SAP and Westpac Institutional Bank today launched a partnership to develop Australia's first real-time payment solution for large companies and institutions, heralding a new era in corporate banking.
In a major leap forward, SAP's market leading technology - NetWeaver Process Integration and Westpac, intend to deliver a one-step payment solution that will bring significant cost savings for some of the country's largest companies.
The real-time solution overcomes the normal multi-step process of digital payment instructions and is made possible by connecting the end-to-end payables and receivables data for large companies using Global Data Standards.
Westpac will be the first of the big four banks to offer corporate customers the ability to send a payment instruction directly from their SAP system to bank's core payments systems and receive acknowledgement messages back from Westpac to SAP in real time.
Mike Baldwin, Head of Innovation and Implementation, Westpac Institutional Bank said: "Corporate customers want greater automation of payment processing and global messaging standards for sending and receiving payments. This solution will save significant time and money across everyday payment channels."
"This innovation is part of an ongoing program to simplify banking processes. We invest in technology and innovation where it matters most to customers, making it easier for them to do business with us," Mr Baldwin said.
"Transitioning a company's IT payments system into a tailored platform would normally take six-to-nine months and will now be reduced to weeks. Once we go live, customers simply need to download Westpac software from SAP Service Portal and set up the system at a minimal cost."
"This project with Westpac is unique as it doesn't require any additional hardware to be installed on the customer side. All that is needed is for the customer software to be reconfigured, which requires minimal time and investment," explained Stuart Pike, General Manager, Banking, SAP ANZ.
The Corporate Banking Connectivity project will use ISO 20022 Global Data Standards to convert all parties within the payments channel onto the same data structures.
SAP NetWeaver Process Integration is a technology that integrates tightly with SAP ERP at the customer end to enable real-time data exchange, while integrating into Westpac's electronic banking platform for equally tight connectivity with the bank's own back-end systems. It extends the financial workflow functionality of SAP ERP all the way to the bank so no manual intervention is required in encrypting and transmitting payment and receivables data to the bank.
The project is currently in the design-phase and is scheduled to go live in first quarter 2013.