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Norwegian banks’ payment and clearing house Bankenes BetalingsSentral has replaced its disparate payments channels with a single gateway from Sterling Commerce in order to stay competitive in a single euro payments area environment. The Multi-Enterprise Finance Gateway will consolidate BBS’ payments and data exchange which will enable the institution to reduce costs, increase revenue and provide the necessary flexibility to deliver new services quickly. The gateway is expected to go live in February 2007.
BBS decided to replace its technology because of two changes that occurred in Norway during the past year. In March, the central bank of Norway, Norges Bank, decided to replace its real-time gross settlement system with perago:rtgs solution, developed by Perago, a company owned by SIA. Because of this transformation, BBS decided to take the opportunity to modernise its legacy system to be able to cut costs and stay competitive in Europe.
Although Norway is not within SEPA, the nation felt indirect effects, such as the pressure for the Norwegian banking system to adopt SEPA standards — the new EU Payments Directive will be implemented in Norway — and the pressure on prices. Knut Bjerke, executive vice-president, clearing and payments infrastructure, BBS, said Norwegian banks questioned BBS’ costs in comparison to other clearing houses in Europe.
MEFG manages multiple payment formats and communications protocols, including Edifact, Swift FIN and proprietary formats. Within Norway, there is a national network for formats, but for international payments, banks use SwiftNet. Smaller banks that are not on SwiftNet get larger banks to clear their international payments. Now there is talk about using SwiftNet for national transactions, but it all depends on pricing, said Bjerke.
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