Clearstream Services IT and EastNets join forces to offer SEPA in SaaS mode

Clearstream Services IT and EastNets join forces to offer SEPA in SaaS mode

September 10, 2013

Clearstream Services IT, the leading provider for IT Managed Services and on-demand financial solutions, has joined forces with EastNets, the leading global provider of compliance and payment solutions for the financial industry, to offer a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) solution in SaaS mode.

Recent reports from the European Payment Council and the European Central Bank indicate readiness gaps in many countries and particularly for corporate and medium/small size financial institutions. This is despite the steadily progressing migration across Europe of payment market infrastructures to the SEPA framework and standards. For many financial institutions and corporates, the migration to SEPA is still a stretch in terms of resources, cost and time and the challenge to meet the February 2014 deadline for SEPA compliance is growing every day.

The new SEPA in SaaS solution enables financial institutions and corporates to reduce significantly the timeline for the implementation and go live cycles of any migration from several months to just a few weeks. It combines Clearstream Services’ market-trusted IT capabilities in managing complex and secure ICT infrastructures and EastNets’ long-standing payments expertise to efficiently deliver a quality solution, reliably and in the shortest timeframe.

SEPA in SaaS simplifies and accelerates the migration process, by reducing the impact on existing IT infrastructure and back office applications to enable customers to meet looming compliance deadlines and still deliver higher levels of service with fewer resources.

EastNets’ unique XML payment messaging hub, en.PaymentSafe, efficiently transforms, validates and automates payment flows from back office to the SEPA market infrastructure for both SEPA credit transfer and direct debit workflow in compliance with EPC rulebooks.  Customers also benefit from the very high levels of virtual and physical security provided by Clearstream Services IT which fully hosts and manages this unique technology solution in its secure datacenters in Luxembourg.

“SEPA in SaaS mode marks an important step towards achieving an integrated payment framework for the whole of Europe. Aside from dramatically improving availability and reducing the overhead related to SEPA adoption, the services we offer are backed by the proven expertise of both Clearstream Service IT and EastNets.  Institutions lagging behind SEPA compliance are sure to welcome this development,” said Hazem Mulhim, CEO, EastNets.

“Our joint SEPA solution with EastNets achieves a new step in the growth of our product portfolio dedicated to the financial industry. We continuously invest in new solutions to enhance our catalogue of SaaS solutions and believe that our SEPA solution connected to our Swift Service Bureau is very attractive in terms of cost, quality as well as time to market. We are pleased to support the market with a top rank solution that helps it meet the SEPA deadlines and improve levels of straight-through processing. The SEPA solution adds another service to the current Swift Service Bureau range of automated reconciliation, anti-money laundering, financial transaction reporting, e-archiving and message transformation.    Moreover, the solution is easily accessible via our network of over 6,000 connections,” said Sean Chinnock, Senior Executive – Financial Industry IT Services at Clearstream Services IT.

The messaging hub also processes other payment messages flows such as SWIFTMT for foreign currencies.

The SEPA in SaaS solution is designed to coexist seamlessly with a range of other on-demand financial services from the well-established EastNets and Clearstream Services IT team. Services include Anti-money laundering (AML) filtering and profiling and financial transaction reporting based on en.SafeWatch. Customers can also integrate these with Clearstream Services IT’s SWIFT Service Bureau, providing connectivity capabilities developed in-house by one of the top 10 SWIFT users worldwide.

This Clearstream Services IT and EastNets joint solution for SEPA in SaaS mode will have its financial industry world premiere at SIBOS in Dubai, from 16 to 19 September. EastNets will be located at stand D-58, while Clearstream will be located at stand D-81, at the Dubai World Trade Centre.