Structured addresses: what changes for your QR-bills on 1 October 2026

If your invoicing software predates 2025, your QR-bills risk being rejected from 1 October 2026. Here is why, and how to find out in two minutes whether it affects you.

What changed in November 2025

Version 2.3 of the Swiss QR Standard accepts only one address format inside the QR code: the structured address, or “type S”. Street, house number, postcode, town and country each get their own field. The old combined format, “type K”, where the whole address sat on two lines of free text, is no longer permitted.

Why 30 September 2026

Banks did not cut it off overnight. They still process free-text invoices, but as a courtesy, and that courtesy ends at the end of September 2026. From 1 October, a QR-bill carrying a free-text address can be rejected, and it is your client who ends up facing a payment that will not go through, with no idea why.

How to tell whether it affects you

• Open an invoice you sent recently and look at the payment part at the bottom.
• If the creditor's or the debtor's address runs on a single continuous line, with no clear break between street and number, you are probably still on the free-text format.
• If in doubt, ask your software supplier: “do your QR-bills issue type S addresses?” They will know.

What it asks of you

Nothing complicated, but your clients' addresses have to be complete and split out: street and number, postcode, town, country. A client record where everything is jammed into one field cannot produce a structured address, whatever the software. Now is the right moment to tidy your address book, doing it once, calmly, beats doing it under pressure in September.