IBS Journal November 2015


Who’s bought what? WHO? Japan Post Bank WHAT? Earthport’s payment network


Japan Post Bank has chosen Earthport, a UK-based open global bank payment network, to provide cross-border payments for its customers. In this new partnership, Earthport pro-


vides Japan Post, the world’s tenth largest bank based on total assets, with ‘expanded cross border remittance services’. Masahiro Murashima, senior manag-


ing executive, Japan Post, says: ‘Earthport’s unique transparent service for cross-border payments [means] beneficiaries will receive the full amount expected, without any sur- prise charges or deductions.’ Like other post banks, it is a member of Eurogiro, the international electronic funds


transfer system between the postal services of the member countries. Japan Post provides consumers with


financial services through a network of local post offices and ATM’s throughout Japan. A range of international banks, mon-


ey transfer organisations including HSBC, Bank of American Merrill Lynch, Western Union, Standard Chartered, Azimo and Xoom also use Earthport for cross-border payments.


Looking back Two months ago, Earthport launched


a gateway to enable real-time cross-border payments via a distributed ledger protocol.


Called the Earthport Distributed Ledg-


er Gateway (EDLG), it has been developed in partnership with US-based software firm Ripple Labs. The partnership was first unveiled late last year. EDLG works by transporting the funds


through the Ripple protocol to record the transaction and leverage its prefund- ed accounts to provide instant liquidity and the ‘best’ FX rate. The beneficiary then receives the amount in ‘near’ real-time. Hank Uberoi, CEO at Earthport,


revealed in August that its clients are ‘far along into the planning stage for initial testing’.


Antony Peyton


WHO? Samba Bank Ltd WHAT? IBM servers and middleware


Pakistan-based Samba Bank Limited, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Samba Financial Group, has opted for the IBM middleware with DB2 database for the integration of the bank’s front and back office systems. The bank is also implementing new


servers based on IBM Power8 (introduced by IBM last year and touted as the first open server platform and the first proces- sor designed for big data), IBM storage and IBM Flash Systems. The project will be delivered by a


domestic system integrator and IT consul- tancy firm, Infotech. Samba Financial Group has a long-standing partnership with IBM across a number of areas, including using the IBM Cognos suite of products for business intelligence (BI) and analytics. For its core banking software, Sam-


ba Financial Group is using Temenos’ T24 offering. The project started in 2011. The Pakistani subsidiary is penned for


migration to T24 in 2016. Temenos’ local partner, National Data Consultants (NDC), has been recruited to


28 © IBS Intelligence 2015


assist with the implementation. In addi- tion to the new core system – T24 R15 – Samba Bank will also build a new online and mobile banking platform, based on


Temenos Connect, and will implement a new anti-money laundering (AML) solu- tion, also supplied by Temenos. Tanya Andreasyan


WHO? TP Bank WHAT? BPC’s Smartvista payments platform


Vietnam-based TienPhong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TP Bank) is implementing Smartvista from BPC Banking Technologies to replace its current card solution and legacy payments systems. Smartvista will give TP Bank ‘all aspects of payments’ including full in-house pro-


cessing of ATM and POS transactions together with card issuing. Nguyen Hung, CEO of TP Bank, says the new system is needed because the bank


wants to be seen as ‘a technology leader taking the initiative’. BPC’s first customer was secured in Vietnam in 2008 and this latest deal makes


TP Bank its fifth customer in the country. The user list includes Donga Bank, An Binh Bank (Abbank), Oceanbank and Saigon Hanoi Bank. BPC adds that the relationship will lead to further investment in Vietnam and


expansion to its development and support centre in Ho Chi Minh. The partnership will see the migration of the bank’s legacy ATM switch and


cards platform to Smartvista this year and further roll-out and ‘enhancements’ in the early part of 2016.


Antony Peyton


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