In a few short years, most of the world’s major market payment infrastructures will have been renewed.

Switzerland, Japan, China and India are already operating on ISO 20022, and most other major markets – including the U.S., Europe, U.K., Hong Kong and Canada – will soon follow suit.

Facing this imminent migration, a large European bank partnered with FIS and Accenture for a comprehensive payments system transformation. Overcoming challenges posed by disparate legacy systems, the team navigated 700 integration points across 250 systems in 49 payment systems across multiple countries.

Overcoming legacy obstacles in a complex environment

Open Payments Framework emerged as a critical component, ensuring SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) compliance and reducing managed systems from 49 to 10. The results were transformative: The bank streamlined operations, achieved consistent product offerings across countries and enhanced payment system stability. Notable improvements included reduced incidents, simplified monitoring and a consistently high straight-through processing (STP) rate.

The results

• Simplified payments system
• Harmonized infrastructure
• Ability to offer consistent products across all countries of operation
• Payment processing monitoring capabilities
• Improved payment system stability
• ISO 20022 ready
• Improved STP

From an ISO 20022 standpoint, the bank now boasts full processing capability with no data truncation. The OPF platform supports various ISO 20022 payment types, such as SCT Inst, SCT Batch, TARGET2 and the Nordic P27 payments platform. Migration to ISO 20022 for SWIFT MX is seamless, requiring only configuration adjustments.