​It was great to see so many attend the Atlanta Tandem User Group (ATUG) event last month in Alpharetta Georgia. As a gracious host, HPE let us use their facility for the day and even gave tours of the customer solutions center. It was an opportunity to see a virtual NonStop demo in action.

​The following week Lusis was honored to attend the Canadian Tandem User Group (CTUG) held at the HPE offices in Mississauga Ontario. It was great seeing so many of the NonStop users in Canada turn out for this event as well.  As a vendor, it allows us to share what Lusis can provide to new prospects as well as catching up with customers on their current endeavors.   

Recently, one of Lusis Payments’ clients, Bankserv Africa, performed a stress test of TANGO on their own Production and Test systems. The stress test was conducted on what was considered one of the busiest transactional days due to South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) payments. In the graph below, the blue line depicts actual transactions per second being run during each hour of the business day. On the same graph, the green line indicates the high volume capacity still available as determined by the stress test conducted on the system, even on this high volume trading day.

​Bankserv Africa’s Production and Test systems feature the same configurations therefore enabling like for like testing capability with regards to hardware, software and fail over scenarios. Their target was set at 600 tps. With the NonStop X, SSD and configuration, Bankserv Africa was able to see their systems have the capacity to achieve up to 1400tps, which over sought their target tremendously.
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It is in this year, 2018, that the PSD2 (Revised Payment Service Directive) will be implemented.  Instructions from the European Union (EU), banks’ monopolies on their customers’ account information and payment services will no longer be permitted.  

PSD2 will enable bank clients to use third-party vendors to provide financial services on their behalf.  In the near future, clients will have the option of using any provider to pay their bills via person-to-person (P2P) transfers, while still having their money assets secured in their current bank account.  Banks will be obliged to ensure that these third-party providers are given access to “their” customers’ accounts through open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).  This will enable third-parties to build financial services on top of banks’ data and infrastructure.

All of this will significantly change a bank’s competition model.  It will not be about changing account location; rather, it will be about the services that customers use.  No longer will banks be competing against their peers.  Instead, they will be competing against one another.  PSD2 will change customer expectations; payments’ value chains; and determine what business models are profitable. 
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The Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) and the Account Information Service Provider (AISP), are two entries into the EU’s changing financial system.  Because of PSD2, they are service providers which will have access to the account information of bank customers.  The fact is that such services could look at a user’s spending behavior and provide analysis, or even aggregate a user’s account information from several banks, looking at that as well.  A PISP provider initiates a payment on behalf of the user, with P2P transfer and bill payment as component parts sure to be seen when PSD2 is enacted.

A More International Perspective

It is well understood that the EU evidences great ambition and in so doing it issues laws or directives to realize its goals.  The EU ‘s involvement in the deregulation of telcos has produced spectacular outcomes.  Huge operators have transformed old national monopolies in national amphi-polies, tri-polies or tetra-polies.   In the meantime, the telco industry itself has been badly damaged and is now dying.  Today, Europeans buy phones via the United States (US) or Korea and network switches in China or the US. 

As to bank services, and with no directives, it is very possible that Citibank, Bank of America Corporation (BAC), and Chase Bank will do better more quickly if they may take advantage of the frantic activity Europeans are going to create in their homelands.
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No matter what, it is clear that the mandate is for creation of a more competitive bank environment, thereby creating a global marketplace for European bank services.

Lusis payment hub SOA architecture provides agility and scalability for an evolving marketplace
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SAN FRANCISCO & PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lusis Payments, a global innovator of mission-critical payments software, announced today that CIBC, a leading Canadian-based global financial institution, has migrated its POS, ATM, and Payments Hub to the Lusis TANGO platform. CIBC has been modernizing its payments infrastructure to improve their ability to meet the demands of today’s evolving payments ecosystem.

​TANGO is an online transaction processing engine for mission-critical 24x7 solutions including payments, retail, loyalty, finance, utilities, and transport. TANGO delivers performance, availability, and scalability, with a rich set of functionalities, all from a single application, a single code set and a single architecture. This flexibility makes TANGO ideal for the next generation of payment systems.

CIBC selected Lusis Payments’ TANGO product for use across a range of banking channels. TANGO allowed the bank to move to an open platform built on a high-performing micro-service architecture providing agile banking needs. CIBC has also implemented a number of new functionalities and capabilities to its payments systems as a result of the migration.

“TANGO is the payments HUB facing todays challenge,” said Philippe Preval, President and CEO of Lusis Payments. “TANGO is addressing business needs both now and in the foreseeable future. Our team worked closely with CIBC to provide the flexibility it needs in today’s evolving payments landscape.”

​About Lusis Payments
Lusis Payments is an innovative global software and services provider to the payments industry. The company’s proven, cutting edge technology operates in numerous hardware and operating environments. The TANGO platform, combined with the know-how to mitigate risk and deliver high levels of assured customer service, constitutes a unique proposition for organizations faced with the challenge of adapting to traditional and future needs in the payments ecosystem.


Contacts
​Lusis Payments
Brian D. Miller, 415-829-4577
General Manager
Brian.Miller@lusispayments.com