Technology & Finance
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
SWIFT Payments Solution Goes Live in Australia on Microsoft BizTalk
Cuscal, the leading wholesale financial services provider in Australia and Decillion Solutions Australia, have announced the successful implementation of a SWIFT real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) developed by Decillion based on Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004. Cuscal processes in excess of $13 billion worth of RTGS payments per annum representing more than 90,000 transactions.
The system, developed by Decillion using Microsoft BizTalk 2004 Server and the Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT 2.1, has been in live operation since early November. It enables Cuscal’s clients to create and manage SWIFT RTGS payments via a highly secure internet based portal. With annual transaction volumes in excess of $13 billion the system is critical to the Cuscal’s service offering.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Steve Ballmer on Vista in the FT
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, got a lengthy profile in the New York Times and affiliated papers on Sunday...Now the FT weighs in with an interview online ahead of the Vista launch.
What does Vista mean?
“I think the place to start has got to be with the person who uses computers. I can talk about business versus consumer, but let’s just talk about the individual consumer: What does it mean to me, whether I’m writing on one of these machines at home or at work,” said Ballmer.
Chase Paymentech Turns Vista PC into Card Processor
Chase Paymentech, the world’s largest merchant acquirer and provider of payment processing services, has announced it will provide credit card payment processing to small businesses via the Windows Vista Business operating system, which went on sale today.
Banking -- Retail, Wholesale, Payments, FX • Comments • Trackbacks • Permalink
Merrill Buys First Republic -- A Bank with a Strategy
Merrill Lynch has announced that it will buy First Republic Bank of San Francisco for about $1.8 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition not only gives the brokerage firm an established private-banking firm focused on wealthy investors, but also a commercial bank with 43 branches that makes business and mortgage loans.
In the winter issue of Windows in Financial Services, Terence Roche of Cornerstone and the highly readable gonzobanker, cited First Republic as a bank with a clear and clever strategy—it makes jumbo mortgages to wealthy individuals and then uses the relationships to sell them wealth management services.
This is a clear differentiator from most banks which, despite all the noise about CRM, never manage to dig out the client information they possess and act on it.
Roche credited Jim Herbert, the bank’s chairman, president and chief executive with the strategy and Katherine August-deWilde, COO, with making sure that wealth managers act on the information the bank collects.
Merrill paid a 44 percent premium, so the bank must be doing something right.
Financial Services Is a People Business -- Shinsei CEO
“Financial services is a people business. What is going to make the difference between success and failure is going to be the people,” says Thierry Porté, CEO of Shinsei Bank. The highly successful bank runs iFlex on Windows.
Banking -- Retail, Wholesale, Payments, FX • Comments • Trackbacks • Permalink