Overview
Misys, best known for its core banking and treasury and capital markets (TCM) systems, has a long-standing messaging solution, Meridian Middleware. It has used this extensively as an interface layer for its different banking applications. On top of this it has built a routing solution, Message Manager, and of late has added what it claims is a full payments engine, Misys Payment Manager.
Summary History
1998 September – Misys unveils Meridien Middleware, a middleware offering for interfacing between its own systems and between those systems and third-party ones.
1999 – There are 20 takers of Meridien Middleware by the start of the year, including Unibank in Denmark, Belgian Bank in Hong Kong, NordLB in Singapore, Bank of East Asia Singapore, United Bulgarian Bank, BIG Bank and ABN Amro. All used it with other Misys applications.
1999 – Misys adds Meridien Link, touted as a generic messaging system, built on top of Meridien Middleware. This was initially for Equation, with links to Swift. It went live in September 1999 at Equation user, US Bancorp in Minneapolis. As well as support for all Swift message types, Misys claimed to have added exception processing facilities, bulk file processing and release, improved reporting and query support. It was subsequently integrated with Swift's Accord matching service.
2005 – Misys moves Meridian Middleware and the messaging component, now Misys Message Manager, to Java.
2008 September – Misys signs a partnership whereby it intends to offer Dovetail's payments platform, initially for SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs), plus as a gateway for Fedwire and Chips in the US. Existing Misys partner, HCL, was expected to provide payment related services. The Dovetail solution would be pre-integrated with Misys' banking systems, including Bankfusion Universal Banking System, and Message Manager. Misys claimed to already support SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs).
Product Suite
The 'backbone' to Misys' messaging and payments offerings is Misys Message Manager. With its origins in the Meridian Link messaging platform, Misys Message Manager underwent a technical refresh in 2005 to move it to J2EE. At the time, it was positioned as a potential replacement for the likes of IBM's Merva, with subsets of the system having been tailored for SwiftNet services. The first components covered FileAct and Cash Reporting; subsequent releases were for cash management, bulk payments and funds solutions. These new components would negate the need for a bank to replace its entire message infrastructure, with the ability to reside alongside existing systems, potentially adding functionality which was not available within older messaging systems. ABSA Bank and Standard Bank both replaced the mainframe-based Merva solution with the Misys system, on a Windows cluster and Sun Unix boxes respectively. Misys Message Manager is now used by around 300 banks as a messaging infrastructure, mostly linked to Misys' core banking systems. A few banks (ABSA is one) use it as an 'architectural piece' within their payments infrastructure.
The payments solution itself stems from a number of components. Misys Exceptions & Investigations was the first to be announced, at Sibos 2007. Misys explained that following an approach from Swift, it had embarked on building a solution to support the Society's SwiftNet Exceptions & Investigations service. This was on top of Message Manager and, since this platform already supported FIN, FileAct, InterAct and ISO 20022, it was apparently simply a matter of adding four workflows and a case manager on top to support the Swift service.It was touted as an alternative to the heavy and costly existing exceptions management systems typically used by large banks.
The functionality could be extended and Misys was apparently talking to a number of banks about the solution, potentially to introduce to their own banking partners and corporate customers. From Swift's perspective, a key enabler for the take-up of the service is compliant application software. It was expected that there would be dashboard and reference data partners within the eventual Misys solution, with tie-ups to be announced, as well as links to matching and reconciliation systems. The aim was for availability of the Misys E&I solution by the middle of 2008, in line with the overall strategy for Misys which was to provide an 'end-to-end payment processing environment'. A prototype for this was indeed built, but it remained under review in 2009 as Swift's E&I initiative was yet to pick up momentum.
This project was followed by a component which fitted into the opposite end of the Payment Services spectrum. In February 2008 Misys signed an agreement with Petra Financial to adopt that company's customer payment initiation software within its own applications and as an offering in its own right. 'Payments initiation is an area where we have seen a degree of interest from some customers and from other banks that we have been talking to,' said Misys' solutions manager, Barry Kislingbury. 'The demand is for a more innovative front-end, so when you press the button to generate a payment, it has been checked against reference data and is an STP message'.
