Accepting CembraPay as a merchant
CembraPay is the Swiss invoice and instalment provider of Cembra, the Swiss bank listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange since 2013. It was formed in 2023 by combining Cembra's subsidiaries Swissbilling and Byjuno. The shopper buys on invoice, in monthly instalments or on one monthly invoice, and CembraPay AG in Zurich pays the merchant and collects from the shopper. CembraPay describes itself as one of the leading providers of invoice purchase in Switzerland, and it sells to merchants online and in store. For a merchant the point to understand is that the purchase price claim leaves your books at checkout, while the returns stay with you.
Published prices for CembraPayPer provider, country and channel, further down this pageGo to the pricesHow to accept CembraPay as a merchant
You can contract CembraPay directly. It publishes plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento 2, Shopware 6, PrestaShop, JTL-Shop and Sylius, a JSON API, and states that it has direct and indirect interfaces to 20 shop systems. For the shop floor it offers its own POS solution.
Or you take it through a PSP. CembraPay names Datatrans, wallee and Payrexx as integrations, and PostFinance Checkout lists CembraPay invoice and CembraPay instalment as payment methods. On the PSP route you still connect a CembraPay account: Payrexx asks its merchants to request an offer and then link the CembraPay account they receive.
Model
CembraPay buys the claim and carries the default risk
When CembraPay accepts a transaction, it gives the merchant a payment guarantee, takes on the full default risk and handles the receivables. The decision is made in real time, with what CembraPay calls dynamic limit management, and a payment fails when that decision declines the purchase or the shopper's limit does not cover it.
The merchant is paid the value of the goods within a fixed period agreed in its contract. The shopper is invoiced by CembraPay AG, usually by email, and pays with the Swiss QR payment slip attached. In the terms CembraPay publishes for its SBB customers, an invoice is due within 30 days of the invoice date.
There is no card rail, no issuer and no interchange in this chain. What decides acceptance is CembraPay's credit decision, so conversion work on this method is about who is declined and why, not about 3DS or issuer behaviour.
Where CembraPay is used, and where it is sold
CembraPay is a Swiss product. Its site runs in German and French, its invoices carry Swiss QR payment slips, and Payrexx lists Switzerland and Liechtenstein as the countries where it can be offered. The index lists Switzerland as the market.
Its parts also reach shoppers through TWINT: in August 2023 TWINT announced that users shopping with specific merchants can choose to pay immediately or in 30 days, with Swissbilling, now part of CembraPay, providing the invoice. For a merchant selling into Switzerland from abroad, the relevant question is whether you can contract it at all, and CembraPay's own material addresses Swiss merchants.
Pricing
The shopper's fees are published, the merchant's rate is not
CembraPay publishes no merchant rate on its merchant page, and neither provider in the index publishes a price for CembraPay. What is published is the shopper side: invoices go out by email, and a postal invoice costs the shopper CHF 4.25. On instalments, CembraPay states that with CembraPay ZERO shoppers usually have 3 to 48 months to pay without further costs or interest.
A plan the shopper pays nothing for is still paid for, and the price sits in the merchant's agreement. That makes the plan mix part of the rate. Take an illustrative 3 million euro of CembraPay volume a year at an average order of 150 euro, which is 20,000 orders. Every 0.10 percentage point in the quoted rate is 3,000 euro a year, and a fixed component of 0.30 euro per order is 6,000 euro. If 1 million euro of that volume runs on a long plan priced two percentage points above invoice, the plan costs 20,000 euro a year more than the same sales on invoice.
These figures are illustrative, and the quoted rate decides what you actually pay. Ask for the rate per product and per plan length in writing, so that the cost of each option you show at checkout is visible before you show it.
Claim
The invoice belongs to CembraPay, the return still belongs to you
CembraPay states that a shopper can pay only CembraPay AG, with the QR payment slips attached, because CembraPay has taken over the purchase price claim and the handling of payment terms from the merchant. A shopper who pays the merchant directly has not paid the invoice.
Returns go the other way. The shopper sends goods back to the merchant, never to CembraPay, and the merchant informs CembraPay after receiving the return so that the invoice is adjusted or cancelled. Until that message arrives, the invoice stands at its full amount and runs towards its due date. A delay in the return notification therefore reaches the shopper as an invoice for goods already sent back.
That makes the return notification a reconciliation flow in its own right. Connect it to your returns handling, so that a received return reaches CembraPay the same day, and match CembraPay's payout statement against your credit notes rather than against your orders.
Contract
Fix the payout period and how returns are netted
CembraPay's merchant page says the value of goods is paid out within a fixed agreed period, and it does not print that period. Write it into the contract, together with the cut-off for a return that is reported after payout: whether it is deducted from the next payout, invoiced back or settled otherwise, and within which time.
Fix the edge cases as well. On the PSP route PostFinance Checkout and wallee document deferred completion with a different amount and multiple refunds, which covers partial shipments and partial returns technically. Agree in writing that the payment guarantee stays in place for the remaining amount after a partial return, and how a late return notification is handled when the shopper has already received a reminder.
Swiss consumer credit law draws a line through the plan menu
The Swiss Consumer Credit Act does not apply to credit that is repayable within three months or in no more than four instalments within twelve months, nor to interest- and fee-free credit or credit under CHF 500 or over CHF 80,000. Where it does apply, the lender must check creditworthiness and report the credit to the Informationsstelle für Konsumkredit.
Payrexx lists CembraPay's interest-free models as 3in3, 4in4, 6in6, 12in12 and 24in24, and CembraPay ZERO runs up to 48 months. Part of that menu sits inside the statutory line and part of it may not. Ask CembraPay in writing which of the plans you offer it treats as consumer credit, because that determines the checks behind the credit decision and the acceptance rate of that plan.
Which payment providers support CembraPay
In the index, PostFinance and wallee offer CembraPay to merchants established in Switzerland. CembraPay also names Datatrans and Payrexx as integrations, and you can contract CembraPay directly.
The questions to put to each are the same: which CembraPay products and plan lengths the route carries, whether returns and partial refunds flow through to CembraPay automatically, what the route adds to CembraPay's own rate, and whether the payout comes from CembraPay or from the PSP.
Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index
Published prices for CembraPay, per provider
2 providers in the index offer CembraPay to merchants established in Europe, and none of them publishes a price.
Each rate is shown as the provider prints it, and the provider's name links to the page it was read on. A published rate is a list rate: what a merchant actually pays is stated in the quoted rate and the contract.
The country where your business is established and from which you sell. Shoppers pay with CembraPay in: Switzerland.
| Provider | Per transaction | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| PostFinance Merchants in Switzerland | No price published | Online |
| wallee Merchants in Switzerland | No price published | Online |
Source: EcomStream, Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index, ecomstream.eu/payment-methods-transparency-index. Read at source between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026. A provider that believes a row is wrong can write to index@ecomstream.nl. Every reported correction is checked at the source.
Reviewing what CembraPay costs you
What you pay for CembraPay is set in your agreement, with CembraPay or with your PSP, and the plan mix you offer is part of that price. Start by establishing whether you are overpaying your PSP, and where invoice and instalments are a material share of your Swiss volume, price each plan before you renew.
Relevant markets: Switzerland
Payment set-up check
Selling to shoppers in Switzerland? Let's check what CembraPay and its plans cost you.
Enter your webshop. The check sets your checkout against what shoppers in each of your markets expect, and names the gaps. If you want, it then calculates what those gaps cost you in euros.
Ramon Helwegen
