The system will be rolled out across the entire MPS group which includes Banca Toscana and Banca Agricola Mantovana. The bank hopes as a result of the implementation it will be able to reduce payment time from a few days to real-time and will cut operating costs by as much as 50%.

The system has been jointly developed by the bank and Microsoft, along with IT services group Getronics and Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft. Employing Microsoft SQL and BizTalk server, the system is also based on the ISO 20022 messaging standard for compliance with the Single Euro Payment Area regulation.

"Around 95% of Italian credit transfers and collections requested by corporate customers are made using electronic services such as CBI, so it was important for us to ensure the system would be able to support standard messaging and direct bank-to-bank connections without causing any inefficiencies to our customers," says Piero Poccianti, head of the Technology Lab at the Operative Consortium of Monte dei Paschi di Siena Group.

"For this project, MPS Group, Microsoft, Avanade and Getronics chose to move away from traditional IT systems development and instead apply advanced technology innovatively and strategically to achieve the bank's desire for a solid payments architecture built on Microsoft technology," said Sheida Hadji-Ashrafi, Worldwide Industry Manager for Payments at Microsoft.

The MPS deal follows a similar announcement by Spain-based Banco Santander which is employing Microsoft technology in an overhaul of its payments systems.