SIC Instant Payments

Background

Instant Payment (IP) initiatives are developing everywhere. Whether it is a renewal of an existing infrastructure or a brand-new rail, almost all regions across the world are moving to new Instant Payments facilities. For instance, this is the case in Switzerland with SIC Instant Payments, in Europe with SEPA Inst, and in the UK with the New Payments Architecture.

This move to Instant Payments is a key driver for economies to remain competitive, to facilitate liquidity management, to meet customers expectations and to unlock the funds trapped in the traditional systems for improved overall efficiency across the whole ecosystem.

But IP is a new paradigm that requires new components and infrastructure to cope with the 10 seconds latency requirement. This 24x7x365 availability also carries the necessity for improved liquidity management, updated technology, & best-in-class risk and compliance. As such, SIC Instant Payment offers an opportunity for the Swiss players to upgrade their architecture and to look at different deployment options.

To provide the marketplace with a state-of-the-art proposition, Bottomline has developed a new API enabled SaaS platform, relying on the most modern technologies to future proof access to SIC IP and, by extension, to other payment schemes.

SIC IP Challenges

The implementation of SIC IP is not only about coping with a processing time of 10 seconds; it also has ramifications across the whole ecosystem with many areas such as end user experience, non-stop availability, sanctions screening, balance check, reporting, storage, and flow orchestration being impacted. Therefore, this whole integration needs to be carefully planned and implemented.

Operating costs must also be included into the remit since the 24x7x365 requirement will create new Service Level Agreements with partners and customers that have the potential to turn into additional commitments.