Financial news

Temenos, the open platform for composable banking, is helping banks and payment service providers (PSPs) stay ahead of market changes and grow profitable cross-border payment services on the back of them, with its cloud-native ‘Correspondent Banking’ solution.

Temenos revealed that its cloud-native banking solution is supporting the rapid addition of new alternative payment rails and payment types using payment adaptors and an extensive set of APIs.

The Temenos Correspondent Banking solution includes pre-configured banking capabilities for nostro and vostro account servicing, cash management, cross-border payments, treasury, liquidity management, customer onboarding and financial crime mitigation. It can be taken as a SaaS service or deployed on the cloud, supporting constant payment processing. It operates alongside any banking system including Temenos core banking.

The solution is targeted at domestic banks servicing their correspondent banking business through outgoing and incoming cross-border payment flows, or international branches and subsidiaries processing payments for their head office and customers in non-domestic markets.

International payments revenues total up to $200billion globally which equates to 27 per cent of global payment transaction revenues. The world is also moving to instant payments and by connecting instant payment rails in domestic markets to cross-border flows, payments can be executed on a much tighter timeline.

At the same time, banks are under pressure to provide real-time, frictionless cross-border payments services, at low cost to remain competitive and meet compliance and customer needs. They face growing competition from fintechs, high payment volumes due to increasing digitisation, continuing globalisation of markets, and the need to adhere to new regulations and standards.

“New rails, new technology, and new business opportunities”

Aaron Press, research director at IDC, commented: “New rails, new technology, and new business opportunities are driving banks to undertake a range of payments modernisation projects. While retail banks are leveraging cloud technologies to help them transform, the cross-border market has been lagging by comparison.

“As new instant payment schemes and cross-border options continue to grow around the world, banks that want to remain relevant in international payments should consider adding cloud technologies to their cross-border strategy.”

Mel Jacobs-Kemps, CIO of wealth management and corporate banking at ABN AMRO, commented: “With Temenos, ABN AMRO is able to operate a single global payments hub for both high and low-value payments, for domestic and international payments. The solution helps ABN AMRO to reduce the cost of global compliance, achieve extremely high STP rates and increase the pace of innovation for our customers.”

Prema Varadhan, president of product and COO of Temenos, also added: “With more ways to send money internationally and transaction volumes booming, it is vital that banks have the right technology and platform to innovate in payments and scale efficiently.

“As SaaS, the Correspondent Banking solution gives banks a low-risk modernisation path to elevate their correspondent banking capabilities helping them maintain and grow their cross-border payments business sustainably.

“We see tremendous growth opportunities in the payments space, recently being selected by Convera, a global leader in B2B cross-border payments to modernise their payments infrastructure, and we continue to heavily invest in our single code base across account services, banking and payments, making our offering the most compelling in the market.”