From the end of 2023, the range of users of the
Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) will expand: in
November of next year, the migration of payments systems from the proprietary
Multi Bank Standard (MBS) used up to now will begin in Austria. For the
companies in the Alpine republic, the changeover means work at first, but in
the end it has clear advantages. Because with EBICS, there is a seamless
connection to the largest European payments area around Germany and France.
Obviously the banks do not leave their customers to make the switch on their
own. First, however, the institutions themselves have to do their homework. In
a joint interview, Thomas Bargehr, Product Manager Banking Solutions and
Payment Services at Hypo Vorarlberg Bank AG, and Michael Lembcke, Leading
Product Manager at PPI AG, talk about the schedule, advantages and procedures.
Mr Bargehr, in July 2020,
the Austrian banking industry declared its accession to the EBICS Company, and
since then the introduction at the banks has been underway. How far along is
your bank, what is the further roadmap? We are currently coordinating the requirements for
automatic migration interfaces in the PSA (Payment Service Austria). They are
to be used to transport data and authorisation methods from the legacy
programmes and the MBS master data. This enables a user-friendly switch from
MBS to EBICS. The migration itself is to follow from November 2023 according to
the national project plan. From then on, all business customers must also
switch to EBICS.
Mr Lembcke, German
financial institutions have been using EBICS for quite some time, and we have
not heard of any problems. What advantages does this standard have for financial
institutions compared to MBS? For corporate clients, cross-border multi-bank
capability is particularly important. Too many different national standards or
procedures cause additional work and disrupt processes. Standardisation also
promotes possible process automation in the sense of straight-through
processing (STP). At the architectural level, EBICS enables an innovative,
contemporary design of payments systems.
Mr Bargehr, the further
development of MBS has been discontinued, so corporate customers will have to
switch to EBICS at some point. This causes work for your corporate customers;
what can be used to justify this? Since the introduction of the euro, payments and
the formats to be supported by the customer software have been subject to constant
change. So companies are already used to the fact that something changes every
few years. The manufacturers of enterprise resource planning software usually
accompany these developments in a timely and qualitatively excellent manner. Of
course, the same also applies to our own house, which always sees itself as a
reliable partner at our customers’ side.
Mr Lembcke, PPI AG is the
market leader for EBICS solutions and has been involved in the standard from
the very beginning. From a payments advisor's point of view, how is the
introduction in Austria going? So far, no significant problems have been
identified. The challenge, at best, is to make the transition as smooth as
possible for all parties involved. Of course, as a manufacturer of EBICS
software, it is our job to provide solutions. Obviously there was already a
functioning e-banking standard in Austria with MBS. But in the future, the
institutions and corporate customers in Austria will have a European multi-bank
standard that is based on state-of-the-art architectures and will make payments
in the country future-proof in the long term.
Mr Bargehr, such a
migration of data processing standards is by no means a trivial matter. How do
you ensure that nothing goes wrong and there are no downtimes? We ascertain the current status of the customer
well before the start of migration and thus determine any special requirements
in terms of technology and support at an early stage. Accordingly, we then
provide support for the companies until the migration. The keys to success are
a clean transfer of customer accesses to the EBICS server, a short and at the
same time manageable transition period as well as high-quality customer
service.
Mr Lembcke, PPI AG has
accompanied numerous migration projects towards EBICS. What approach do you
recommend to a financial institution? There is no one-size-fits-all solution here. The
procedure depends strongly on the strategy and customer structure of the
individual institution. A big-bang migration, in which all customers are
migrated at once, is quite conceivable. However, step-by-step migration
scenarios are just as justified, even if parallel operation of EBICS and MBS
becomes necessary. It is important to exchange information with the
institution's corporate customers, whose migration plans should be queried. In
any case, there is no reason for downtimes; migration during ongoing operation
is absolutely feasible.
Mr Bargehr, EBICS does
have regional differences; for example, France has insisted on some local adjustments.
Are there also deviations from the EBICS standard case in Austria? Even though EBICS is not yet a standard in Austria,
most banks already operate corresponding servers and clients due to market
requirements. However, they have different strategies: some buy off-the-shelf
solutions and operate them without further adaptation to national specifics.
Others – and Hypo Vorarlberg is one of them – analyse precisely those local
requirements and take them into account when designing their customer systems.
For us, PPI has implemented the respective special cases into the payments
solutions. Therefore, we have already been fully EBICS-ready since 2017.
Mr Lembcke, does EBICS 3.0
have the potential to end the discussion about the need for additional, PSD2-compliant
APIs? This is ultimately a discussion in which there can
be no result in the sense of a decision. Because just as EBICS is an
established standard mastered by all institutions, APIs are also an integral
part of the IT landscape due to their number. Both will coexist for some time
to come.
Mr Bargehr, what path will
Hypo Vorarlberg Bank take? Do you offer additional interfaces or are you
relying fully on EBICS for the time being? The smallest customers can continue to use our
online banking as usual. However, small and medium-sized companies as well as
large customers will work with us exclusively via EBICS in the future. We are
taking the EBICS migration as an opportunity to gradually switch off old
payments and banking systems and thus avoid double-tracking.
Mr Lembcke, a lot is
happening in European payments at the moment anyway; examples include the SWIFT
migration or Request to Pay (RTP). How is EBICS to be classified in this
context? The standard fulfils all the important requirements
for harmonising the foreseeable changes in European payments with each other.
For this reason alone, everything should be done to officially introduce EBICS
in other countries. Attention should also be paid to standardising the way of
use in order to increase acceptance. The areas of application are already
diverse. For example, SEPA instant payments can be processed with EBICS, and
RTP is supported in interbank communication. EBICS is the ticket for
participation in payments of the future!
0 comments:
Post a Comment