Fundtech IT Company Helps Banks Integrate Systems, Cut Costs with Rapidly Deployable Solution

Fundtech, a global IT services provider, offers automated payment systems and cash management solutions to more than 1,000 banks and corporations worldwide. The company’s European banking customers need to comply with the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative, which standardizes euro payments and mandates electronic payment processing. These customers must make sure that their payment systems are SEPA-compliant. To help them meet these challenges, Fundtech developed a new payment solution, based on Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2, and other Microsoft technologies. The solution adds SEPA processing to existing payment systems. It also supplies developers with built-in tools to make their work easier and gives customers fast-deployment capabilities. Additionally, the solution provides high availability and helps customers reduce costs.

Fundtech is a leading provider of software products and services to banks of all sizes throughout the world. Established in 1993, the company develops banking transaction solutions that automate payments, cash management, and other financial activities.

We can offer a flexible infrastructure … so that the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments can easily communicate with the bank’s disparate systems. BizTalk Server 2010 makes that possible.  Dieter Prang Senior Vice President and Managing Director Fundtech Germany

For many of the organization’s European banking customers, the most challenging current business issue is integrating payment systems to comply with the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative. SEPA, created by the European Payments Council, is an initiative for the European financial infrastructure based on a single European payment area with a common framework of payment formats and infrastructures. SEPA standardizes euro payments and mandates all-electronic processing.

Because of national payment processing differences, however, it is not feasible for most banks to completely replace their disparate payment systems with new SEPA-ready systems. Instead, banks are looking to save money by extending the life of their existing payment systems, which means integrating those systems with the new SEPA processes. “This is a huge challenge,” says Dieter Prang, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Fundtech Germany. “In addition to customizing payment formats to handle SEPA requirements, banks need scalable payment systems that are flexible enough to handle both interbank payment flow and customer-to-bank payment flow.”

There is also a sense of urgency for banks to meet SEPA processing requirements. For example, by November 1, 2010, European banks are required to have processes that integrate with SEPA Direct Debit technology. By the end of 2010, there will be an announcement about the retirement date of banks’ existing domestic payment systems. And the European Parliament is demanding that all payment systems officially become SEPA-compliant by December 31, 2012. “There’s a lot of pressure on banks to get this done,” says Prang.

Fundtech corporate customers, too, are faced with the same challenges as banks when it comes to SEPA. “Large global enterprises in other industries have the same pain points: they’re multinational, they have employees and suppliers all over Europe they need to pay, and they have disparate payment systems they need to centralize,” says Prang. “They also have older payment systems they must integrate with new SEPA processing formats.”

In early 2009, Fundtech decided to develop a solution to help banks and other enterprises meet the challenges of SEPA compliance.

Fundtech partnered with German technology services firm Headsight to build a new payments solution for banking customers that would be based exclusively on Microsoft technologies. “We knew Microsoft had the right technologies to help us build a very flexible solution,” says Ulrich Reinhardt, Owner, Headsight.

We were able to easily meet our short development timeline because of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 support in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.  Ulrich Reinhardt Owner Headsight

The Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments gives customers a middleware solution that organizes and routes transactions between existing and SEPA formats using ISO 20022 XML messaging standards. The solution adds complete SEPA transaction processing capabilities to a bank’s existing payment processing infrastructure.

Additionally, the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments extends to multiple entities and branches that can support the centralization of payment operations, so banks can easily integrate branch systems into a central SEPA environment.

By integrating their existing payment infrastructure with SEPA processing, banks can save time and money with transaction-processing capabilities for both SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debit. Fundtech corporate customers are able to send a single flow of payments, in various formats, to a centralized payment service, streamlining their accounts-payable operations while improving multicountry cash management visibility.

The solution is built with the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and based on the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 database software. Fundtech also took advantage of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, an integration, messaging, and business-activity monitoring solution. BizTalk Server 2010 contains built-in functionality that adapts to various data formats.

The development team also used the Microsoft Silverlight 4 browser plug-in to create the payment solution’s web-enabled user interface. In addition, the solution integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, an application lifecycle management product that includes built-in tools for versioning and source-code control, work-item tracking, bug management, and automated builds.

