Dutch payment processor Interpay has signed a five-year outsourcing contract, worth $110 million, with Unisys for the management of its paper-based payment services.
Interpay's document services business unit processes approximately 110 million paper-related payments a year for Dutch banks. One hundred and thirty Interpay staff will transfer to Unisys under the agreement.
Ben Haasdijk, CEO of Interpay, says the decision to outsource the operation is due to the decrease in paper-based processing in the Netherlands.
"Interpay would have had to increase Document Services' volumes by entering new European markets in order to guarantee continuity and a stable price-performance to customers," he says. "By transferring the activities to the Unisys utility, these volume increases can be realised."
Unisys says it will establish a business process outsourcing utility in the Netherlands that will tout for business from other financial institutions across continental Europe.
Scandinavian banking group Nordea last month outsourced the back-office handling of its paper-based payments services to Swedish BPO firm Tradimus.
Seperately, Unisys has released a new cheque processing hardware system designed to help US banks comply with Check 21 legislation. The vendor claims that tests of the new NDP Quantum Series in client environments have demonstrated up to 60% improvements in workload processing compared with previous NDP Series generations.