Postbank is to handle Dresdner Bank's payments processing with effect from May 2004, according to an agreement signed today.
For Postbank, the deal is a further step in the expansion of its Transaction Banking business division, created following the implementation of new SAP banking software last year.
A wholly-owned Postbank subsidiary based in Frankfurt/Main, "Betriebscenter für Banken Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG" (BCB), has been founded to take over processing from Dresdner's Zahlungsverkehrsservice GmbH (ZVS) with effect from 1 May 2004. A similar deal has been struck with Deutsche Bank's payments subsidiary DB Payments.
Wulf von Schimmelmann, Postbank chairman, comments: "We want to expand our role in the area of transaction banking. By offering our services to other institutions, we can improve capacity utilization of our systems, leverage economies of scale and generate additional revenue."
Dresdner chairman Herbert Walter describes the deal as a key milestone in the bank's systematic implementation of its "New Dresdner" programme.
"We are optimising our business model and focusing even more closely on our customers," he says. "This is a major contribution to the consolidation of the German banking market."