with the bank’s key stakeholders. Fundtech’s SOA strategy and emerging Global PayPlus-SP
were deemed to fit well with BoA Merrill Lynch’s philosophy and the system was felt to be much easier to implement than some others, said Milton Santiago, the bank’s portal strategy and eChannels executive within global product solutions. Very importantly, he said, the bank felt it could be independent of the vendor, using the development tools to mould the platform to its own requirements and putting control into the hands of the business. There was already a relationship with Fundtech, as the bank had its software for some niche back-end activities and also partnered with the supplier for CLS. The first milestone in the project would be to develop the services to create the sought-after single payment experience for the customer, said Murray. This was for treasury management, but on a global basis, and would see the removal of the existing e-banking applications in this area. The second phase would be to address the back-end services and to rework these, towards the envisaged centralised model. The approach was expected to be taken across the enterprise, so would be applied to retail banking as well as corporate. That wider plan would bring the need to engage with the different business units. However, the initial infrastructure was being built with expansion in mind. Santiago likened it to building a four-lane bridge that might only need to be one-lane at the outset. As other lanes were opened up for other parts of the business, there would not need to be fundamental changes to the structure. The first phase was due for completion in the latter part of 2010. In the end, Global PayPlus went live first in India in May
2011, followed by Brazil and then roll-out commenced elsewhere around the world. Each implementation is capable of being tuned to local needs (without the need for heavy-duty IT support) for factors such as field names, local language and any country-specific STP rules, but the important factor is that it is fundamentally the same platform for all. ‘We know the requirements for the different payment types so the service hub is connected to our web 2.0 online channels and has STP rules for each payment type,’ explained Murray. When a client selects a debit account to make a payment, the website dynamically presents the range of options (and a description, if required) and the required fields for that payment. The client is unable to submit the payment until those fields are complete, which aids simplicity and drives STP.
The platform, which can also be used to debit an account
with another institution, making it multi-banking too, has another facility. ‘It is not now just a case of sending a file, processing the payment, getting to the clearing networks and settling everything for the client,’ said Murray. ‘It is just as important to the client that we provide robust information going back, in any format, so they can reconcile.’ With many clearing networks – and even some of the bank’s old payments systems – prone to truncating information, the beneficiary would often struggle because not all the data required to
reconcile would be available. The new system delivered all the information that posts to the bank’s system, so a client could ensure all of its payments have hit the beneficiary and the account had been debited for those payments. Murray added that the bank was also now building out capabilities ‘where we can augment that information’. On the beneficiary’s side, if the full data is not available – or if the clearing network truncates the data – she said the new platform would give clients the option to attach an invoice or a spreadsheet and then send an email to the beneficiary with the relevant descriptive and reference information.
Unicredit, HSBC & other projects
BankAustria Creditanstalt, now in the guise of Unicredit, set about centralising much of its payment infrastructure based around a shared services model, with Global PayPlus at its heart, running from Prague. The Czech Republic had traditionally been used by the bank as the pilot site for payment products and had the highest volumes of cross-border payments. A selection kicked off in 2004. The bank wanted a sizeable partner with reliable references, said managing director, Business Transaction Services, Johannes Majer. In other words, it swayed away from some of the newer players, touting promising but largely untried solutions. Global PayPlus was selected and was implemented in both the Czech Republic and Hungary. One key criterion had been to find a solution that could provide multi-entity support because, said Majer, while the selection was done ahead of the establishment of the service centre and while there were separate implementations in Prague and Budapest, the hub model was already in mind and the bank was not intending to implement the new payment system in each country.
As Majer pointed out, not only did the system need to be able to cope with multiple start and close of business days but also country-specific differences such as national holidays and local regulatory reporting requirements. There was the establishment of a separate company to run the shared service centre in 2005, after which seven countries and one external entity were brought onto the Prague-based system: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. The three Baltic country operation followed, then Hungary which still used its own version of Global PayPlus. Prior to this, payment processing was totally decentralised at the bank. Not surprisingly, a major part of the roll-out had been interfacing. The nature of the payment business meant that most were online, including those to banking systems, Swift, Step 2, booking systems and balance checking systems. The only batch interfaces were really for exchange rates and static data. In terms of performance, this was always a topic, said Majer, but was generally to do with hardware not software. The bank had worked closely with Fundtech on how to scale and plan the next upgrades. The bank was running Global PayPlus
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