Twint is practical, but expensive for the stores that accept the payment. Customers can use a wide variety of cashless payment methods at Swiss retailers. Swiss retailers have to pay far lower fees for other payment methods that are used just as frequently in Switzerland than for Twint. The Swiss Retail Federation, as the Swiss retail trade association, therefore wants the Competition Commission Weko to examine whether the Twint fees comply with the law. 

Twint, its market power and the (excessively) high fees

The association accuses Twint of abusing its market power by charging unreasonably high fees to the detriment of the retail trade and other sectors. The association has therefore filed a complaint against Twint with the Competition Commission Weko.

In 2024, over 5 million users carried out more than 773 million transactions with Twint. This corresponds to further growth of over 30 percent compared to the previous year. For retailers, there is therefore no way around this payment channel - customers expect the corresponding service. However, the merchant fees for Twint have become too high a burden for retailers, according to the retailers' association.

The fees charged by Twint in 2025 are regularly the same or even higher than for credit cards. However, as most Twint customers have a bank account instead of a credit card as a means of payment, the Twint fees should be based on the significantly lower level of debit card transactions, argues the Swiss Retail Federation.

Who is Twint? 

Twint is not a small Swiss start-up, but an established company owned by the largest Swiss banks and payment processors such as UBS, Post Finance, Raiffeisen, BCV, ZKB as well as SIX and Worldline. Twint is known and loved by the Swiss population as the "free Swiss app".