The first such packaged solution is for SEPA Direct Debit. HCL, one of Misys' strategic partners, is providing its highly skilled resources to roll out Misys' solutions to modernise payments and messaging infrastructures.

The financial industry has seen a massive growth in global payment volumes in recent years. At the same time messaging standards, such as ISO 20022, technologies like XML and the number of networks that a bank's core processing systems are required to support have all increased. Initiatives such as SEPA Credit Transfers, launched earlier this year and SEPA Direct Debits due at the end of 2009, have forced financial institutions to review the way they manage payments. They have had to examine closely their multiple silo-based systems as they look for the most efficient and innovative way to meet these challenges and cater for more sophisticated customers.

"There is a pressing need for banks to upgrade their infrastructures so that they are fit enough to meet these challenges and remain competitive," comments Guy Warren, EVP and General Manager, Misys Banking. "Many legacy systems, such as Merva, BESS and MINT are not able to handle these new volumes and technologies and this is preventing them from being cost competitive in their offering and from capitalising on the opportunity the growth in payments gives them. With FED and CHIPS also planning to move towards ISO 20022 over the next 3 years, banks have to make sure they have a modern, flexible payments and messaging system that will allow them to cope with the fast-paced changes the industry is seeing."

Misys will take a packaged SEPA DD solution from Dovetail, built from components of the Dovetail Payments System, and integrate this with Misys applications and Misys Message Manager. Global deployment will be managed by systems integration experts at HCL. The resulting modern Java EE solution will help banks to automate their payments requirements and increase straight-tthrough processing rates. Banks will be provided with more efficient payments processing capabilities, enabling them to service their customers more effectively and grow their business more rapidly at a lower cost.

Misys was recently awarded the SWIFT Ready Financial EAI 2008 accreditation for Misys Message Manager, and is one of the world's largest generators of SWIFT messages, with more than 1,000 sites worldwide. The combination of this proven expertise, coupled with components from the world-class Dovetail Payments System, offers a modern, comprehensive, proven solution to banks that need to upgrade their infrastructure to cope with the increasing changes in the payments world.