ACI Worldwide is launching a new wholesale payments system which supports processing of domestic and international payments and is designed to help banks prepare for the introduction of the Single Euro Payments Area (Sepa).
ACI says the payments processing engine supports processing of prieuro, credeuro and Pan-European direct debits as well as country-specific formats.
As the back office processing engine, the system supports payment capture, enrichment, routing and settlement of bulk and individual real-time payments in a variety of configurations. The vendor says various aspects of processing – including funds control, risk and approval, foreign exchange rate calculations, black-list checking, and liquidity control – are managed as a set of services in a workflow configured by the financial institution.
In addition, ACI says the system assists with the transition from a country-specific ACH environment to an environment where one or many Pan-European clearing houses exist.
Anthony Smith, chief technical officer for wholesale payments at ACI, says it is unlikely that all traffic created as a result of the Sepa initiative can be migrated in a single phase and there will be a time when old and new systems must coexist.
"The ACI Wholesale Payments System for Sepa is designed to accommodate the transition period by interoperating with legacy formats and systems," he adds.