Uptake and customer experiences
One major Base24 customer, card processor, First Data, renewed its contract with ACI in September 2010. It had been a customer for 15 years or so, with Base24 underpinning its retail card payment services, and signed an extension for an unannounced period. First Data already had some parts of Base24-eps and planned to add others to extend its services. There might be some rationalisation because First Data has been on the acquisition trail in recent years and, as well as using the ACI systems for its original core, a number of the acquired companies also had Base24. A notable win for Base24-eps in 2007 was at Partecis, a joint
venture between BNP Paribas and Natixis Paiements designed specifically as a joint payment platform. According to Jean- Michel Schneider, ACI’s country manager for France, the banks selected the system to, ‘process cross-border transactions in a more efficient manner, and to make them ready for SEPA’. BNP Paribas was already an ACI customer for several of its products. This was something that Schneider said, ‘helped with the selection’. That process lasted about a year. Eight or nine mainly French vendors were contacted, with Steria losing out in the final two. The implementation started in 2007 and Partecis was expected to go live at the end of 2008. In Spain there was ACI Soluciones, a joint venture set up in 2000 between ACI and processor Sistema 4B. This was bought out by ACI in October 2010, thereby doubling the number of ACI employees dedicated to the region. The joint venture was meant to provide expertise and resources to support Sistema 4B itself and other ACI customers in Spain, Portugal and North Africa. A reason cited for the change of tack were changes in the Spanish market, such as a new ruling that gave banks flexibility in the choice of processing their POS and ATM transactions.
A stand-out deal for Base24-eps came in the first half of 2010 at the Central Bank of Oman. This was to consolidate the country’s two independent payment switches into one national switch. Oman had been modernising its payment software for a few years, and had already undertaken ACH and RTGS projects. The new switch, which all banks will connect to, should mean reduced complexity and reduced bank fees, as well as providing a platform for the bank to offer new services such as EMV transactions. An example of a third party processor on Base24-eps is Smartlink Card Services Joint Stock Company. It is one of the largest national retail payment switch companies in Vietnam, and was ACI’s first customer in the country. Smartlink took Base24-eps on the System p as a shared payment switch between its member banks, and to connect to Vietnam’s other national switch. This enables card holders to use any ATM,
thereby providing access to cash through more than 10,000 ATMs across the country. Base24-eps was implemented to replace the bank’s legacy payments switch. The selection was partly with new services in mind, with Smartlink planning to roll out direct ATM driving, POS driving, and connections to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB and Diners Club. MasterCard is another interesting customer of Base24-
eps. Mastercard took Base24-eps as a key element of its new Integrated Processing Solutions (IPS). IPS is intended to provide banks with a suite of branded debit network and card issuer processing services including PIN and signature debit and prepaid processing, and ATM driving. Base24-eps is the retail payment engine for the debit processing platform for ATM transaction acquiring, transaction clearing, and related electronic payment functions. In addition, Mastercard uses ACI’s Payments Manager to monitor all transaction activity, provide customer support features and manage payment settlement functions. In terms of banks migrating from Base24 to Base24-eps,
the aforementioned ABSA Bank is a prime example. The bank’s Base24 processed transactions from 48,000 POS devices and nearly 7000 ATMs, managing more than 836 million transactions in 2008. ABSA set about migrating issuer processing and had done so for around half of its card base by mid-2009. It planned to roll out acquirer functionality in a later phase. With the implementation of Base24-eps, the number of modifications required was significantly reduced making the system easier to manage and maintain. Tertius Haak, general manager for service delivery at ABSA, said it was an easy decision to migrate to Base24-eps, having been a user of Base24 for many years, with the former having a ‘much more modern architecture’. ABSA has been working with ACI since the mid-1990s. Base24-eps now supports the bank’s ATM/POS network and Tandem processing platform. In late 2011, Allen Mahadeo, head of the bank’s self-service channel, said there were no plans to move away from ACI. The volume of transactions via self-service channels exceeded 40 million per month which, he observed, ‘requires a reliable and stable platform’. In addition, he said ABSA could call upon the experience of a well-matured dedicated in-house team that knows the solution and the vendor inside out. ABSA’s jewel in its ATM crown is a cardless service dubbed CashSend. This is supported by ACI software. CashSend was introduced in 2008 and is available across the bank’s domestic network of ATMs. It enables retail customers to make low- value payments to any individual with a mobile phone in South Africa; the recipient does not need to be an ABSA client. The payment can be originated online, via a mobile device or at an ATM, and the money can be withdrawn from any ABSA machine. The main beneficiary of this service is the unbanked
Payment Systems & Suppliers Report |
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