Overview
Formed in 1999, Distra is an Australian software company specialising in the development of high performance, high availability payment applications. Distra's products have been designed for use by financial institutions, payments processors and other institutions operating in the payments chain. National Australia Bank holds a minority stake in the firm. The company has overseas offices in Atlanta, the UK and Singapore.
Corporate Overview
Distra's origins coincided with the Y2K upheaval, with legacy systems coming under scrutiny – not just because of concerns about the 'millennium bug', but more generally because of the difficulty and high costs associated with maintaining them. Cofounders Craig Worrall and CTO, Ken Larsen, saw an opportunity to develop a solution that was not reliant on proprietary technologies. Their vision was to develop a platform that was agnostic in terms of hardware, operating system and database and
would incorporate fault tolerance through the software, rather than requiring the traditional high-end, fault-tolerant hardware architecture configuration to achieve this. Larsen was regarded as a 'Java guru' and saw this as being the route forward – there was no real Java-based solution available at that time.
Summary History
1999 – Distra founded by Craig Worrall• and Ken Larsen.
2005 – Starfish Ventures invests in Distra, enabling the supplier to complete product development and sell to
international customers.
2006 – UK office established, in part to support Vocalink partnership.
2008 – National Australia Bank takes a minority stake in the supplier.
2010 – Opening of US office.
Overview
Adopting the application server approach, the Distra payments platform, Distra Universal Payments Platform, provides a faulttolerant run-time environment for payments applications, known as the Mission Critical Application Server or MCAS. The platform follows an SOA model, with the application services distributed, across multiple nodes or servers and across sites.
Distra has developed the frameworks for a number of different applications, built around EFT payment requirements, and has used these frameworks to build a transaction processing platform. The company claims that the solution contains around 95 per cent of the functionality typically required by a bank. The remainder is added by Distra, the bank or a systems integrator to meet specific requirements usually through configuration, according to the supplier, rather than having to develop software code. If development is required, this is done in Java and XML.
The system can be implemented as an end-to-end payments solution, alongside or behind legacy systems. One scenario the company has encountered is where a bank has retained its legacy systems to handle the existing POS infrastructure but is using Distra Switch to handle new products and channels.
Distra Universal Payments Platform has been designed with payments convergence in mind. The system is touted as able to handle all types of payments and enable new payments channels to be introduced rapidly, regardless of the messaging type, structure or type of device from which the transaction originates.
Distra takes a broad view of convergence. Distra Universal Payments Platform allows real-time risk management to be carried out across all 'end points' (device, network, incoming or outgoing source etc), across retail and wholesale activities. Similarly, the system supports real-time liquidity management across the payments environment.
Managing liquidity is an important feature of the Distra Universal Payments Platform solution for the UK scheme. In addition to providing member banks with a gateway solution for online access to the FPS infrastructure, the system maintains a real-time settlement position against the other member banks. The Faster Payments solution is marketed through Vocalink, which selected Distra as one of its technology partners (see below).
Product Suite
Distra's core solution, Distra Universal Payments Platform, together with its various iterations, is hardware and database independent and is written in Java, with thin client user interfaces. All relevant industry interfaces can be provided.
All types of payments are claimed to be handled by the Distra suite of products.
Distra Universal Payments Platform (Formerly Distra Switch)
A real-time distributed multi-currency payment processing platform, built on open standards and providing cross-site, missioncritical fault tolerance. Incorporating automated fail-over and recovery of both applications and database on any contemporary platform without requiring proprietary clustering or database replication tools. Supporting any payment type, format or channel
including Retail B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B, ATM, POS, Interchange, Mobile and eCommerce. Wholesale and international functionality is provided, delivering real-time risk monitoring and settlement positions, according to the supplier.
Distra Authorisation
Provides co-operative or complete 'on switch' transaction authorisation for payment or other transaction types. This product supports serial or parallel, multi-leg and multi-party transaction routing, transaction authentication, velocity limits, cryptographic routines, shadow account balances, negative and exception processing and real-time alerts.
Distra Enhanced Payments
This product provides support for non-payment related information and processing to be applied to existing payment channels. Such non-payment related data and interfaces as e-invoicing, remittances, and multi-party transactions are included and that enhanced data can be maintained along with, or separate from, financial data.
Distra Faster Payments
As its name suggests, this module provides scheme-compliant gateway functions for Faster Payments member banks and corporates. It supports real-time reporting, risk monitoring, scheme link, MQ connectivity, system interfaces employing ISO 20022, ISO 8583 and batch file transfer.
Distra Builder
This is a GUI tool that allows non-technical users to build and configure switch functionality. It enables offline editing, configuration repository and remote deployment directly from a user's desktop. A number of banks and corporates use this functionality.
