IBM has won a A$50 million contract to provide IT services in support of Fiserv's A$600 million cheque processing venture with three of Australia's four largest banks.
Fiserv beat off competition from Unisys and EDS to land the contract to provide cheque processing services to the Vipro consortium of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac.
Under the latest agreement, IBM Global Services will provide Fiserv with a full range of IT services, covering infrastructure, networks and desktop PCs, as well as application development and management. In addition, IBM will provide e-business hosting services from data centres in Baulkham Hills and Cumberland Forest. Implementation has already begun.
Ken True, CEO of Fiserv Solutions of Australia, says: "We believed it was important to leverage IBM's existing infrastructure rather than create something from scratch. IBM is an important partner to us as we do our part to help transform the Australian payments industry."
While Westpac severed a cheque processing agreement with Unisys subsidiary UPSL to participate in the Vipro joint venture, ANZ, the remaining Big Four bank, has opted to continue with its own cheque processing joint venture with Telstra subsidiary Kaz.