Icon Solutions, the independent IT payment consultancy and specialist technology provider, today announced the worldwide launch of its Instant Payments Framework (IPF).
IPF is an agile yet robust software product that expedites financial institutions’ transition to instant payments. IPF was designed specifically to meet the needs of national banks and global bank subsidiaries who regularly find the cost and complexity of current payment hubs excessive.
Instant will soon become the standard for payments globally, with 21 domestic instant payment systems already live today around the world with many others in the planning or development phase. Instant payments is a key constituent of digital banking as consumers, businesses, corporates and regulators demand the ability to make and receive payments in real-time.
To offer instant payments banks need to overhaul their current IT infrastructure to integrate with domestic instant payments schemes and operate in an online environment. To date, this has been a slow, expensive and cumbersome process especially for national banks and global bank subsidiaries which require market specific bespoke development options, the ability to handle transaction volumes cost-effectively, and easy integration with internal/external systems without heavy investment. Existing vendor platforms are inflexible and often hide additional costs for customisation, are too expensive to operate especially at smaller transaction volumes, and delay time to market.
Icon has a fifteen year heritage working with tier one banks on major technology projects including the UK’s Faster Payments and Singapore’s G3 FAST. IPF distils this instant payments experience and expertise, delivering three key benefits to institutions:
• Flexibility to meet the requirements of different banks, different national schemes and emerging technologies
• Faster time to market thanks to the pre-built component library, multiple APIs and an SDK with intuitive graphical configuration
• Lower cost of ownership due to open source software stack, small hardware footprint and dramatically reduced professional services fees for customisation projects
“With real-time payment schemes going live all around the world, instant is quickly becoming the ‘new normal’ for global payments,” said Tom Hay, Head of Payments at Icon Solutions. “Banks of all sizes who have yet to make the transition are under extreme pressure from consumers, businesses and regulators to provide real-time payment services. Any further delay risks customers walking away and opens the door to faster moving competitors, especially challengers that aren’t burdened by legacy systems.”
“Instant payments have been the preserve of big banks with the big budgets for big platforms. And the transition has major operational requirements as well as technical ones. This makes the challenge particularly acute for smaller banks. With IPF they finally have a quick and cost effective way to provide the speed of execution their customers need today, and the digital services they expect tomorrow,” concluded Hay.
The Instant Payments Framework uses advanced architecture, incorporates proven open source technology, and integrates with existing core banking and back office applications. It is faster to implement because the framework includes an extensive library of pre-built services and can be rapidly connected or extended to suit specific business needs. By extending the life of current systems, rather than adopting a ‘rip and replace’ strategy business risk is reduced and the investment required is significantly lower.