To tackle cost reduction and competitiveness issues, Transactis has set up the first electronic money platform in France, in partnership with Sopra Banking Software.
This factory is now operational and uses the Sopra Banking Cards-Issuer* to handle the electronic money back office.
In 2008, Société Générale and La Banque Postale decided to pool their electronic money activities and created the joint venture Transactis, thereby connecting two similar-sized actors but whose cultures are different. For 2012, Transactis managed 26 million cards for both companies (including all savings cards for La Banque Postale) and processed 2.15 billion transactions.
Collaboration between Transactis and Sopra Banking Software
In this context, Transactis selected the Sopra Banking Cards-Issuer, a component of the Sopra Banking Suite, to build the electronic money back office - the base of its new platform.
"The deployment's success relies on a strategic partnership between Transactis and Sopra Banking Software, which has resulted in close collaboration between the teams from the two companies," explains Jean-Paul Bourbon, Sopra Banking Software's CEO.
Based on Sopra Banking Cards-Issuer, this new multi-bank, multi-currency and multi-country electronic money platform is pioneering and unique in France. It enables Transactis to reduce the time to market of the new card products and help it launch new services following the example of mobile payments and Instant Issuing. Furthermore, it is directly connected to international network platforms.
This electronic money factory is capable of processing the high data volumes that result from the pooling of two banks' card data, and halves Transactis' transaction costs.
Since 2013, the electronic money factory has been used by all Société Générale customers (corporate, private and business customers) throughout the electronic money value chain, and is about to host, this year, the part relating to cards' contract management from La Banque Postale (operations are already handled by Transactis) and cards management and operations of Crédit du Nord.
"Pooling the means, handling high volumes and the innovative contribution made by Sopra Banking Software's components has already allowed Transactis to reduce its costs by half. On top of that, Sopra Banking Card-Issuer's flexibility and architecture favor time to market and enable quick response times both in a business and in a market sense," explains Alain Nicaud, CEO of Transactis.
*Evolan Issuer is now called Sopra Banking Cards-Issuer