Petra Financial emerged in 2007 with two initial reference data offerings built on Interchange middleware and it forged a partnership to use CB.Net's data. Via Petra's front-end application, Touchstone – a solution that can be used at both bank branch and customer levels to fully capture, validate and route payment instructions – Misys planned to use the data within its own applications and also to build its own payments initiation offering using the technology. A number of Misys customers already used CB.Net's services, but while there had been 'numerous' conversations with the company, there was never a formal partnership. Petra added the ability to take the CB.Net data, and potentially other data as well, 'and do something interesting with it, making it available in a more intelligent manner', according to Kislingbury. The Java nature of the Petra offering meant
it would be 'pretty easy' to integrate with Misys' payment offerings, he said. The Customer Payments Initiation solution could be licensed standalone or as part of the integrated Misys payments solution.
Misys' plan was to productise this process by adding new functionality to Message Manager and releasing a new product, to be known as Misys Payments Manager. The direction in which Misys had been developing Message Manager had apparently been driven by some of its larger users. Kislingbury suggested in mid-2009 that banks had been adding their own functionality to
Message Manager and looking to use it as a payments hub. This would be 'not necessarily to glue in a payment engine, but really to orchestrate everything that needs to be done to a payment, by integrating all the different back office systems. It's about integration and automation rather than chucking out what they have got and buying a nice big expensive engine,' Kislingbury
explained. The main advantage of this approach was that it would avoid the 'political rows' associated with putting in a new enterprise-wide payment system, and would allow siloes at the banks to remain in place.
Misys Payment Manager is built on top of Message Manager and the supplier's portal platform (see below). It is described by the supplier as automating the processing of all payment types, from high-value cross-border to low-value, high volume domestic retail, on the same platform. It spans payment initiation; payment processing including validation, prioritisation, defaulting and enrichment of data, routing, calculation of fees, risk monitoring and reporting; payment delivery, with
reformatting for the target execution mechanism such as Swift FIN, SEPA, Target2, Step2 and Swift bulk payments; and postprocessingfor matching and reconciliation, exception handling, rejection processing, audit and archive. Misys claims that Misys Payments Manager also supports Swift's Workers' Remittances service. The supplier says the solution can be deployed as a centralised payment processing hub replacing complex payment flows between existing core processing systems. It can also be used, it is claimed, to wrap existing legacy payment engines, to bring more agility and flexibility.
A potentially complementary area is cash management. In the second half of 2008, Misys unveiled Global Cash Portal. This is a version of its trade finance portal, Trade Portal, which sits in front of its flagship trade finance system, Trade Innovation. Trade Portal allows banks to connect to corporates; an early taker was BNP Paribas working with Carrefour. A multi-bank version allows corporates to access multiple banks from a single front-end to manage domestic and international trade transactions, with KBC a pioneer here. As well as standard trade finance instruments, it is meant to support open account transactions. One connectivity option is SwiftNet, facilitated by Swift's decision to extend its Score corporate access model to include support for trade messages.On the Global Cash Portal side, head of banking, Guy Warren, said adding cash management capabilities to the trade capabilities was felt to be logical and came at a time when there was ever more corporate pressure to understand cash positions.
Facilities include intra-bank and inter-bank fund transfers, bulk uploads, recurring transfers, account balances, sweeping and pooling services, SCTs, a report designer and audit trail. As with Trade Portal, it can be hosted on an ASP basis by Misys. Banks can still apply their branded front-ends to the solution and there is support for XML, Swift FIN messages and ISO 20022, plus custom-built interfaces and links to ERP systems.
The company has a Swift bureau service as part of its Confirmation Matching Service (CMS) and has gradually opened up the SwiftNet connectivity from this Citibank-derived corporate offering that has been around for 20 years or so. The first phase was to make it available to users of Trade Innovation, followed by an announcement in October 2010 that it would also now be available to banks, fund managers and non-CMS corporates.