With the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments, banks and other enterprises can integrate existing payment systems with SEPA formats. Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, Fundtech developers took advantage of development tools that helped save time and effort. In addition, the solution can be deployed in months instead of years, and it increases overall system availability and reduces operational costs.

With the high availability built into BizTalk Server 2010, banks can have more stable systems. This is critical, because they cannot delay payments to their customers.  Dieter Prang Vice President and Managing Director Fundtech Germany

With the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments, banks and other corporations can easily integrate their existing payment systems and SEPA payment systems into a single, centralized infrastructure. Using integrated functionality in BizTalk Server 2010, Fundtech customers can use any existing format for mapping and converting SEPA and existing files. “The Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments gives banks a way to overcome the SEPA integration challenge, so they can meet critical compliance deadlines and provide value-added SEPA services to their customers,” says Prang. “They can take advantage of their existing payment systems while adding SEPA payment processing functionality, without the need to invest major resources in a totally new system.”

The solution also gives customers a way to organize their multibranch structures so that transactions can be routed and connected to the main office. “Banks typically have various systems to manage payments and provide cash management services, in different countries, managed by different teams,” says Prang. “With this solution, we can offer a flexible infrastructure that uses service-oriented pieces so that the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments can easily communicate with the bank’s disparate systems. BizTalk Server 2010 helps make that possible.”

Eases Development

Fundtech and Headsight developers had a tight deadline for creating the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments. “We started our work in April 2009, and we had to have the solution ready for a customer event in September 2009,” says Reinhardt. But because BizTalk Server 2010 contains support for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, the development team could use integrated source-code control, work-item tracking, and testing tools to work faster and more efficiently.

“We were able to easily meet our short development timeline because of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 support in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010,” says Reinhardt. “From a development perspective, it was a major advantage for us to use these Microsoft products and technologies, which are all tightly integrated. As a result, we didn’t have to use different database or programming approaches.”

Offers Rapid Deployment

The Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments is a suite of SOA services that give customers flexibility and reusability. They therefore can implement needed services such as SEPA mandate management quickly and flexibly. “For large banking customers, new payment system implementations can take several years, because they have so many requirements and interfaces to build into these systems,” says Prang. “This solution can be deployed in about three months, because it takes advantage of the existing format adapter functionality in BizTalk Server 2010 and is based on flexible service-oriented architecture services.”

In addition, because of the tight integration with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, developers were able to ensure solid source code, which reduces time needed for testing. “Customers are getting a very reliable solution, and they do not have to worry about the technology behind it all,” says Prang. “They can trust that it all works.”

Increases System Availability

Customers who use the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments will also experience increased overall availability for their critical payment systems, particularly when they use BizTalk Server 2010 load balancing in large server deployments. BizTalk Server 2010 Enterprise Edition features built-in load-balancing support and employs easily configured SQL Server 2008 R2 clustering. “With the high availability built into BizTalk Server 2010, banks can have more stable systems,” says Prang. “This is critical, because they cannot delay payments to their customers. Having availability issues with payment systems would automatically call into question a bank’s stability.”

Saves Money

Banks and other Fundtech customers can also expect to conserve resources by implementing the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments. “Many large European banks have big global infrastructures, with multiple branch offices used for payments in different regions,” says Prang. “By consolidating their payment systems into one system, they can have one European office and lower costs because they are using less hardware.”

Banks and corporations also save money by not having to invest in a completely new SEPA-ready solution. “There is a huge cost savings accomplished by integrating existing systems into new processing systems,” says Prang. “With the Fundtech Integration Suite for Payments, our customers can use a middleware solution that easily maps their existing payment formats into the SEPA format, without the need to invest huge sums of money. The solution can really transform how they do business.”

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For more information about Headsight products and services, call (49) (6131) 89288 10 or visit the Web site at:
www.headsight.de

For more information about Fundtech products and services, call (44) 207 588 1100 or visit the Web site at:
www.fundtech.com