At the end of the month, a self-employed graphic designer in Bern sits in front of her invoices. Some clients open the PDF on their smartphone, scan the Swiss QR Code and trigger the payment instead of typing in the IBAN, amount and reference by hand. For her, the new QR bill in Switzerland has long since stopped being a vision of the future — it is part of everyday payment traffic.

The change does not only affect the visible payment part. What matters is the data structure in the QR code, the correct reference, up-to-date software and properly recorded addresses. This guide shows what the standard means in practice for freelancers, sole proprietorships and single-owner limited companies.

Why the new QR bill changes your daily routine

The Swiss QR bill was introduced on 30 June 2020 and definitively replaced the previous payment slips on 1 October 2022, as SIX explains on the topic of the QR bill. Within a little more than two years, Switzerland thus switched completely to a new standard format for invoices with payment references.

For the Bern graphic designer, the workflow changes in several places. Her clients scan the payment details directly into their banking app. The amount, the account details and the reference are taken from the code, which means fewer manual entries are needed. In accounting, the reference can then help match the incoming payment to the right invoice.

Practical rule: The QR code does not replace your invoice. It complements it with a machine-readable payment part that makes the payment process cleaner for your clients and your accounting.

What shifts in a freelancer's daily routine

In the past, a customer sometimes had to copy information from the payment slip or enter it separately. Today, the information needed for payment is available digitally in the Swiss QR Code. That is exactly what the format is designed for: reducing manual entry effort and cutting down on payment errors, as SIX explains in its overview of the Swiss QR Code.

This brings concrete benefits:

• Fewer follow-up questions: Clients have to ask about the IBAN, amount or reference less often.
• Better reconciliation: A correctly generated reference supports the matching of payments in accounting.
• Digital workflow: Invoice, banking app and accounting can all work with the same payment data.

But the switch also has a downside. Your software must generate the current standard, customer and supplier addresses must be kept clean, and old invoice templates may render technical fields incorrectly or incompletely. If you still create invoices from a self-built template, you should therefore check not only the layout but also the content of the QR code.

Structure and content of the Swiss QR Code

The Swiss QR Code is not just any QR code containing an IBAN. It contains a standardized data record that bundles payment information in machine-readable form. According to the technical specifications from SIX, this data record may contain a maximum of 997 characters, as stated in the SIX documentation on the QR bill.

The data follows a fixed logic

At the beginning is the header SPC. This is followed by 0200 as the version number. After that, among other things, the character set, the payee's details, the debtor's address, amount and currency, as well as reference and additional information, are processed.

For a freelancer with an office in Zurich, this means in simplified terms:

1. Payee: The freelancer's name and structured address.
2. Account: The QR-IBAN designated for QR payments.
3. Debtor: The client's name and address, if used in the data record.
4. Amount: The invoice amount in CHF or EUR, if already fixed.
5. Reference: The number for automatic matching.
6. Additional information: Further details, such as messages or an alternative procedure without a fixed amount entered.

The visible invoice can be designed to be easy to understand. The embedded data record, however, must correspond exactly to the specification. You should therefore not create a QR code with an arbitrary image generator, but with invoicing or accounting software that generates the Swiss QR Code according to the SIX specifications. For an additional technical check, you can validate a QR bill.

Mandatory fields in the Swiss QR Code

The software takes care of the correct order and calculates the technical check elements. So you do not have to fill in every character position yourself. What matters is that your master data is correct, because a formally valid code can still contain the wrong payee or invoice data.

Understanding the QR-IBAN and reference system

A classic IBAN identifies the account. A QR-IBAN additionally serves the function of processing QR references unambiguously in Swiss payment traffic. It is recognizable by the QR-IID. This special range of the institution identifier lies exclusively between 30000 and 31999, as Raiffeisen explains regarding the QR-IBAN.

The rule is therefore: QR reference plus QR-IBAN. A QR reference consists of 26 digits plus a check digit, i.e. 27 characters in total. It is used to match a payment to a specific invoice. The payment information from UBS distinguishes between the QR reference and the Creditor Reference.

