PostFinance E-Trading

PostFinance prices brokerage in fixed bands by order value, not as a percentage. On SIX Swiss Exchange and BX Swiss the ladder as at 1 January 2026 runs: CHF 6 up to CHF 500, CHF 12 to CHF 1,000, CHF 20 to CHF 5,000, CHF 30 to CHF 10,000, CHF 40 to CHF 15,000, CHF 60 to CHF 20,000, CHF 80 to CHF 30,000, CHF 105 to CHF 50,000, CHF 160 to CHF 100,000, CHF 240 to CHF 150,000 and CHF 300 above that.

The banded structure produces a strange cost curve. A CHF 400 order costs CHF 6, which is 1.5% but only six francs. A CHF 501 order costs CHF 12 — double, for one franc more of exposure. A CHF 10,000 order costs CHF 30, or 0.30%, before stamp duty.

Foreign venues are priced in their local currency on a similar ladder:

• NYSE, NASDAQ, NYSE American: USD 15 / 20 / 30 / 35 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 105 / 160 / 240 / 300
• Frankfurt, Xetra, Euronext, Borsa Italiana, Madrid, Vienna, Nasdaq OMX: EUR 15 up to EUR 300 on the same bands
• London Stock Exchange: GBP 15 up to GBP 300
• Toronto and TSX Venture: CAD 15 up to CAD 300
• SIX Structured Products and off-exchange Switzerland: CHF 12 rising to a CHF 80 cap
• Swiss DOTS: CHF 9 rising to a CHF 36 cap — by far the cheapest venue on the list

On top sit Swiss federal stamp duty of 0.075% on Swiss issuers and 0.15% on foreign ones, exchange fees passed through at cost, and the UK, French, Italian and Spanish transaction taxes where they apply. Custody is CHF 18 per quarter, matched by CHF 18 of quarterly trading credits — so trade at least once a quarter and the custody fee disappears. The credits do not roll over.

Mutual funds sit outside that ladder. A purchase costs 1% issuing commission on the subscription amount, but never less than CHF 20 and never more than CHF 1,000. There is no minimum subscription amount, which sounds generous until you do the arithmetic: a CHF 500 fund order still costs CHF 20, or 4% of the money invested, against CHF 6 for the same amount as an ETF trade on SIX. Redemptions are free, and funds domiciled abroad add 0.15% stamp duty.

The gap in the published schedule is currency conversion. The e-trading price list does not mention currency conversion at all, so the all-in cost of a US or euro trade cannot be computed from published information.

PostFinance Ltd is a Swiss bank in the fullest sense. It has held a licence under the Swiss Banking Act since June 2013, when postal financial services were carved out of Swiss Post into a private limited company, and it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Swiss Post Ltd. FINMA supervises it directly and has designated it a systemically important bank on the strength of its position in domestic deposit-taking and Swiss payment traffic. Very few retail brokerage accounts sit behind a counterparty with that status.

Two protections apply, and they cover different things:

• Cash in the e-trading account is covered by esisuisse, the Swiss deposit insurance scheme, up to CHF 100,000 per client and bank. This limit is shared across all your PostFinance accounts, not per account.
• Securities are not deposits. Under Swiss law, book-entry securities held in custody are segregated client assets and are separated out of the bankruptcy estate rather than paid out from a compensation fund. In practice this is the stronger protection of the two, because it is not capped at CHF 100,000.

The institution's roots go back to the launch of the Swiss post cheque and giro service in 1906, and PostFinance publishes audited annual and interim accounts through its investor relations pages — it reported a profit of CHF 103 million for the first half of 2026, published on 20 August 2026. It is not listed on a stock exchange, so there is no share price to act as a market signal, but the combination of federal ownership, FINMA supervision and systemic designation is about as conservative as a Swiss brokerage counterparty gets.

None of this protects you from market losses, and none of it makes a portfolio "safe". It reduces counterparty risk, which is a different and narrower thing.

There is no PostFinance trading terminal. Securities trading is a module inside e-finance, the same online banking portal used for salary payments, standing orders and QR-bills, and inside the PostFinance App on mobile. That is the product's greatest strength and its clearest limitation at the same time.

What works well: one login for everything, a portfolio that sits next to your current account balance, instant internal transfers so cash is never stranded, savings plans that execute automatically, and tax documentation generated in the same place. For an investor who checks a portfolio monthly and places a handful of orders a year, this is genuinely more pleasant than logging into a separate broker.

What is missing is everything a trader would want. There is no depth of book, no conditional or bracket orders, no algorithmic order types, no multi-chart workspace, no options chain, no API and no third-party platform connectivity. Charting is basic price history rather than a technical analysis environment. Real-time Swiss price data is available through the stock market prices section of the website, but the platform is not built for people who watch it.

