Dovetail has named Rule Financial as a certified implementation partner to oversee systems integration, testing and training for the Dovetail Faster Payments Solution, in preparation for live operation of the UK Faster Payments Service. The Faster Payments Service, announced by the UK banks under the umbrella of APACS (the UK trade association for payments and for institutions that deliver payment services to customers), will offer near real-time clearing of internet and telephone banking payments and standing orders for UK accounts. It is scheduled to go live in November 2007.

Kevin MacEntee-Creighton, managing director, Dovetail UK, comments: "Rule Financial has established a new payments practice to support our collaboration for UK Faster Payments and SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) implementations. This investment will provide a focused team to deliver specific solutions for banks offering a customer proposition in 2007/08. Rule Financial has worked successfully with Dovetail in the past and we feel this collaboration will leverage our respective strengths in systems design and implementation."

Marcus Rule, CEO, Rule Financial adds: "The Faster Payments Service will impact banks' liquidity management, anti-money laundering and accounting procedures. As a result, financial institutions will need to rapidly upgrade or replace some of their existing payment systems and integrate those changes within the organisation and technology infrastructure, with minimal disruption to the bank's business. Rule Financial's partnership with Dovetail enables financial institutions to meet the November 2007 timescale, de-risk the implementation process and significantly reduce time-to-market."

The Dovetail Faster Payments Solution is based on industry standards, Java and ISO messaging (20022 and 8583), and provides the common payment processing and communications functions to enable banks to effectively manage business flows between internal systems and the Faster Payments Central Infrastructure.