PostFinance is founded in 1906 and the financial services unit of Swiss Post

Swiss Post

Swiss Post is the postal service of Switzerland. A public company owned by the Swiss Confederation, it is the country's second largest employer...

, and the fifth largest retail financial

Retail banking

Retail banking is banking in which banking institutions execute transactions directly with consumers, rather than corporations or other banks. Services offered include: savings and transactional accounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit cards, credit cards, and so forth.-Types of...

 institution in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. Its main area of activity is in the national and international payment

Payment system

A payment system is a system used for transferring money. What makes it a "system" is that it employs cash-substitutes; traditional payment systems are negotiable instruments such as drafts and documentary credits such as letter of credits. With the advent of computers and electronic...

s and a smaller but growing part in the areas of savings, pension

Pension

In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...

s and real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

.

Wikileaks involvement

On 6 December 2010, in the wake of the leak of American embassy cables by WikiLeaks

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

, PostFinance announced that it had closed an account in the name of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Julian Assange

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...

 because he did not reside in Geneva as he had claimed when opening the account.

In response, PostFinance's website was hit by denial of service attacks, and Swiss prosecutors announced that they were investigating whether PostFinance violated Swiss secrecy laws by announcing the closure of Assange's account.