• Bangkok Bank and financial technology provider FIS partnered to unify payment acquiring platforms, channels and merchant services 
• The transaction volumes increased by 100% while achieving operational efficiency and faster turnaround time
• The system improves transaction processing scalability

Singapore, 12 August 2021 — Bangkok Bank and financial technology provider FIS^® (NYSE: FIS) have won the Best Retail Payment Implementation Award at The Asian Banker Financial Technology Innovation Awards 2021.

Bangkok Bank’s project brought notable business impact and improvement in retail payment features 

Bangkok Bank and RakBank were the finalists for the Best Retail Payment Implementation Award. Bangkok Bank’s project achieved high scores in payment features, project scope and business impact. Bangkok Bank, one of the largest banks in Thailand by assets, encountered challenges in addressing the evolving business needs in payment services and the ability to launch new payment products with speed. It faced high costs because of its legacy payment systems. Bangkok Bank and its technology partner FIS implemented a unified payments platform (UPP) to integrate all acquiring platforms as well as replace and transform its legacy systems.

Project Scope: Bangkok Bank unified the payment acquiring platforms, channels and merchant services  

Bangkok Bank applied a unified platform across all payment channels and devices including transactions authorisation engine and merchant management. It consolidated all its retail acquiring channels including ATM, point of sale terminals, e-commerce channels, in-house channels and local, as well as international cards. The implementation entailed the migration of over 10,000 terminals from the legacy platform to the FIS system. 

The system enabled new revenue streams for the bank while reducing its dispute losses and operating expenses. The bank’s open architecture facilitates a faster launch of new retail payment products. It enhanced the payment capabilities with dynamic currency conversion, multi-currency acquiring, contactless cards, QR payments and Promptpay. It provides cardless cash withdrawals at ATM terminals while merchants can use QR codes for initiating and processing ‘request to pay’ transactions.

Business Impact: The transaction volumes increased by 100% while achieving operational efficiency and faster turnaround time

The bank’s payment transaction volume increased by almost 100% following the implementation of UPP. The solution deployed currently processes about 600 transactions per second and is capable of scaling up further. It can process about 600 transactions per second using this solution. The system also provides merchant processing and complex merchant hierarchy structures to improve the efficiency of the bank’s middle and back office operations. It supports merchant relationships, flexible fee management and merchant terminal management. It reduced the time to onboard merchants from three days to one day. It also improved operational efficiency and reduced the overheads in acquiring programmes due to platform consolidation.  

The system consolidates card payment warehouse, expedites dispute management and provides real-time settlement and reconciliation engine. It provides real-time data access for online views and end-of-day batch transactions, and supports payments data monetisation through payments data warehouse. 

Technology and Innovation: The system improves transaction processing scalability

The complex implementation entailed migration of over 10,000 ATMs, one million merchants, 30 million card base and over 30 interfaces. It has demonstrated good scalability with the ability to process close to 400 million transactions a month and provides the foundation for future payments and scale in transaction volumes.

Other shortlisted payment projects include RakBank‘s software as a service-based mobile payment service that allowed parents to make secure payments to schools in the United Arab Emirates using any bank card. Bank of China is also implementing a cloud-based system that supports card payments, e-payments and wallet payments, authentication, reconciliation and merchant management in China.  

About The Asian Banker Financial Technology Innovation Awards

The Asian Banker Financial Technology Innovation Awards Programme, refereed by prominent global bankers, IT consultants and academics, provides an undisputed benchmark of technology implementation in an increasingly fierce marketplace. A stringent three-month-long evaluation process determines the awardees from across Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The awardees are honoured in a gala event that recognises their efforts in using the best technology to run their institutions and bring superior products and services to their customers. 

About The Asian Banker

The Asian Banker is the region’s most authoritative provider of strategic business intelligence to the financial services community. The global research company has offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Manila, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Dubai, as well as representatives in London, New York, and San Francisco. It has a business model that revolves around three core business lines: publications, research services and forums. The company’s website is www.theasianbanker.com.

For further information, you may get in touch with:

Mr. Mobasher Zein Kazmi

Head of Research

Tel: (+61) 452 514 145

mkazmi@theasianbanker.com