With €500B in assets, €10B in revenue, this European bank is one of the largest financial institutions in the world. The global player aimed high when they set out to become the first bank in France to execute a real-time payment (RTP).
After all, this banking giant prides themselves on superior customer satisfaction, even crediting their global expansion to the prioritization of client experience above all else. Operating a broad portfolio of banking services – from global asset and wealth management to corporate banking and payment solutions – this banking behemoth relies on entrepreneurship and agility to meet their diverse customer demands.
To maintain their position as a leader in innovation and customer service, this major bank knew they needed to become the first one in Europe to instantly settle a payment transaction. Since the launch of TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) by the European Central Bank in 2018, the move toward real-time payments is picking up steam in Europe. In fact, becoming the first to successfully accomplish RTP was actually a very ambitious objective.
Starting with an aggressive timeline to execute their RTP project, the bank immediately began looking for all the tools and parts needed to conduct instant payments.
Like most major banks, this organization uses mainframe computers as their system of record. Calling out from legacy systems to modern applications poses a significant challenge. In fact, mainframes were never designed to interact with external systems. The level of complexity required for a real-time payment to run on legacy systems is a major obstacle for many banks.
Next, the bank researched and evaluated a number of software products that enabled varying degrees of mainframe access. They found one solution, Adaptigent’s Adaptive Integration Fabric, was being used by their sister bank to seamlessly expose the mainframe. After thoroughly researching other alternatives, the banking giant found that the Fabric was the only solution that could meet their project deadline.
The Fabric facilitated the quick creation of complex APIs, enabling the bank to connect their mainframe to applications that allow the transfer of money in real-time. Adaptigent’s Adaptive Integration Fabric generated the code that the bank then inserted into an existing COBOL program that called two APIs. The first API generated a customer-level authentication token that was transferred to the second API, which called FIS’s Clear-2-Pay application from the legacy COBOL program. Clear-2-Pay then executed the payment, allowing the bank to be the first bank to execute an instant payment in France.
The Fabric creates powerful bi-directional APIs without manual coding through an easy-to-use drag and drop interface. With the Fabric, not only did the bank avoid extensively training their current employees or hiring additional staff, they delivered the project on time. In fact, the bank went from proof of concept to production in under 2 months.
Click here to view the full case study.