Concise provides bulk payment processing capability for large banks and their customers. The acquisition includes the Concise products CorpPay and PayAssure.

Dovetail says the acquisition is of strategic importance given the increasing convergence of high and low value payments in the banking industry.

Both operations have invested more than five years in building bank payment processing systems to a component architecture using Java/J2EE for the wholesale and retail banking sectors. Concise's CorpPay platform enables corporate or institutional customers of a financial services supplier to submit payment files for settlement. The vendor's PayAssure product is used for the processing of ACH payments.

By combining components, Dovetail says it is now positioned to provide solutions for the two major infrastructure challenges facing European banks from 2006 – Faster Payments in the UK and the requirements around Sepa for euro related payments.

Bruce Hutcheon, Dovetail CEO, comments: "We are delighted to be joining up with a group of people who share our conviction that banks do not wish to buy new payment systems, but are forced, for business reasons, to change old ones. The acquisition broadens the type of solution Dovetail can provide and strengthens our position in the European market."

Kevin MacEntee-Creighton, a principal consultant at Concise, becomes managing director, Dovetail Systems, UK.