The Financial Exchange solution enables organisations to comply with European standards such as International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and the upcoming deadline for the SEPA Direct Debit scheme (SDD). Axway's Financial Exchange solution is already in use at the French PEACH for SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT), and in large banks and corporations.

Historically, Europe's payment infrastructure varied greatly from country to country introducing complexities and inefficiencies to cross border transactions. Looking to make the European market more competitive with those of other regions of the globe, the European Payments Council (EPC) created SEPA which mandates financial institutions across Europe adhere to common standards for payment transactions. SEPA and other pan-European commerce focused initiatives place a burden on the IT infrastructure in both banks and corporate treasuries as they are required to adapt to new standards and formats.

"The creation of SEPA and other pan-European regulations are forcing Europe through a technological revolution that will forever change the way payments are processed," said Gareth Lodge, regional research leader, TowerGroup. "SEPA creates competition in the payments industry and removes the technical and commercial barriers that impede cross border payment transactions giving Europe a stronger influencing power in the global arena."

Axway's Financial Exchange is designed to meet the common and varied needs of banks and corporates. The solution allows both banks and corporates to control the migration schedule from existing internal infrastructure assets to SEPA-compliant systems easing the financial burden in the near term. In addition, the solution consolidates and provides visibility into high-value flows both internally and externally. For banks specifically, it eases the migration of their customer's payment transactions into new electronic bank protocols reducing risk and ensuring service-level agreemeeements (SLAs). Axway also offers managed services allowing banks to outsource activities such as customer enrollment, provisioning of the communication endpoint to the corporate customers, etc. For corporate treasuries, the solution also facilitates the secure Straight Through Processing (STP) of payment transactions through market infrastructure.

"Financial institutions in Europe are grappling with a global recession and upheaval in the financial markets while also confronting deadlines for regulations that force them to revaluate their payment processing infrastructure," said Bernard Debauche, VP EMEA Product Solution Marketing, Axway. "While industry mandates like SEPA, IBAN and PSD will make Europe more competitive on a global scale in the long term, there will be some growing pains as banks and corporates make the needed changes to be compliant. Financial Exchange was specifically designed help banks and corporates migrate to new systems and turn regulatory mandates into business opportunities."

Axway Financial Exchange supports various domestic protocols and converts payment data between domestic and SEPA formats. In addition, the solution supports all national-IBAN conversions for even the most complex transformations.