Misys, best known for its core banking and treasury and capital markets (TCM) systems, has a long-standing messaging solution, Meridian Middleware. It has used this extensively as an interface layer for its different banking applications. On top of this it has built a routing solution, Message Manager, and of late has added what it claims is a full payments engine, Misys Payment Manager.
Summary History
1998 September – Misys unveils Meridien Middleware, a middleware offering for interfacing between its own systems and between those systems and third-party ones.
1999 – There are 20 takers of Meridien Middleware by the start of the year, including Unibank in Denmark, Belgian Bank in Hong Kong, NordLB in Singapore, Bank of East Asia Singapore, United Bulgarian Bank, BIG Bank and ABN Amro. All used it with other Misys applications.
1999 – Misys adds Meridien Link, touted as a generic messaging system, built on top of Meridien Middleware. This was initially for Equation, with links to Swift. It went live in September 1999 at Equation user, US Bancorp in Minneapolis. As well as support for all Swift message types, Misys claimed to have added exception processing facilities, bulk file processing and release, improved reporting and query support. It was subsequently integrated with Swift's Accord matching service.
2005 – Misys moves Meridian Middleware and the messaging component, now Misys Message Manager, to Java.
2008 September – Misys signs a partnership whereby it intends to offer Dovetail's payments platform, initially for SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs), plus as a gateway for Fedwire and Chips in the US. Existing Misys partner, HCL, was expected to provide payment related services. The Dovetail solution would be pre-integrated with Misys' banking systems, including Bankfusion Universal Banking System, and Message Manager. Misys claimed to already support SEPA Credit Transfers (SCTs).
Product Suite
The 'backbone' to Misys' messaging and payments offerings is Misys Message Manager. With its origins in the Meridian Link messaging platform, Misys Message Manager underwent a technical refresh in 2005 to move it to J2EE. At the time, it was positioned as a potential replacement for the likes of IBM's Merva, with subsets of the system having been tailored for SwiftNet services. The first components covered FileAct and Cash Reporting; subsequent releases were for cash management, bulk payments and funds solutions. These new components would negate the need for a bank to replace its entire message infrastructure, with the ability to reside alongside existing systems, potentially adding functionality which was not available within older messaging systems. ABSA Bank and Standard Bank both replaced the mainframe-based Merva solution with the Misys system, on a Windows cluster and Sun Unix boxes respectively. Misys Message Manager is now used by around 300 banks as a messaging infrastructure, mostly linked to Misys' core banking systems. A few banks (ABSA is one) use it as an 'architectural piece' within their payments infrastructure.
The payments solution itself stems from a number of components. Misys Exceptions & Investigations was the first to be announced, at Sibos 2007. Misys explained that following an approach from Swift, it had embarked on building a solution to support the Society's SwiftNet Exceptions & Investigations service. This was on top of Message Manager and, since this platform already supported FIN, FileAct, InterAct and ISO 20022, it was apparently simply a matter of adding four workflows and a case manager on top to support the Swift service.It was touted as an alternative to the heavy and costly existing exceptions management systems typically used by large banks.
The functionality could be extended and Misys was apparently talking to a number of banks about the solution, potentially to introduce to their own banking partners and corporate customers. From Swift's perspective, a key enabler for the take-up of the service is compliant application software. It was expected that there would be dashboard and reference data partners within the eventual Misys solution, with tie-ups to be announced, as well as links to matching and reconciliation systems. The aim was for availability of the Misys E&I solution by the middle of 2008, in line with the overall strategy for Misys which was to provide an 'end-to-end payment processing environment'. A prototype for this was indeed built, but it remained under review in 2009 as Swift's E&I initiative was yet to pick up momentum.
This project was followed by a component which fitted into the opposite end of the Payment Services spectrum. In February 2008 Misys signed an agreement with Petra Financial to adopt that company's customer payment initiation software within its own applications and as an offering in its own right. 'Payments initiation is an area where we have seen a degree of interest from some customers and from other banks that we have been talking to,' said Misys' solutions manager, Barry Kislingbury. 'The demand is for a more innovative front-end, so when you press the button to generate a payment, it has been checked against reference data and is an STP message'.
