By combining Sterling Commerce financial services solutions with Perago's regional expertise, business focus and experience in payment systems, this partnership provides Sterling Commerce with a strong platform to deliver flexible and customer-focused solutions to end users in this market.

Sterling Commerce and Perago Africa see a market opportunity to provide African organisations with solutions to integrate, automate, secure and manage the exchange of financial and payment information. Perago Africa is a leading provider of financial infrastructure services and a SWIFT business and service partner for Southern Africa. Sterling Commerce, also a SWIFT partner, offers a combination of network, community management and market-leading multi-enterprise collaboration infrastructure solutions to help financial services organisations to optimise and integrate business processes within their enterprise and amongst their trading communities.

Initially, Sterling Commerce will work with Perago Africa to pursue regional business opportunities for its Multi Enterprise Finance Gateway (MEFG) solution. MEFG is a highly scalable communications solution to enable high volume transactions in a bank-to-bank or bank-to-corporate environment to analyse and route a wide range of financial transmissions. The partnership will also form the basis for future collaboration in the development of packaged solutions to extend the capabilities of MEFG.

"The partnership with Perago Africa builds on the existing relationship between Sterling Commerce and SWIFT to provide comprehensive solutions to the financial services industry," said Michele Carvalho, Head of EMEA Partners for Sterling Commerce. "Sterling Commerce has taken a strategic view of the financial services industry and has developed solutions that will enable the integration of the physical supply chain and the financial value chain. Perago Africa is well positioned in this territory and business area to deliver these solutions at optimal value for our customers."

"Through the partnership with Sterling Commerce, Perago Africa will be able to extend its solution offering to our existing customer base and unlock new business opportunities based on the Sterling Commerce solution set," said Hugo Smit, CEO of Perago Africa. "In Sterling Commerce, we see a partner with a proven track record of providing industry leading products and solutions to financial services customers worldwide. This fits perfectly with Perago Africa’s vision to provide financial system solutions within the larger financial services market."