Product suite
Much of the original development of what became Global PayPlus was driven by UMB (United Missouri Bank, as was), which became the first bank to go live with the new version. Two acquisitions were also made in 2004 to complement
organic growth: India-based provider of cash management and electronic banking software, CashTech Solutions, plus Swiss outsourcer, Datasphere. Fundtech already had a cash management product, CashPlus, but this was primarily selling into the US market and was favoured by banks looking for a system to work ‘straight out of the box’. The CashTech system was sought by large banks looking for a highly customisable product and had traditionally been focused on the Asian market.
The two products therefore continued to service clients
in their respective geographical strongholds, but Fundtech began marketing the CashTech system in the US. Conversely, CashTech had more than 50 clients in Asia so could offer local support for other Fundtech products. It was Fundtech’s Swiss subsidiary, BPP, which took over
Datasphere, a provider of interbank clearing and securities settlement systems. Datasphere had over 70 clients in Europe. 2004 also saw Fundtech launch an ASP service for CLS. This was based in Europe and targeted at settlement members, for their own connectivity and as a basis to offer services to their third parties. The ASP decision was taken from a position of strength since the CLS version of the PayPlus payments system was the most widely installed CLS offering by some distance, being used by 19 settlement banks. Product development continued. One new product was a
version of PayPlus, dubbed Omnipay, to allow banks to provide a single service, spanning low- and high-value, domestic and international payments. Mellon Bank was the first to roll out this solution. The idea was that a corporate customer could pass all of its payments to the bank as a single file, perhaps via a feed from its ERP system, and rely on the bank to automate them accordingly. It included a rules-based layer which handled the different formats and routed the payments. Omnipay was duly selected by Wachovia in 2005 to form
part of the enabling technology to provide customers with a single point of entry for payments. The bank instigated a project called ‘International ACH’, focusing on supporting US clients to initiate low-value retail payments. The aim was to provide customers with a cost-effective service which allowed them to debit their US dollar accounts and make payments in local currencies in international markets – initially Canada, the UK and the euro-zone. Fundtech accumulated six Swift service bureaux. In the first quarter of 2010 it established one in the US and, by October, was claiming three clients, with a first about to go live. By this
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stage, Fundtech had come up with a strategy to co-ordinate and consolidate the bureaux, under the umbrella branding of First ServiceBureau (FSB), across Swift, plus areas such as cash management, electronic invoicing, AML, reconciliation, and payment processing (including Bacs in the UK and US wire and ACHs). The supplier claimed around 700 customers in 30 countries across the different centres and the consolidation would bring cost efficiencies and a more standard service, including standard service level agreements. Long-standing German payments specialist, Prang GmbH,
was acquired by Fundtech in 2007. Its IBM iSeries-based system, now dubbed PayPlus FTS, continued to be marketed and there were two new deals in the third quarter of 2009, for instance, including the Fortis-derived European Multilateral Clearing Facility (EMCF), which became part owned by Nasdaq OMX. By the end of that year, Fundtech had 27 SEPA customers for PayPlus FTS, according to Dieter Prang, founder of Prang GmbH and now managing director of Fundtech GmbH. Around twelve to 14 of these had signed for SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs), an area where he felt banks were keen to introduce services as part of their cash management solution. Fundtech also brought PayPlus FTS into its Swift service
bureau, to offer a per-transaction-based service across payments and Swift connectivity. The combined service was aimed at mid-sized banks. The PayPlus portion supported Swift, EBA, Target2 and domestic clearing and settlement systems in Europe and Asia. One emphasis for the bureau move was SDD support. The service also included transaction filtering for OFAC and the like. Linked to the Prang product, at Sibos in Hong Kong in September 2009, Fundtech and Microsoft announced a ‘SEPA Integration Suite’ to provide transaction processing support for SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs) and SDDs alongside a bank’s existing payments infrastructure. Corporate clients would be able to send a single stream of payments, in various formats, to the bank; the Integration Suite would provide the interconnections and workflow, including out to clearing and settlement mechanisms (CSMs). The solution was based on Microsoft’s BizTalk Server with Windows and SQL Server and sold as a Fundtech application. Microsoft’s industry manager, payments and core banking, Colin Kerr, pointed out that there were around 8500 corporates and other institutions using BizTalk (including via two Swift service bureaux, Eastnets and Decillion). On the Fundtech side, Prang said the product was
positioned as a ‘silo connector’, so that banks could leverage their existing infrastructure. The supplier had identified the need for such a solution and embarked on a search of the market. BizTalk was deemed to be ‘very powerful and reliable’ as well as significantly lower priced than alternatives, such as from Oracle or IBM. Ravich felt it would probably provide
Payment Systems & Suppliers Report |
www.ibsintelligence.com
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