The arrival of NCR
NCR Corporation finalised the acquisition of Alaric in December 2013. This was part of NCR’s strategy to broaden its offering from consumer payments hardware into the full payments transaction cycle, front-to-back, said NCR’s Johnston. As well as Alaric, NCR picked up at around this time mobile and internet banking vendor, Digital Insight, for $1.65 billion. Johnston explained that whilst the financial services
business was NCR’s largest, it was most renowned for its retail payments solutions, such as card machines and self-service checkout machines at major supermarket chains. However, he said the firm had now shifted its strategy in the software space to couple its customer-facing technology with back office processing capability. ‘What we want to do with that technology is not just make the consumer’s life easier, but make the bank’s life easier as well.’ The additions of Digital Insight and Alaric were significant,
explained Johnston, as it would allow NCR to offer integrated mobile and internet banking capability, as well as the processing component with Alaric’s Authentic payments switch engine and Fractals AML system. The main focus marketing-wise would be to package the NCR payments hardware and Digital Insight channel technology at the front- end, with Authentic and Fractals at the back as a straight- through processing (STP) offering. Johnson added that cross- selling opportunities within all three businesses’ client bases would be examined.
Uptake and customer experiences
The aforementioned American Express uses Authentic to acquire POS transactions both directly and via POS networks in different formats. Authentic switches these to a primary host and a range of authorisation services. Authentic also provides stand-in authorisation, normalisation of incoming message formats, data enrichment, implementation of legal mandates, data validation, velocity checking, store and forward capabilities, reversals handling and browser-based access to transaction logs, setting of business rules, system configuration and reporting. The system is running on Stratus ftServers with Red Hat Linux in a number of data centres. Amex replaced a 40-node legacy network with a smaller number of consolidated nodes. The global roll-out followed a successful pilot project and spans the US, EMEA and Asia/Asia Pacific. Tata Consultancy Services has acted as the systems integrator. Amex carried out two pilots before signing the full contract. There were six users in Mexico by the end of 2010, with this number at ten by the end of 2012, in large part due to the aforementioned partnership with Stratus Technologies. Wal-Mart Mexico is one of these. It offers services via its POS
Technologically, both Authentic and Fractals were similar
to NCR’s stack, and both shared a core set of standards and interfaces. There was no product overlap as payments processing was a completely new area for NCR. There was not expected to be any change to Alaric’s partnership strategy, with a continued use of local third parties. The Oracle relationship was now basically purely a technical one. NCR set about adding more development staff to the
Alaric team and bolstered the US sales team, also adding a new managing director, Steve Wright, who was ex-ACI, from the start of June 2014. The Alaric sales team is intended to work alongside the 400-strong NCR salesforce, with the latter ‘opening doors’. By mid-2014, this was apparently happening, with a number of sales leads via the wider NCR reach. ‘This is much more than we would have been able to achieve ourselves,’ said Brown. He claimed Base24 ‘knock-outs’ had been signed since the takeover. These were in the US (a top ten bank) and Europe. The latter project would see the first involvement of NCR’s professional services team alongside the Alaric team. The company was also claiming its first win in India (it has a partner here called Manipal Technologies). The plans to integrate the Alaric products with the Digital Insight platform had not moved on by this stage. The latter’s user base was primarily US community banks, so there wasn’t particularly synergy with the traditional target sectors for Alaric. More important looked to be embedding some of the Alaric software within other NCR offerings, including its Interactive Teller, with some pilots expected in the second half of 2014.
terminals and uses Authentic for routing, to its own bank – Wal-Mart de Mexico Bank – or other banks. One of the largest retailers in the country, Sanborns, had been replacing the old S2-derived OpeN/2 with Authentic. This customer not only spanned POS but also a range of other services, including cross-border funds transfer, accessing bank accounts, buying airline tickets and topping up online services such as iTunes. The third largest grocery chain in the country, Comercial Mexicana, had been implementing Authentic for a loyalty card scheme, alongside its existing Base24 POS system (Alaric would ultimately like to remove the latter as well). The company signed in early June 2010 and a version of Authentic for testing had apparently been delivered within three weeks. Another, Banco Inbursa, has been replacing Fidelity’s Tandem-based Connex, ultimately to support around 800 ATMs (the first ones went live in December 2010). Requirements included functionality for cheque imaging and bulk note acceptance, plus full EMV support. This is another user on Stratus ftServers with Red Hat Linux. And E-Global, one of the two national switches and another OpeN/2 user, signed at the end of March 2010, with Alaric competing against ACI and S1 within a sales cycle lasting almost two
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