The two reference types

A web developer in Basel can assign a separate QR reference to each invoice. When a client pays that invoice, her bank transmits the reference along with the amount. Accounting can then recognize which open receivable was settled. However, this only works cleanly if the account type, reference type and check digit all fit together.

The QR reference is not the same as the former ISR reference, even though it performs a similar reconciliation task in everyday practice. The important difference lies in the technical coupling: with the QR reference, the QR-IBAN is mandatory. With a Creditor Reference, on the other hand, you use a regular IBAN.

A common mistake occurs when a freelancer confuses their main bank's QR-IBAN with a normal IBAN, or uses a QR reference on an ordinary IBAN. Therefore, check the details directly with your bank and store the reference type in your invoicing software. A practical example of the structure can be found in the QR-IBAN example.

SIX standards and version changes at a glance

For a freelancer, the QR bill is only reliable if the software used matches the applicable SIX specification. The Implementation Guidelines, or IG for short, work like a technical rulebook. They define which data fields a QR code contains and how banks and accounting programs process them.

The current status

The former Version 2.2 has been replaced by IG QR Bill Version 2.3. Version 2.3 has been mandatorily implemented since 22 November 2025. SIX plans to introduce Version 2.4 in November 2026, expected as of 14 November 2026. You can find the current status of the documents in the SIX Download Center for payment standards.

The development can be understood as continuous maintenance of the rulebook:

• Introduction in 2020: The QR bill replaces the previous payment slips as a uniform format.
• Earlier guidelines: SIX refined the data fields, processing and how the systems work together.
• Version 2.2: This was the previous foundation and has since been replaced.
• Version 2.3: This is currently mandatory and contains stricter requirements for the address structure.
• Version 2.4: This is planned for November 2026 and will form the next specification level.

When switching software, the visible PDF is therefore not the only thing that matters. Have it confirmed that your application generates invoices according to IG QR Bill Version 2.3 and takes the planned transition to Version 2.4 into account.

If you switch from Excel to accounting software, import old customer data or set up a new bank connection, test the entire workflow. Create an invoice, scan it with a banking app and check the payee, amount, currency and reference. The explanation of the QR bill changes 2025 helps you put the technical adjustments in the invoicing process into context.

Structured addresses and deadlines up to 2026

When you issue an invoice as a freelancer, the address in the QR code can decide how it is processed. Since 21 November 2025, structured addresses are mandatory there. Older formats have a transition period expected to apply until 30 September 2026. For payment orders, an additional deadline of around November 2026 is expected, as SIX explains regarding Swiss payment traffic rules.

A structured address works like a form with individual fields. Name, street, house number, postal code and town are stored separately instead of together in one free-text line. From November 2026, the Town Name and Country fields must be correctly filled in for every address used. An unstructured address will then no longer comply with the new standard.

What you should check now

• Customer database: Store street, house number, postal code and town separately in your database.
• Your own address: Check whether your invoicing details are stored fully in structured form.
• Templates: Update PDF and software templates. What matters is not only the visible layout, but also the data record behind it.
• International customers: Store the correct two-digit country code and check the spelling.
• Old records: Invoices already issued do not have to be recreated retroactively. New invoices, however, should be generated from current master data.

Therefore, check the data source of your next invoice. An old template can look correct and still generate a data record that banking software or QR processing no longer accepts.

Impact on freelancers and sole proprietorships

A freelancer issues an invoice, scans the QR code and expects the incoming payment to later match the open invoice automatically. This is exactly the chain you should review as a whole before the transition:

• Check the IG version: Verify whether your tool supports the current Implementation Guidelines version 2.3.
• Clarify the QR-IBAN: Ask your main bank which QR-IBAN applies for QR references.
• Update software: Choose a system that processes structured addresses.
• Test templates: Scan a test invoice and check the amount, account and reference.
• Assign references: Define how new invoice references are generated.
• Reconcile accounting: Check whether bank imports match payments to open invoices.

The QR bill continues the former ISR process digitally under today's standard, from invoicing through to reconciliation. The introduction of Version 2.4 is scheduled for 14 November 2026. You should take the schedule announced by SIX in the Download Center into account when planning software updates. Magic Heidi creates Swiss QR bills with QR code, payment reference and payment tracking.

Check out the features of Magic Heidi and test an invoice before the transition.