latter via Decillion. Trifunovic felt large banks were more willing to look at hosted platforms than in the past, due to pressure on profit margins, but that there had been no appropriate platform, until now. In March 2014, Fundtech announced that 20 of its messaging service bureau customers were on Global Compliance Plus. Fundtech’s EMEA user conference in London saw the company set out its roadmap for the overhaul, integration and rationalisation of its product set. It also talked about
Uptake and customer experiences
An early taker of Global PayPlus on a hub basis was Citigroup. Mazzetti admitted that Fundtech had ‘learnt the hard way’ in terms of multi-entity support, not just from a technical perspective but also from an operational one. The payments platform was rolled out along side I-flex Solutions’ core system, Flexcube (which now resides with Oracle FSS).
ABSA Bank & Barclays
A proactive and broad Global PayPlus customer is ABSA Bank in South Africa, now part of Barclays. It embarked on overhauling its payments infrastructure earlier than most within a group- wide project centred on a ‘Global Payments Utility’ (GPU), with parallel projects under way within its UK parent. ABSA Bank had set off on its payments overhaul ahead of the arrival of Barclays, with a need to address the consolidation of its eight or nine payment systems. ‘Barclays coming along just made it a bigger programme,’ said Sean Mouton, sector CIO, services clusters. There was first some ‘wrapping’ of existing systems using Misys’ Meridian middleware and a down-grade from IBM’s Merva to SwiftAlliance. There was then a full selection process in the UK and South Africa for a central payments engine, with this taking around 14 months. Ahead of this, there was a six-month phase to plan the
target operating model and architecture. The selection included a standard RFI/RFP approach and ended in favour of Global PayPlus. This was already in use at both Barclays (including for its UK Faster Payments) and ABSA Bank (for CLS). The Faster Payments experience was a ‘turning point’ in the selection, said Mouton. It gave the bank experience with the supplier and its system.
Meridian was used as the integration, translation and
routing layer in ABSA and was retained in this role within the GPU architecture, albeit with some of the functionality migrated from here into Global PayPlus, particularly what Mouton described as an ‘STP module’, written as a tactical solution based on Meridian but this role would now be handled by Global PayPlus. Once a payment has been passed to Global PayPlus, this system supports subsequent workflow, such as look-ups or service calls, whereas these were previously
the corporate restructuring of the last couple of years and where it might look for future acquisitions. It presented on its current product strategy, which will see the gradual move to single flagship solutions in each of its four areas of activity: payments, cash management, financial messaging and merchant services. The supplier also set out where it is seeking to integrate these, with Unicredit and Banco do Brasil highlighted as pioneers here.
handled by the Meridian-based STP module. One other component is Systar’s Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) solution, to provide transparency into the transaction flows. The group was creating two GPUs, one in the UK for Europe and another in South Africa for ABSA’s business in South Africa but ultimately for Africa as a whole. There might eventually be additional hubs for Asia/Asia Pacific and North America. The first phase of the GPU in South Africa went live in October 2009. This was for a relatively narrow area, comprising Swift MT2XX messages. The phase was mainly to put in place the infrastructure for the utility as a whole and to test the capability of the solution. This included all of the necessary resilience aspects, such as disaster recovery. For this phase, customisation was purely parameter driven. The bank’s specific needs were at the interface level, for hooking into its legacy systems. Indeed, Mouton estimated that 60 per cent of the project was around integration, linking into around ten back office systems. ‘I would say Global PayPlus had an 80 per cent fit.’
The cut-over was on budget but around five months later than initially envisaged, largely to do with an internal decision to implement Global PayPlus with the latest version of Oracle. The bank did not want to implement the older version and then face an upgrade in a few months’ time. The new version of Oracle brought a number of ‘non-functional’ benefits that meant it was felt to be worth the delay. There was also nothing so pressing that it couldn’t wait. The next phase covered the major area of cross-border payments, with go-live scheduled for the third quarter of 2010. RTGS payments was next on the list. In terms of the wider African plans, Mozambique and Tanzania were scheduled to move to the new platform and work started in the first half of 2010. Any new operations that came via acquisitions would be linked into the GPU. The business analysis for other countries was planned for the next year or so. The phases at Barclays were different because it had different business priorities. It started with cross-border payments, taking this in two phases, initially for inward payments, then outward. The benefits after the first phase of the ABSA roll-out
were centred on STP rates for the MT2XX message types. For MT202s for payments in Rands, STP rates were previously around 60 per cent; now they were around 98 per cent. ‘So we have gained business benefits but these are a low risk set
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