Swisscom, financial infrastructure group SIX, leading local retailers and Switzerland’s five biggest banks are in talks about creating a single platform for mobile payments.

Retail chains Coop and Migros are involved in the discussions alongside banks UBS, Credit Suisse, PostFinance, Raiffeisen and Zurcher Kantonalbank.

The aim is for talks to lead to results by early May, and for the platform to be open to other partners.

Partnership between local players is a recurring theme in the market, as industry strives to create a Swiss solution that is a counterbalance to international players.

Swisscom, SIX, UBS and Zurcher Kantonalbank are already developing their own Paymit mobile payment system for online and offline transactions (previously, Swisscom had its Tapit system but dropped it in favour of Paymit). Meanwhile, PostFinance has its own Twint platform, supported by several other banks.

Work will continue on the Paymit and Twint sytems but the various companies have also agreed to talk about a single, standardised system that will be open to all.