Instant Payments Framework launched by Icon Solutions
Icon Solutions launches Instant Payments Framework
The new framework – available worldwide – is set to open up access to real-time payments for banks.
UK-based Icon Solutions, an IT payment consultancy and specialist technology provider, describes its Instant Payments Framework (IPF) as “an agile yet robust software product that expedites financial institutions’ transition to instant payments”.
The vendor emphasises that “IPF was designed specifically to meet the needs of national banks and global bank subsidiaries who regularly find the cost and complexity of current payment hubs excessive”.
Overhauling the existing IT infrastructures to integrate with domestic instant payments schemes and operate in a digital environment has been “a slow, expensive and cumbersome process” for banks to date.
Icon observes that “existing vendor platforms are inflexible and often hide additional costs for customisation, are too expensive to operate especially at smaller transaction volumes, and delay time to market”.
Tom Hay, head of payments at Icon, states: “Instant payments have been the preserve of big banks with the big budgets for big platforms. And the transition has major operational requirements as well as technical ones. This makes the challenge particularly acute for smaller banks.”
The vendor feels that its experience in working on real-time payments schemes – such as Faster Payments in the UK and FAST in Singapore – adds a lot of value to IPF.
It highlights three key benefits of IPF:
- flexibility to meet the requirements of different banks, different national schemes and emerging technologies;
- faster time to market thanks to the pre-built component library, multiple APIs and an software development kit (SDK) with intuitive graphical configuration;
- lower cost of ownership thanks to open source software stack, small hardware footprint and “dramatically” reduced professional services fees for customisation projects.
The solution integrates with existing core banking and back office applications.
