ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading international provider of software for electronic payment systems, today announced that the ACI Money Transfer System has been comprehensively tested for SEPA direct debits.
The Money Transfer System was tested in conjunction with a major European payments processing bank.
The test results conclusively demonstrated that the Money Transfer System meets the requirements for processing inbound and outbound SEPA direct debit instructions. With support for the EBA STEP2 specific formats, including the full range of R-transactions, and ongoing maintenance support to accommodate the additional EPC Rulebook changes, the Money Transfer System ensures that banks will be ready for the evolving SEPA landscape.
Jonathan Eber, director of product management at ACI Worldwide, said, "Each country is establishing their own deadline as to when its banks will be able to process SEPA direct debits. Banks should be looking now at how their solution deployments will offer processing efficiencies and competitive differentiation in consideration of the November 2009 deadline."
The ACI Money Transfer System has been used by banks globally for many years as a single engine for payments processing and settlement. SEPA has introduced new ways that banks have to process transactions, and the Money Transfer System can easily incorporate the new messaging formats into one centralized system, and process them as easily as all other payment types. The system also provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, enabling banks to track individual payments as well as monitoring overall payments activity.
The Money Transfer System testing was conducted on IBM's System p servers at a combination of the IBM benchmark centre in Poughkeepsie, New York, and ACI facilities. The tests spanned a variety of functional workflows for SEPA Direct Debits and related R-transaction processing as well as SEPA Credit Transfers. Additionally, tests were conducted addressing scalability, recoverability, workflow monitoring and interface simulation.