14 DAY TRIAL // Corporate clients are now able to leverage the first SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) payments solution, which relies entirely on the Microsoft platform. The Redmond-based company has partnered with Fundtech for the creation and introduction of the SEPA Integration Suite. Designed for banking sector customers in Europe, the SEPA Integration Suite is set up to help banks deal with both SEPA Direct Debit and Credit Transfers. Microsoft has noted that, in this regard, the SEPA Integration Suite manages to get out of the way one of the key issues in building payment systems for European corporate customers.
“Our alliance with Fundtech substantially expands our partner ecosystem for payments by helping our banking clients meet the imperatives of cost-cutting and innovation in these challenging economic times,” revealed Susan Hauser, vice president, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft. “Fundtech’s commitment to Microsoft’s banking and payments solutions leverages our familiar mission-critical enterprise platforms, including Microsoft BizTalk Server with the BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT as the payments messaging infrastructure - a solution that has been certified SWIFTReady over the past six years.”
According to the software giant, the SEPA Integration Suite bundles together a number of technologies built in Redmond. The infrastructure has Windows Server 2008 at the foundation, but also brings to the table products such as Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009. Of course that for the web-enabled user interface, Microsoft and Fundtech have opted for Silverlight, the Redmond-based company’s alternative to Adobe Flash.
European banks have a November 2009 deadline for adopting SDD, and in this regard, the SEPA Integration Suite will streamline uptake, especially for customers that are lagging behind. The Microsoft and Fundtech solution will help banks be compliant with European Payments requirements, with the duo promising scalability, security and low costs.
“Fundtech and Microsoft are offering the market an affordable and quickly implemented solution that addresses the eurozone harmonization dilemma related to SEPA payments. By leveraging existing payments infrastructure, banks using SEPA Integration Suite will be able to meet the SDD deadline while minimizing the expense of adding this required capability,” added Dieter Prang, managing director, Fundtech Gmbh.