In Europe, the focus is on the standardisation and further optimisation of intra-national and cross-border payment traffic based on uniform formats, rules, service levels, and legal frameworks. In 2014, the SEPA initiative (Single Euro Payments Area) was comprehensively rolled out within the Eurozone to service large-scale electronic payments by banks and companies; beginning in 2016, SEPA will be available to private customers as well. The formats are based on ISO20022, an international standardised messaging scheme for the financial industry.

Future processes in the financial industry will build on the basis of this ISO format standard, both within the Eurozone and internationally. The declared goal of this worldwide trend is to unify national solutions for processing payment flows with respect to foreign trade.

 This is being done with a view to:

• legal norms and agreements between banks,
• technical and organisational standards, and 
• clearing houses.

Software solutions, uniform transmission paths, and new interaction platforms are part of  this process.

Companies or banks engaged in international trade currently find themselves faced with the challenge of being required to support local software standards, formats and transmission paths. These are regularly subject to revisions due to changing legal environments or specifications from the institutions issuing formats.

Additionally, depending on the country and format, individual processes are used for handling messages and different rules are applied for submitting/retrieving payment information and for service levels and costs. Complex and sometimes very cost-intensive infrastructures are maintained for this purpose. Permanent maintenance and the trend towards ISO formats along with standardisation, lead to additional complexity during the phase of parallel operations.

A particular challenge for banks are special agreements with major customers regarding formats and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

These agreements require separate, flexible handling. Furthermore, value-added services in customer-bank transactions, intrabank processing, and interbank transactions, are decisive factors influencing a corporate customer's decision to use a particular bank, as well as that bank's success in its competitive environment.

One key concern is simple, cost-effective, and secure access to systems that – in addition to pure information transmission –- need the backing of a company's internal processes on the bank's end as well as active support with bank products, whenever and wherever the customer needs them. In addition, process excellence within the internal processing chain in terms of order management is crucial, ensuring the bank can react quickly to new circumstances, customers are actively supported, and internal processing is "in time" and "in risk."

This means that fraud prevention, international embargo processes, and prevention of money laundering are essential. The most efficient connections to national, multinational, and international clearing structures exist for this purpose.

Let's talk about the potential of your payment transactions and processing!

• cost optimization and support
• sustainability and investment protection
• expandability via modern integration architectures

1. Develop and continuously pursue a strategic target architecture
2. Maintain flexibility in the face of unforeseeable market events
3. Establish business monitoring as a measure for added value and risk management
4. Migrate projects with systems that have matured over decades
5. Keep pace with ever-shorter innovation, planning, and release cycles in a changing environment

SPG can support you from input channel to service level-compliant format and data handling, as well as conversion and booking.

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SPG offers tailored solutions supported by time- and project-proven software architectures. We’re delighted to help you set realistic goals and map out a plan to achieve them!

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Data privacy and data protection place ever-increasing demands on mobile applications. Legal, regulatory, and risk management requirements have placed mobile devices and communication channels at the holistic centre of IT risk analysis.

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It is important to establish connections between different sources of information and to evaluate them. The ability to make proactive decisions based on these data, whether automated or only assisted, is a unique selling point.

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SPG supports end-to-end monitoring of payment transactions and payment flows within the company and the bank, and can also support you in the evaluation of your existing processes.

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Challenge is our motivation! Our strengths are complex integrations with a clear business application, at a fixed price or on a cost basis.

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