The bank says the hub will support consistent processing for all payments regardless of channel, provide faster and lower cost payment processing, enhance flexibility and improve response times to new opportunities, and allow other advanced functions.

Cindy Murray, e-commerce executive in Global Corporate Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says the payments services hub is a critical component in transforming the payment capabilities at the bank.

"We will be able to drive integration among common payments processes, react more swiftly to evolving standards and regulatory changes, and leverage our payments capabilities to gain efficiencies for both clients and the bank,” she says.

Online clients will be able to monitor payment status in real time, and the new system will be able to select the best way to process payments based on pricing and urgency, Murray adds.

Fundtech says the new product is part of a company-wide evolution to a services-based approach that transforms all of its transaction banking products into an integrated suite of SOA services including payments, cash management, financial messaging, and financial supply chain. Fundtech has developed a single shared-services framework that is platform independent, based on an open architecture and XML-based data model, ensuring compatibility with bank-developed and third-party SOA-based services.

Fundtech claims that one benefit of its use of SOA, is that it now becomes possible to integrate full payments functionality into the corporate customer’s online experience to enhance self- service, streamline workflows, and significantly increase straight through processing (STP). Because clients are engaged in the validation and enrichment of payment transactions, there are fewer exceptions. And as clients are empowered to make routing and pricing decisions they get a faster and more responsive service.

Fundtech is working with IBM on the implementation at BofAML and has integrated the software components with Big Blue's WebSphere middleware platform.