The payment hub project is aimed at unifying the bank's domestic, high value and international payments through one single payment engine.

The bank understood for some time that it would have to compete at the client services level, merging the objectives of giving their customer a suitable and customized product and experience, whilst at the same time streamlining the underlying processes. This means that implementing a payment hub with the ability to handle transactional volume peaks, prioritize payments, handle exceptions with lowest possible level of manual intervention, the generation of information for the operational and product development teams, as well as for customers. This way the bank can reduce costs in the back office through a unifications and rationalization exercise at the processing level by out phasing the various payment silos. The bank's payment hub will go live by the end of October, 2012 running from their main data center with two additional back-up sites, touching a few hundred employees at the Bank.

Patricio Melo, Corporate Vice President of Technology and Operations at Banco de Chile states: "Our payments and cash management strategy sits at the core of our banking relationship with our customers. The service levels we offer in terms of efficiency and information are of paramount importance and we are convinced that a payment services hub is the only way to achieve this from a technology and operational view. Clear2Pay with its highly referenced Open Payment Framework technology offer the flexible, scalable and proven route we are looking for."

Michel Akkermans, Chairman and CEO of Clear2Pay concludes: "For us it is very exciting to connect banks all over the world to our Open Payment Framework technology. The similarities of the many implementations help our new banks in the implementation journey, whilst we learn from their local specific needs and market requirements. Banco de Chile is a clear leader in the Latin American region and a wonderful partner to work with. This project is a great milestone for our recently opened office in Chile and our staff".