Formed in 1999, Distra is an Australian software company specialising in the development of high performance, high availability payment applications. Distra's products have been designed for use by financial institutions, payments processors and other institutions operating in the payments chain. National Australia Bank holds a minority stake in the firm. The company has overseas offices in Atlanta, the UK and Singapore.
Corporate Overview
Distra's origins coincided with the Y2K upheaval, with legacy systems coming under scrutiny – not just because of concerns about the 'millennium bug', but more generally because of the difficulty and high costs associated with maintaining them. Cofounders Craig Worrall and CTO, Ken Larsen, saw an opportunity to develop a solution that was not reliant on proprietary technologies. Their vision was to develop a platform that was agnostic in terms of hardware, operating system and database and
would incorporate fault tolerance through the software, rather than requiring the traditional high-end, fault-tolerant hardware architecture configuration to achieve this. Larsen was regarded as a 'Java guru' and saw this as being the route forward – there was no real Java-based solution available at that time.
Summary History
1999 – Distra founded by Craig Worrall• and Ken Larsen.
2005 – Starfish Ventures invests in Distra, enabling the supplier to complete product development and sell to
international customers.
2006 – UK office established, in part to support Vocalink partnership.
2008 – National Australia Bank takes a minority stake in the supplier.
2010 – Opening of US office.
Overview
Adopting the application server approach, the Distra payments platform, Distra Universal Payments Platform, provides a faulttolerant run-time environment for payments applications, known as the Mission Critical Application Server or MCAS. The platform follows an SOA model, with the application services distributed, across multiple nodes or servers and across sites.
Distra has developed the frameworks for a number of different applications, built around EFT payment requirements, and has used these frameworks to build a transaction processing platform. The company claims that the solution contains around 95 per cent of the functionality typically required by a bank. The remainder is added by Distra, the bank or a systems integrator to meet specific requirements usually through configuration, according to the supplier, rather than having to develop software code. If development is required, this is done in Java and XML.
The system can be implemented as an end-to-end payments solution, alongside or behind legacy systems. One scenario the company has encountered is where a bank has retained its legacy systems to handle the existing POS infrastructure but is using Distra Switch to handle new products and channels.
Distra Universal Payments Platform has been designed with payments convergence in mind. The system is touted as able to handle all types of payments and enable new payments channels to be introduced rapidly, regardless of the messaging type, structure or type of device from which the transaction originates.
Distra takes a broad view of convergence. Distra Universal Payments Platform allows real-time risk management to be carried out across all 'end points' (device, network, incoming or outgoing source etc), across retail and wholesale activities. Similarly, the system supports real-time liquidity management across the payments environment.
Managing liquidity is an important feature of the Distra Universal Payments Platform solution for the UK scheme. In addition to providing member banks with a gateway solution for online access to the FPS infrastructure, the system maintains a real-time settlement position against the other member banks. The Faster Payments solution is marketed through Vocalink, which selected Distra as one of its technology partners (see below).
Product Suite
Distra's core solution, Distra Universal Payments Platform, together with its various iterations, is hardware and database independent and is written in Java, with thin client user interfaces. All relevant industry interfaces can be provided.
All types of payments are claimed to be handled by the Distra suite of products.
Distra Universal Payments Platform (Formerly Distra Switch)
A real-time distributed multi-currency payment processing platform, built on open standards and providing cross-site, missioncritical fault tolerance. Incorporating automated fail-over and recovery of both applications and database on any contemporary platform without requiring proprietary clustering or database replication tools. Supporting any payment type, format or channel
including Retail B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B, ATM, POS, Interchange, Mobile and eCommerce. Wholesale and international functionality is provided, delivering real-time risk monitoring and settlement positions, according to the supplier.
Distra Authorisation
Provides co-operative or complete 'on switch' transaction authorisation for payment or other transaction types. This product supports serial or parallel, multi-leg and multi-party transaction routing, transaction authentication, velocity limits, cryptographic routines, shadow account balances, negative and exception processing and real-time alerts.
Distra Enhanced Payments
This product provides support for non-payment related information and processing to be applied to existing payment channels. Such non-payment related data and interfaces as e-invoicing, remittances, and multi-party transactions are included and that enhanced data can be maintained along with, or separate from, financial data.
Distra Faster Payments
As its name suggests, this module provides scheme-compliant gateway functions for Faster Payments member banks and corporates. It supports real-time reporting, risk monitoring, scheme link, MQ connectivity, system interfaces employing ISO 20022, ISO 8583 and batch file transfer.
Distra Builder
This is a GUI tool that allows non-technical users to build and configure switch functionality. It enables offline editing, configuration repository and remote deployment directly from a user's desktop. A number of banks and corporates use this functionality.
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