a significant milestone on its journey as a monetary asset. The next major step in Bitcoin’s development as an investable asset is to unlock yield generation opportunities (similar to dividends on stocks or coupons on bonds). The first part of this two-part blog post introduces Bitcoin as a new type of monetary asset and the need for productive use of Bitcoin and analyses how initial approaches in this area led to the 2022 crypto credit crisis.

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The journey from open banking to embedded finance to contextual banking and the future role of banks

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If you look at today’s bank customers, they are always digitally active in their respective living environments. McMakler provides an example of positioning in customers’ living environments. If people search for design ideas for self-built furniture on Pinterest, for example, McMakler displays real estate offers that match their known living preferences. This happens in the context of a cooperation between McMakler and over 400 banks. Under certain conditions, banks can therefore offer their services in the respective living environments of their customers. However, this option is only one alternative as to how banks or individual banking divisions can position themselves strategically. In Stefan Knaus’ blog post from October 24, 2023, we presented four different strategic role profiles in the context of open banking. Now we would like to take a look at current market developments and which use cases have driven banks forward. We will also classify the terms “embedded finance” and “contextual banking”, which are frequently used in this context.

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Large Language Models: Origin-Use-Further Development

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Large language models (LLMs) have made a quantum leap in the field of natural language processing (NLP) over the last five years, both in terms of understanding (natural language understanding, NLU) and generation (natural language generation, NLG) in the development of communication with computers. With ChatGPT, the general public has also become aware of this. The possible uses in companies are beginning to become more and more relevant. A small series of articles will describe the emergence, integration possibilities in processes and effects of LLMs. In this article, the history of the development of LLMs up to their current status will be outlined, with the aim of presenting strengths, weaknesses and manifestations in the next article on this basis.

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Overview: Data value creation in companies

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For a long time, everyone was talking about data. “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data” (The Economist, 2017) was the ubiquitous mantra. However, advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are currently dominating the media, driven in particular by generative AI such as ChatGPT, DALL-E and the like, which can create new content such as text, images or speech. These generated data instances are in turn created with the help of technology on the basis of enormous data sets (Touati, 2024). Accordingly, it is becoming increasingly relevant for companies today and in the future to deal with the topic of “data” as the basis for value-adding activities. The Competence Center (CC) Ecosystems of the Business Engineering Institute St.Gallen develops solutions for relevant practical problems and addresses, among other things, the use of data as a key role for business success in dynamic environments. This blog post provides an introduction to the research in the field of data value creation for companies at the CC ecosystems.

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Service Design in Business Ecosystems: How you can use the service blueprint in the context of business ecosystems and the relation to my research.

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As part of his research at the Competence Center Ecosystems, Dennis Vetterling is developing artefacts for the conceptualization of value capture for organizations in business ecosystems. The objective is to provide managers with the basis for in-formed decisions in the context of value capture in business ecosystems. In this blog post, he introduces the service blueprint as a modeling framework for handling the topic of business ecosystems in his research and provides further thought fragments for their analysis.

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