This page describes the procedure and the methods of payment used by the Swiss Compensation Office (SCO) for the transfer of benefits.
Most SCO payments are made in the local currency: the benefit amount is debited in Swiss francs from the SCO's account, and the beneficiary receives the exchange value in the currency of their country.
The currency of origin and the initial amount are notified to the beneficiary in the remittance details on the account statement.
Only transfers to a bank or postal account in Switzerland are made in Swiss francs.
The Swiss Compensation Office uses the financial services of PostFinance, the BPS (Banca Popolare di Sondrio) and the BPE (Santander Group) to execute its payments. If these services do not have a direct connection in the destination country, they can use their correspondent banks that act as payment intermediaries to transfer the payments to their destination.
Certain payments are transferred in a convertible foreign currency (US dollar, Euro, Pound sterling) in the following cases:
- when the currency of the destination country is not fully tradable or it is tradable only subject to specific provisions;
- if the financial partner does not have hedging for this currency or a correspondent bank capable of ensuring the payment to the country in the local currency.
An account, which is not kept in the currency of execution of our payment, can engender a second conversion.
Attention: if your account is not in the local currency or in the currency, we use for our payment, your bank may, based on certain conditions, refuse the conversion into that currency and therefore return our payment.