Petra Financial emerged in 2007 with two initial reference data offerings built on Interchange middleware and it forged a partnership to use CB.Net's data. Via Petra's front-end application, Touchstone – a solution that can be used at both bank branch and customer levels to fully capture, validate and route payment instructions – Misys planned to use the data within its own applications and also to build its own payments initiation offering using the technology. A number of Misys customers already used CB.Net's services, but while there had been 'numerous' conversations with the company, there was never a formal partnership. Petra added the ability to take the CB.Net data, and potentially other data as well, 'and do something interesting with it, making it available in a more intelligent manner', according to Kislingbury. The Java nature of the Petra offering meant
it would be 'pretty easy' to integrate with Misys' payment offerings, he said. The Customer Payments Initiation solution could be licensed standalone or as part of the integrated Misys payments solution.
Misys' plan was to productise this process by adding new functionality to Message Manager and releasing a new product, to be known as Misys Payments Manager. The direction in which Misys had been developing Message Manager had apparently been driven by some of its larger users. Kislingbury suggested in mid-2009 that banks had been adding their own functionality to
Message Manager and looking to use it as a payments hub. This would be 'not necessarily to glue in a payment engine, but really to orchestrate everything that needs to be done to a payment, by integrating all the different back office systems. It's about integration and automation rather than chucking out what they have got and buying a nice big expensive engine,' Kislingbury
explained. The main advantage of this approach was that it would avoid the 'political rows' associated with putting in a new enterprise-wide payment system, and would allow siloes at the banks to remain in place.
Misys Payment Manager is built on top of Message Manager and the supplier's portal platform (see below). It is described by the supplier as automating the processing of all payment types, from high-value cross-border to low-value, high volume domestic retail, on the same platform. It spans payment initiation; payment processing including validation, prioritisation, defaulting and enrichment of data, routing, calculation of fees, risk monitoring and reporting; payment delivery, with
reformatting for the target execution mechanism such as Swift FIN, SEPA, Target2, Step2 and Swift bulk payments; and postprocessingfor matching and reconciliation, exception handling, rejection processing, audit and archive. Misys claims that Misys Payments Manager also supports Swift's Workers' Remittances service. The supplier says the solution can be deployed as a centralised payment processing hub replacing complex payment flows between existing core processing systems. It can also be used, it is claimed, to wrap existing legacy payment engines, to bring more agility and flexibility.
A potentially complementary area is cash management. In the second half of 2008, Misys unveiled Global Cash Portal. This is a version of its trade finance portal, Trade Portal, which sits in front of its flagship trade finance system, Trade Innovation. Trade Portal allows banks to connect to corporates; an early taker was BNP Paribas working with Carrefour. A multi-bank version allows corporates to access multiple banks from a single front-end to manage domestic and international trade transactions, with KBC a pioneer here. As well as standard trade finance instruments, it is meant to support open account transactions. One connectivity option is SwiftNet, facilitated by Swift's decision to extend its Score corporate access model to include support for trade messages.On the Global Cash Portal side, head of banking, Guy Warren, said adding cash management capabilities to the trade capabilities was felt to be logical and came at a time when there was ever more corporate pressure to understand cash positions.
Facilities include intra-bank and inter-bank fund transfers, bulk uploads, recurring transfers, account balances, sweeping and pooling services, SCTs, a report designer and audit trail. As with Trade Portal, it can be hosted on an ASP basis by Misys. Banks can still apply their branded front-ends to the solution and there is support for XML, Swift FIN messages and ISO 20022, plus custom-built interfaces and links to ERP systems.
The company has a Swift bureau service as part of its Confirmation Matching Service (CMS) and has gradually opened up the SwiftNet connectivity from this Citibank-derived corporate offering that has been around for 20 years or so. The first phase was to make it available to users of Trade Innovation, followed by an announcement in October 2010 that it would also now be available to banks, fund managers and non-CMS corporates.
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