The solution, called Misys Customer Payment Initiation, is a result of a partnership with Petra Financial, adding its market-leading front-end application, Touchstone to the portfolio.

Touchstone is an intuitive and dynamic java-based front end used at both bank branch and customer levels to fully capture, validate and route payment instructions. Complete with integrated reference data, Touchstone offers a significant uplift in Straight Through Processing rates, reductions in correspondent charge backs and significant increases in both accuracy and processing efficiency - all with minimal manual intervention at the bank processing level.

"One of the key issues that banks face is how to improve the speed and accuracy with which a payment is generated and routed," states Barry Kislingbury, Global Product Manager, Misys Banking. "This directly affects the quality of the service that banks can offer their customers. Petra Financial has the best front-end application in the market and we are pleased that it will add value in our payments offering to our customers."

Designed to be implemented incrementally, Misys Payments allows clients to focus on individual problem areas within their payments business, delivering a low risk, gradual implementation approach. Misys, building on their market leading messaging infrastructure, is combining the leading solutions in the market, such as Touchstone from Petra Financial, to bring banks a complete integrated payments solution, delivering business benefits at every stage of the payments transformation lifecycle.

Tony Marks, the Partner Channel Director of Petra Financial, comments, "We are delighted to be partnering with an organisation of the stature of Misys in what we believe to be a highly innovative solution, which will allow our banking customers to leverage their investment in Misys products to enhance STP rates, minimise processing costs and establish a low risk approach to payments migration providing a significant return on investment."

The Customer Payments Initiation solution can be licensed standalone or as part of the integrated Misys Payments solution. Misys Message Manager's J2EE thin-client messaging infrastructure will provide the backbone for the fully-integrated solution, enabling banks to automate the processing of all types of payments on a single platform, allowing them to control costs, decrease risk and improve operational efficiency. This will allow banks to respond quickly to their customers' needs and market changes without having to implement large payments engines that are high risk and which deliver limited return on investment.

Misys Exceptions & Investigations was the first component within Misys Payments, announced at Sibos 2007 with SWIFT, which helps banks to reduce the costs associated with exception processing while improving operational efficiency through increased traceability.