What is EBICS

EBICS (Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard) is a communication protocol developed by the German banking sector and Comité Français d'Organisation et de Normalisation Bancaires for secure data exchange between companies and banks over the internet.

Key Characteristics

• Standardized: A protocol that has established itself in the banking sector over the years. Widely supported in Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland.
• Secure: Multi-level encryption, digital signatures and authentication using RSA/AES
• Bidirectional: Supports both upload (payments) and download (statements, notifications)

EBICS Versions

Version	Description
EBICS 2.5	Widely used in Germany and Switzerland
EBICS 3.0	Current standard - consolidates order types into BTF (Business Transaction Format)

Important

bossEBICS supports EBICS starting with version 3.0.

Key Concepts

• Business Transaction Format (BTF): The EBICS 3.0 way to define the order type (e.g. pain.001 credit transfers)
• Certificate: Digital identity used to sign, encrypt and authenticate EBICS orders
• Host ID: Unique identifier assigned to the bank's EBICS server
• Partner ID / User ID: Identifiers assigned by the bank to your organization and individual users

What is bossEBICS

bossEBICS is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central extension developed by bossinfo.ch AG that brings EBICS bank communication directly into Business Central - no external tools or manual file transfers required.

Capabilities

Establishing Bank Connection

Before payment or account statement data can be exchanged between Business Central and a bank, a bank connection must be established.

A Bank Connection holds the three identifiers the bank provides you - Host ID, Partner ID, and the bank's EBICS endpoint URL. Under each connection you create one or more bank users, each mapped to a Business Central user account and identified by an EBICS User ID.

Each bank user requires three X.509 certificates - one for signing orders (INI), one for authentication (HIA), and one for encryption (HIA). The built-in Bank User Initialization Wizard guides through generating or importing these certificates step by step, then transmits the public keys to the bank via the EBICS INI and HIA order types. Once the bank has activated the keys on their side, the user's status is set to Ready and bossEBICS fetches the bank's own certificates (HPB) to complete initialization.

To control who in Business Central may submit transactions for a given EBICS user, Authorized Users can be defined with granular per-order-type permissions.

Bidirectional Communication

With the connection established, bossEBICS exchanges data with the bank in both directions using the EBICS BTF (Business Transaction Format).

Uploads (BTU) send files to the bank - payment initiation, direct debit collections, or any custom file format the bank supports. Downloads (BTD) retrieve files from the bank - bank statements, direct debit notification or any file format supported by the bank. The exact formats available for each direction are defined as BTF Parameters, which bossEBICS fetches automatically from the bank (HKD order type) when a user is set to Ready.

Information

Not every bank supports HKD (download customer’s customer and subscriber information).

Every exchange follows the EBICS multi-phase protocol: an initialisation request, one or more transfer requests carrying the payload in compressed and encrypted segments, and a receipt acknowledgement.

Transaction logging

Every BTU and BTD exchange is recorded as an EBICS Transaction in Business Central, giving a complete audit trail without requiring access to the bank portal.

Standard integration

bossEBICS connects into Business Central's standard payment and reconciliation workflows without replacing them.

Each Bank Account is extended with an EBICS Bank Connection and three BTF parameter assignments - one for bank statement import, one for credit transfer export, and one for SEPA direct debit export. When a bank account has a connection configured, bossEBICS replaces the standard file-based import and export actions with EBICS equivalents that communicate directly with the bank.