Our customer is India's largest bank with a network of over 22,000 branches, 55,000 ATMs across remotest parts of India. The bank processes 20% of total retail payment transactions in the country.
Our customer had an ageing, proprietary payments hub developed in-house to enable intra-bank fund transfers. Over time, the bank has deployed disparate systems to process payments for different payment schemes. Product silos and inefficient, manual processes were draining resources and impeding scalability and convergence across the payments value chain. These impacted costs of payment processing as well as made the payment infrastructure exceedingly complex.
The bank wanted to consolidate multiple middleware systems handling different transaction streams to improve efficiencies. For the bank this translated into:
- An open-source system that is agnostic to operating system, database, mode of connectivity and hardware
- Bringing multiple payment transactions onto one application for ease of monitoring and control of all payment systems
- Providing clearing and settlement services with central institutions
- Providing high STP capability with minimum manual intervention
- Catering to the need of various departments of the Bank like CBS, cash management, mobile and Internet Banking
- Providing a highly scalable environment with high transaction processing capability
- Easing new product/scheme rollouts
Integrated Payment Hub
The Integrated Payments Hub (IPH) is designed to help banks transform their payments infrastructure. Built on ISO 20022 standards, IPH consolidates management of all payment schemes onto a payment hub that significantly reduces time to market and costs. Built using an open system architecture, IPH provides secure handling of interbank payment, clearance and settlements over a single platform.
IPH currently supports transaction processing for 24 modules ranging from real-time, high-volume high-value (RTGS/NEFT/IMPS), cross-border (SWIFT) and Treasury transactions. It provides global, multi-currency, multi-entity, and multi-standard coverage, offers real-time capability, lowers cost per transaction for retail and corporate customers. The application connects 15+ channels, supports 25,000+ branches – domestic and international – 14 Regional Rural Banks affiliated with the bank and 45+ integration end points.
Functional Highlights
- High level of straight through processing (STP)
- Multi-currency, multi-branch support
- Maker-checker concept based on rules like high-value transactions
- Maintenance of corporate master
- Virtual account number for corporate customers
- Real-time liquidity monitoring and liquidity dashboards for the treasury department
- Integrated platform to integrate various channels / departments for NEFT processing including CBS
- Rule engine for transactions
- Security – All channels encryption/decryption
- Money monitor dashboards / customized reports based on various parameters - FSC, RRB, date, transaction amount
- Support for affiliate banks for inward and outward NEFT and RTGS transactions
- Real-time payments settlement
Implementation
The scale and the size of the bank, transaction volumes and the number of payment types to be consolidated presented a significant challenge.
To ensure on-time project delivery, the implementation approach focused on making changes in the IPH rather than touch multiple satellite host systems.
FSS in consultation with the bank opted for a phased approach to implementation. The integration with the highest transacting product, NEFT, was carried out in the first phase to provide confidence to the bank on the application’s capabilities. Further NEFT is integrated with numerous systems within the bank and its users are spread across departments presenting a big challenge. The NEFT implementation was completed in 5 months and the entire project took 15 months.
Currently all payment and settlement systems are integrated with various customer facing channels through Retail Internet Banking, Corporate Internet Banking, Mobile Banking. Thus, easy access to Centralized Payment Mechanism has been ensured.
Internally, the branches are being encouraged to push this channel for interbank transactions. Dedicated units in the bank handling large value corporate interbank transactions are using this platform to meet the requirements of demanding corporates with prerequisite for almost real-time MIS of their transactions.
Benefits IPH - Bank
- Higher STP rates improves margins per transaction
- Reduced workload and de-cluttering of CBS
- Shared components - transaction scanning and filtering, liquidity management, transaction alerts, and billing across products - simplifies operations
- Connected to all the payment adaptors and hence can monitor each customer transacting patterns, which improves cross-sell potential
- Optimized ‘go to market’ time for new products
Benefits - Customers
- Support for timely payments reduces working capital needs
- Reduced cost of transaction was passed on to the customers reducing their burden. With realization cycle being crunched, the cost of funds also declined for the clients.
- Easy integration with ERP systems and user-friendly interfaces makes it simple to adapt.
- Customizable reports help customers identify and reconcile transactions fast.
- Detailed MIS with meaningful snapshots giving them a clear picture of business trends.
- Faster release of credit lines enables them to increase turnover
- Access to latest features like alerts, advice to the stakeholders, payers and beneficiaries, rules engine helping prioritization and transaction scheduling
Solution Impact
Effectively designed processes and architecture has enabled the bank improve market share and achieve operational excellence.
Market Share
- The bank’s market share is around 20% (1/5th) of the domestic market in NEFT and around 15% in RTGS.
Volumes
- 30%-35% increase in NEFT volumes with 20%-25% reduction in processing time
- Highest NEFT per day volume – 10 M transactions per day (highest in the country)
- Average per day volume (all modules) – Around 3M transactions per day
- Corporate onboarding trend – Average 36% year on year
- Web UI for 25,000+ Branch Users, Bank internal departmental users, operational users, Admin users, maintenance and support users (with role-based access control)
- Capability to handle 50,000 concurrent users: 2,000 transactions per second
Availability
- 24x7X365 transaction processing and application availability
- High availability: 99.999% uptime on a monthly basis
- Reduced RTO for business continuity – 15 minutes during the last DR drill
- Real-time data replication between all 3 sites
- Data retention of 10 years
Other Parameters
- 70% to 80% reduction in customer complaints
- Reduced reconciliation cycle time
- Increased efficiency due to availability of historical data for analysis and business improvement
To learn how Integrated Payments Hub can help banks scale up efficiently, contact us at products@fsstech.com.