There is also no demo account. You cannot evaluate the interface without first becoming a PostFinance banking customer, which is a meaningful friction point compared with brokers that let you test-drive in ten seconds.

For orders that cannot be placed online, a telephone dealing desk operates on +41 58 448 79 00 from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays. Note that offline-traded instruments are excluded from the quarterly trading-credit scheme.

PostFinance advertises more than 20 stock exchanges worldwide. The published brokerage table names the venues explicitly: SIX Swiss Exchange, BX Swiss, SIX Structured Products, off-exchange Switzerland, Swiss DOTS, Frankfurt, Xetra, Euronext Paris, Euronext Amsterdam, Euronext Brussels, Nasdaq OMX Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki, Borsa Italiana, Madrid, Wiener Börse, EUWAX and off-exchange Germany, the London Stock Exchange, NYSE, NASDAQ, NYSE American, Toronto and TSX Venture.

Within those venues you can trade:

• Equities and ETFs, including fractional amounts through the savings plan from CHF 1
• Investment funds, at a 1% issuing commission with a CHF 20 minimum and a CHF 1,000 cap, with free redemption
• Bonds — listed issues on the standard equity table, OTC bonds at 0.25% with a CHF 50 minimum
• Structured products and warrants, via SIX Structured Products and the notably cheap Swiss DOTS venue
• Medium-term notes and fixed-term deposits in CHF and foreign currencies
• Cryptocurrencies — over 20 coins including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Solana, held in Swiss custody, with ETH staking available from 0.1 ETH

What is absent matters just as much. There are no listed options, no futures, no spot forex, no CFDs and no margin trading. Leverage is only available in packaged form through structured products and warrants, where the issuer sets the terms. Crypto positions currently cannot be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet, so the coins function as an exposure product rather than as assets you control.

For a mainstream Swiss retail bank this is a broad shelf. For an investor who expects to hedge with options or trade index futures, it is a dead end.

E-trading is not a standalone product: it is switched on inside an existing PostFinance banking relationship. Existing customers add a custody account through e-finance; newcomers first open a PostFinance private account and then activate e-trading. In practice this makes PostFinance a Swiss-residents proposition, and the account is not aimed at clients abroad. US persons should assume they are out of scope.

There is no minimum deposit and no funding fee. Because the e-trading account sits inside the same institution as your payment account, transfers are internal and effectively instant — the single biggest practical advantage over an external broker, where settlement cash can spend days in transit. E-trading accounts are available in CHF, EUR and USD. Withdrawals back to a PostFinance account are free; a bank transfer to an external institution follows normal payment pricing.

Moving a portfolio out is where PostFinance charges properly: CHF 108.10 per position to transfer securities to another financial institution, and CHF 54.05 per position for a change of custodian, waived only where the change was not initiated by you. On a twelve-position portfolio that is around CHF 1,300 to leave, which is worth knowing before you build one. PostFinance does periodically cover incoming transfer fees for customers switching to e-trading.

On tax, the account behaves like any Swiss bank account. PostFinance is a Swiss withholding-tax agent: 35% Verrechnungssteuer is deducted at source on Swiss-source income and reclaimed through your Swiss tax return. A tax statement costs CHF 97.30, and German or French withholding-tax reclaims cost CHF 108.10 plus CHF 21.60 per document. PostFinance does not settle German Abgeltungsteuer or Austrian KESt — it is not a paying agent for those regimes, so a cross-border investor would have to declare income themselves. For Swiss residents, who are the target market, the account is fully tax-simple.

Research is functional rather than a reason to open the account. PostFinance publishes a market view with house commentary on rates, currencies and equity markets, an investing blog, a first-steps section for beginners, stock market price pages and a set of tools and calculators covering savings plans and retirement. Fundamental data, screeners, analyst estimates and consensus price targets are not part of the offering in the way they are at a specialist broker. If you want to research a position properly, you will do it elsewhere and place the order here.

Education is aimed squarely at the Swiss mass market: what a share is, how an ETF works, why diversification matters, how a savings plan compounds. It is clear, well-written and free of hype — and shallow if you already know the basics. There is no options curriculum because there are no options, and no demo account to practise in.

Support is the part of the proposition that outperforms most online brokers. PostFinance runs a general hotline on +41 58 448 14 14 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, a dedicated e-trading information line on +41 58 448 78 00, and an order desk on +41 58 448 79 00 open until 10 p.m. on weekdays. There is web chat, e-mail to e-trading@postfinance.ch, and — unusually for a broker — physical advice centres where you can sit down with a person. Everything is available in German, French, Italian and English.

That combination of Swiss-hours phone support, branch access and four-language coverage is worth real money to investors who dislike ticket queues, and it is a fair part of the reason the account keeps its customers despite the pricing.