Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has revealed that Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF), one of Saudi Arabia’s premier banks, has successfully revamped its domestic and international real-time payments processing with the help of TCS BaNCS for Payments.

This represents a significant leap in the bank’s ongoing digital transformation and core banking modernization program.

Banque Saudi Fransi selected TCS BaNCS to digitize and streamline its IT framework across deposits, lending, and payments as part of its goal to solidify its reputation as a modern, innovative, and customer-centric bank in the region. Through this transformation, the bank has centralized and standardized its operations for both domestic and international payments using TCS BaNCS for Payments. This has allowed Banque Saudi Fransi to validate transactions in real-time, almost doubling its straight-through-processing rate and accelerating transactions.

The microservices architecture of the TCS BaNCS solution is helping the bank provide real-time, seamless payment services to its clients and scale systems to accommodate increasing transaction volumes. As part of its commitment to become a local leader in open banking and Banking-as-a-Service, Banque Saudi Fransi plans to expose a large number of out-of-the-box APIs to third-party providers.

Thameer Yousef, COO, Banque Saudi Fransi, commented on the bank’s digital advancements, indicating that Saudi Arabia is leading the growth in the fast-expanding real-time payments markets in the Middle East. The implementation of TCS BaNCS for Payments reinforces the bank’s commitment to supporting payments innovation in the region.

TCS BaNCS for Payments, with its forward-looking digital core and Saudi market-ready functionality, will enable Banque Saudi Fransi to roll out new product lines and easily comply with CBPR+ guidelines as per the timeline defined by SWIFT. Additionally, the bank has become an early adopter of the regional GCC-RTGS Payments Clearing, enabling customers to send and receive money to GCC countries through this innovative payment clearing scheme.

Venkateshwaran Srinivasan – Tata Consultancy Services Global Head of TCS Financial Solutions said: “We are happy to announce the successful deployment of TCS BaNCS for Payments at Banque Saudi Fransi. As digital payments continue to gain momentum in Saudi Arabia, its progress will be dependent on strong and resilient payment infrastructures, including the enhancement of existing systems.

“TCS BaNCS has been powering payments transformation for leading banks worldwide, including the KSA and GCC, and this go-live at BSF is testimony to our functionally rich solution designed on best-in-class technology, high levels of scalability, certified readiness for SWIFT standards, and TCS’ ability to deliver large digital transformation programs successfully.”

  Banque Saudi Fransi, digital transformation, Saudi Arabia, Tata Consultancy Services, TCS BaNCS, Thameer Yousef, Venkateshwaran Srinivasan