Company Overview
The company, a leading payment service provider in Europe, specializes in processing financial transactions for banks and businesses. Focused on delivering secure, efficient, and compliant transaction processing, the company plays a critical role in the financial infrastructure across various sectors. It aims to provide seamless, real-time payment services to its clients, ensuring interoperability across multiple payment platforms and supporting high-volume transaction processing. As a key player in the digital transformation of financial services, the company is committed to maintaining its leadership position by adopting the latest regulatory frameworks while optimizing operational efficiency.
Business Challenge
In 2024, the company faced a significant challenge with the mandatory migration to the 2019 version of ISO 20022 messaging standards. SEPA schemes, including CORE and STEP2, required updates to ensure compliance and to facilitate the smooth processing of transactions. Failure to adopt these changes could have led to transaction rejections, data conversion errors, and reconciliation issues, severely affecting the company’s ability to process payments efficiently.
Additionally, the new messaging standard introduced enhanced fraud detection and improved transaction transparency, both of which were crucial to staying competitive in the evolving payments landscape. The company needed to implement these updates while managing its large transaction volumes, without disrupting its services.
The Solution
To address these challenges, the company relied on CLEAREX, its existing clearing solution, fully integrated into the IBM Z platform. Operating within the company’s z/OS environment, CLEAREX uses Db2 for z/OS for efficient data management, as well as CICS Transaction Server for real-time payment processing.
By capitalizing on the inherent flexibility of the IBM Z platform, the company successfully integrated the regulatory updates without any disruption to its daily operations. The platform’s powerful real-time processing and data management capabilities enabled the company to maintain operational efficiency while adhering to the new regulatory requirements.
Results
With CLEAREX on the IBM Z platform, the company smoothly transitioned to the new ISO 20022 standards without any operational disruptions. The agility of the IBM Z platform allowed the company to implement these updates seamlessly, ensuring full compliance with the latest regulatory requirements while maintaining high levels of operational efficiency.
Furthermore, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) was optimized, as the company was able to scale its operations without requiring major infrastructure overhauls. The integration of CLEAREX and IBM Z has future-proofed the company’s infrastructure, allowing it to adapt easily to future regulatory changes and market demands while ensuring consistent service quality and operational continuity.
Through this strategic transition, the company has strengthened its position as a leader in the European payment processing landscape, delivering secure, efficient, and compliant solutions to a wide range of clients.
