very strong cash management bank,’ said Akkermans, ‘hence good interfaces to everything related to payments is key.’ A lot of the work for the project is being carried out by Clear2Pay’s Chinese operation.
Rabobank was added to the user list in the second half
of 2010, taking OPF as the platform for centralisation of its domestic payment processing. The first focus was SDDs and SCTs. The selection was fairly swift, with the bank first talking to the supplier in April and signing in mid-September.
It
included an RFP and proof of concept stage. It was Clear2Pay’s first major OPF success in Benelux. Rabobank had multiple payment processing systems across multiple siloes and was looking to rationalise and centralise. From this perspective, the aims were similar to those of other OPF projects at the likes of Crédit Agricole and Santander. Akkermans cited short timelines for the implementation, alignment with the bank’s technology strategy, and functional fit as reasons for Clear2Pay’s selection. There would be the usual integration work but no major customisation. It seems, however, that Clear2Pay lost out to Alaric and its Authentic payments platform at Rabobank’s Indonesian subsidiary in the first part of 2013.
B-Web e-banking projects
For the B-Web e-banking solution from Diagram, United Arab Bank (UAB), a former member of Société Générale Group and now a subsidiary of Commercial Bank of Qatar, is one taker. ‘We needed a new comprehensive, fully-fledged banking application to meet our clients’ demands and the market requirements,’ stated Abdelhamid Ghazouani, executive vice president, operations, organisation and IT at UAB. The previous system was acquired through SocGen and was externally hosted, so that all transactions of UAB’s customers were routed via SocGen first and eventually returned to the bank for processing. The system had restricted functionality and there were issues with security, plus UAB’s contract with its former French parent was coming to an end.
The deal with Clear2Pay was finalised in September 2008
and Diagram eBanking/B-Web was scheduled to go live by 15th November (completion of phase one), covering all internet products and services already offered by UAB to its retail and corporate clients. The second stage would introduce additional functionality, such as utility bills payments, collective invoice payments and dual authorisation.
Bank of Thailand
On the cheque image clearing side, Bank of Thailand took OPF as one leg of this central bank’s ambitious plan to overhaul the country’s clearing infrastructure. Other decisions would follow, with Clear2Pay hopeful of gaining more business if the cheque imaging project was a success. The Thai selection ran for 18 months, involved all of the main players and included a proof of concept phase. Clear2Pay worked with its local partner, OGA SynCom
Co. Ltd, with the two companies having already worked together in the country on the roll-out of OPF as a low-value clearing system for eight government banks. OGA already had a relationship with the central bank, mainly providing desktop software and hardware. It was the prime contractor for the latest deal.
‘The bank was always attracted by the technology,’
said Gardiner, with OPF considerably newer than the rival offerings. ‘It was the only one that met some of the very key criteria within Bank of Thailand’s RFP... We won the hearts and minds of the technology people quite early on in the process.’ The tougher challenge was to win over the business people, he said. Central banks, by their nature, are relatively conservative, he pointed out, and Clear2Pay is ‘not an NCR, Unisys or IBM so we had to convince the business’. The proof of concepts and reference calls were the way it did this, he said. The project started in early 2009, with the bank ramping up its team, and there were aggressive timescales, with go-live scheduled for November or December. The project included connectivity to more than 40 financial institutions. There was a joint development strategy, with the work to be done on site, largely with the bank’s resources, under guidance from OGA and Clear2Pay. OGA would provide some third party pieces, including Oracle database and hardware for a number of sites. In terms of the larger picture, Gardiner said the bank had one, probably two, clearing systems it would like to refresh. Its aim is for one-day clearing for the entire country. The bank had indicated, he said, that if the cheque clearing system was a success, then OPF was likely to be used.
Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) took OPF in early 2012, to create a new payments hub for SEPA transactions. It would cover 18 international branches of RBS (including its subsidiary in Ireland, Ulster Bank) and its selected financial institution clients and partner banks, supporting EMEA transaction services. Functionality comprises mobile banking and payments, and real-time clearing and settlement capabilities. Kevin Brown, global head of transaction services at RBS, said that Clear2Pay’s offering was evaluated alongside an in- house built route and a complete outsouring option. Clear2Pay offered ‘the best solution’ in terms of strength, design, delivery ethic and track-record, he said. RBS initially looked at whether it should go for an outsourced, in-house or packaged solution. It leant towards the latter because ‘payments is becoming a commodity’, said Tino Kam, SEPA product executive, transaction services at RBS. ‘If you choose the right vendor with the right expertise, then you are leveraging its client base and their expertise across the world.’
The first phase of OPF was installed in December 2012
for SEPA payment flows in the Netherlands. Other countries within the RBS International Banking franchise were rolled out during 2013 and into early 2014. Kam said one of the main benefits of the new hub was that OPF supports other payment types such as mobile payments and UK Faster Payments. The
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