Introducing the Payments Services Centre of Excellence
Read moreCapgemini’s Payments Services Centre of Excellence is a dedicated team of experts in the field working across borders to advise clients on the complex payments issues faced by financial services firms today. We have partnered with top managers in global payments, national banks, clearinghouses, securities settlement, payments utilities, industry bodies, and regulators.
Our in-depth knowledge of leading software solutions offers an independent perspective on their suitability for specific situations.
From its Centres of Excellence, Capgemini assembles teams of experts who meet client needs in areas ranging from strategy formulation, to technology, through to process re-design and outsourcing. We are the acknowledged market leader in IT architecture and IT infrastructure renewal. To stay up-to-date on payments trends and best practices, in-depth research is regularly performed in the Payments Services Centre of Excellence.
Our Payments solutions currently address these industry issues:
Adapting to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)
Whereas the introduction of the Euro has far from created a single European market, the SEPA will do much to accelerate convergence to a single European payments market. By 2010, the way payments are processed will change for good as the banking community seeks to adapt to the creation of the SEPA.
Industry players and the European Commission alike expect the SEPA to stimulate economies by lifting legal, commercial, and technical barriers associated with the myriad of local payments regulations and processes in place today. While it promises substantial benefits for consumers and corporations alike, the SEPA also creates daunting uncertainties about revenues, costs, and the overall business case for individual banks and others directly involved in payments.
In fact, banks will need to undergo significant shifts in their payments strategies to compensate for the 38% to 62% decline in direct payments revenues that eurozone banks will face in some parts of the market, according to the World Payments Report 2007 from Capgemini, ABN AMRO and EFMA.
While SEPA compliance is the necessary first step, forward-thinking managers also want to get moving now on the longer term strategic payments issues that the SEPA raises.
Learn more about our approach to SEPA Compliance & Beyond Compliancy.
Trade Finance
In the last 30 years, trade finance has achieved only limited efficiency gains in transactions settlement when compared to other banking settlement areas. Reducing costs and achieving greater levels of efficiency is a critical challenge for trade finance operations. Capgemini helps companies determine the breadth and depth of products to bring to market, how to improve processes and optimise operational models and achieve end-to-end straight through processing (STP). We can show you new ways of using technology to build for the future. Download our paper on Taking a Fresh Look at Efficiency in Trade Finance.
Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
Money laundering has become a serious global issue and AML law enforcement has toughened up with serious impacts on banks and other financial institutions. Taking a passive approach to AML is no longer appropriate, given the significant business risks and high personal stakes. Capgemini helps create a strong and flexible AML solution matching the specific organisational requirements, by improving processes, implementing technology and educating people. Download our paper on The Increasing Importance of Anti-Money Laundering.
Payments IT Infrastructure
After Y2K and the euro transition, most banks have postponed investments in renewing IT, and are now coping with heterogeneous, inflexible, expensive, and innovation-averse information systems and payments infrastructures. As they now need to comply with new standards and regulations, IT infrastructure renewal is a strategic and operational imperative with direct consequences for banks’ payments services offering, organisation, processes, and technology. Capgemini helps with IT systems strategy and planning, enterprise application integration, and software selection, program management, project implementation, adaptive IT, business processes and flows reengineering. Download our paper on Renewing Payments IT Infrastructure
Addressing SWIFT Services
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) has made rapid advances in supporting STP with its SWIFTNet offering. However, true “end-to-end STP” with direct external links to clients’ systems remains rare. Capgemini runs impact analysis, technical/business implementation, internal/external rollouts, and in-sourcing, to help cut processing costs by developing true end-to-end STP solutions. Download our paper on Reaping the Potential of New SWIFT Services
Addressing TARGET2
TARGET2 is scheduled to replace the 15 national real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS) with a single shared platform (SSP) by the end of 2007, ending local specificities. Capgemini helps banks improve their own liquidity/treasury management, deliver high performance on payments processing speed and capacity, allow access through a uniform interface, and further develop their cash management offering. Download our paper on Addressing the TARGET2 Challenge.
