Clear2Pay launches PayPark Bank Payment Hub

Next generation payment management system enables banks and payment providers to migrate to one core platform.

Brussels, 12 October 2004 - Today Clear2Pay announces at Sibos, the annual SWIFT conference, the launch of its next generation payments platform: PayPark Bank Payment Hub. The solution offers banks and payment service providers a migration path to a single next generation payments platform. This way banks, payment service and market infrastructure providers will gain efficiency and increase STP rates, thereby benefiting from lower processing costs and enhanced transparency. Above all, they will have a future-proof platform that enables them to react quickly and efficiently to fast changing market demands.

The Clear2Pay Bank Payment Hub has been designed with maximum flexibility in mind. In today's payment world, pressure from regulatory and legislative angles, from advancing technology, and of course from customers force constant changes to the technology infrastructure for payments processing. With this in mind Clear2Pay has decoupled payment business processes from the underlying functional components that perform the work defined by a Business Process Engine. By taking this approach, changes can be made either to the business process or the underlying components without adverse effect on business continuity achieving the goal of maximum flexibility.

PayPark Bank Payment Hub is designed to meet the following business requirements:

• Managing payments as a distinct line of banking business through increased customer service and faster time-to-market for new payment product offerings, ultimately leading to increased profitability.
  
• Payment system resilience in terms of supporting growing volume and high availability through the application of new - electronically based - technology, straight through processing and a distributed architecture.
  
• Pro-active management of payment related fraud/risk.
  
• Support of electronic payment standards and new arising payment services.
  
• Reduction of operational costs, both in terms of licenses and IT as well as vendor specific support.
  
• Optimisation of business processing.
  
• Re-use of business services across a wide variety of payment types.
  
• Evolution not revolution to bring banks the benefit of re-using existing well-functioning payment applications together with the possibility of integrating new components within a service-oriented architecture.
  

Michel Akkermans, Chairman and CEO of Clear2Pay states: "Most banks I speak with are seriously reconsidering how to handle their payments technology: 'Do we migrate to a new platform, outsource to central processing under our own brand, outsource to another bank or to a payment processor?' We found that whatever strategy they choose, an agile payment hub - be it in-house or at a payments processing site - remains vitally important for a bank to offer profitable client-driven payment products and cut cost."

Akkermans further states that the merger with Sienna Technologies in May of this year and its subsequent successful integration enabled the company to accelerate the development of the PayPark Bank Payment Hub. "We knew we matched in terms of strategy and technology environment. The real gain in this process however, was that we were now able to gather more input from clients in many different geographic areas. Banks' payments requirements at top level do not vary hugely around the world, but implementing a specific payment system requires detailed and local knowledge. We recently experienced how important the combination of future facing technology and in-depth payments knowledge is when we were selected for the KCS project in Thailand."

He concludes "Launching the system at Sibos excites us because it is the prime meeting ground where issues of the global financial community are being discussed, and it therefore generates an excellent opportunity for more feedback on our vision and solution."

About Clear2Pay

Clear2Pay is an innovative e-finance company focused on delivering globally applicable solutions for secure, timely electronic payments. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the company's focus is to facilitate banks and financial organizations in their provision of electronic payments services. Clear2Pay's technology helps to reduce transaction processing costs, and to deliver new, compelling e-payment services in a competitive way. Clear2Pay's payment solutions offer organisations easy, branded ways for their customers to pay online: from complex trade-supporting business-to-business environments, through e-commerce applications, to retail payments and micro payments. Functions embrace payments origination, reporting, linkage with back-office processing systems, clearing, netting and settlement. Clients include global and major regional financial institutions such as ING, SEB Kort, LuottoKunta, VISA Europe, MasterCard, ANZ, National, ABN AMRO, Commonwealth Bank, Krung Thai Computer Services (KCS) and Reserve Bank of Australia. Clear2Pay operates out of Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore and currently employs over 120 staff.
More information is available on www.clear2pay.com.

About PayPark Bank Payment Hub

PayPark Bank Payment Hub is built to provide a future proof solution to the rapidly changing requirements of today's payments systems. A service oriented architecture based on J2EE standards, the Bank Payment Hub brings the benefits of re-using existing well-functioning modules together with new payments components through a Business Process Manager. The Business Process Manager plays a central role invoking components that are "process context-less" in the sense that they are called upon to execute their function and return the result. The Bank Payment Hub is positioned between the back office at the core of the bank and the different delivery channels and it comes with added-value functions to enrich, route and manage payments. Functional components include the following: Receive Payments, Split Bulk Payments, Validation, Notification Handling, Matching, Warehousing, Scheduling, Archiving, Repair, Pre-advice, Check Balance, Fraud Detection and Anti-Money Laundering, Routing and Fee Calculation, General Ledger Posting, Reconciliation, Internal Control and Audit.

PayPark illustrations and photographic materials are available upon request in pdf format.

***

Contacts for More Information:

Clear2Pay NV/SA
Conny Dorrestijn - VP Marketing and Communications
E:
M: +31 651 067201

More info on Bank Payment Hub page