Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that South African automated clearing house BankservAfrica has selected its TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure solution for driving the Rapid Payments Program (RPP).

The Rapid Payments Program is a national initiative in South Africa for launching a next-generation real-time retail payments system that is easy to use. The initiative’s objective is to bring in instant payments, proxy resolution for easier addressability, and the ability to initiate payments through a request-to-pay.

TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure has been selected by BankservAfrica for creating a modern, open central payments infrastructure, said Tata Consultancy Services.

Jan Pilbauer – CEO of BankservAfrica said: “Following our rigorous selection process, TCS BaNCS emerged as the natural fit, matching our key criteria for fit-for-purpose and ability to deliver. In addition to having the best technology stack, they have had major success for innovating in India’s payments ecosystem and will no doubt support us in bringing some of this experience to South Africa. This comes at a time where economic recovery is critical and the industry needs to catch up to the digital changes in the economy.

“With TCS’ technology, we are well-positioned to expedite the launch of a modern, easy-to-use and efficient payments platform that caters to lower value transactions at an affordable cost for the benefit of all South Africans.”

According to the Indian IT firm, TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure solution due to its High Performance Transaction Manager (HpTM) deployed as microservices will offer the automated clearing house with an ultra-high performance, low latency, and scalable solution to meet the requirements of Rapid Payments Program.

Furthermore, the unified clearing approach of TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure is expected to consolidate various payment rails into a single solution. At the same time, the TCS solution is said to provide the flexibility and configurability to serve a differentiated payments infrastructure.

Apart from that, by utilizing TCS’ Quartz Smart Ledgers for proxy resolution, customers of BankservAfrica are expected to benefit from a secure, real-time and scalable solution for account details.

The Quartz KYC/ AML solution will offer real-time fraud management capabilities to enable transaction screening and monitoring.

R Vivekanand – Co-Head of TCS Financial Solutions said: “TCS BaNCS has seen wide adoption and success in the South African financial services industry, with the country’s top 8 financial institutions and the South African Depository running on our solutions.

“As BankservAfrica looks to set new standards for real-time payments and financial inclusion in South Africa, TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure will help create a modern, high-performance, open central payments infrastructure. We are happy to be a partner in this exciting purpose-led transformation and are committed to delivering innovative solutions leveraging TCS BaNCS and Quartz in the country.”

  Banking industry news, Jan Pilbauer, R Vivekanand, South Africa, Tata Consultancy Services, TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure