Why Icon?
BNP Paribas wanted to differentiate themselves as a bank when it came to payments and understood that they needed to radically transform their payments estate to do so. In addition, the ability to process very high volumes of transactions was critical to BNP Paribas’ cash management business in a crowded and changing industry landscape. Therefore, faced with challenging timescales, they committed to deliver on a transformation strategy for their architecture and technology, starting with implementing instant payments.
The bank needed a partner to aid them with their transformational programme which encompasses:
- Building a modern, cloud native payments platform to support Instant payments.
- A refined business and IT strategy which identified the key business drivers needed to maximise the value of cash management and its impact on payments architecture.
- Assistance in designing an architecture for the execution of payments that supports future business needs.
- An assessment of the new real-time payments architecture based on real-life use cases, but also geared toward future requirements.
- An assessment of the current datahub roadmap in relation to the target architecture.
Icon's mission
To help banks transform their payments architecture, and “be in control” of the delivery of their payment solutions, resonated strongly with BNP Paribas. The bank valued the combination of Icon’s deep technology and payments expertise alongside its innovative technology solution. Specifically, IPF empowered BNP Paribas to a much greater degree than alternative solutions, allowing them to respond to the increasing demands of an open, data driven and real-time world.
This transformation was underpinned by IPF, Icon Solutions' state-of-the-art, cloud-native, flexible payments platform.
Our approach
Icon deployed a team of experts to support the initiative and work in close collaboration with BNP Paribas to meet these requirements, delivering:
- A market study of the current payments landscape, key trends impacting the future of payments, and recommendations relevant to the client’s target architecture
- An updated future state architecture that considers and ensures alignment with market developments and BNP Paribas’ business vision
- A roadmap for transformation, identifying the appropriate projects to implement and the required governance model to successfully deliver it
- Instant payment processing based on the Icon Payments Framework (IPF)
Benefits
- Icon enabled BNP Paribas to meet their first challenge on the transformation journey through the fast track deployment of IPF for instant payments. This included the two major milestones: Full system certification and; The successful processing of live transactions for the first European SEPA Inst scheme, which were both delivered within six months.
- The impact of our consultancy work with the client has set the target architecture and roadmap for the next three years with the customer whilst simultaneously building a platform that is both cost-effective and leverages cutting-edge technology.
- Building on this, IPF successfully provided a proven path for long term self-adoption by the bank. In stark contrast to traditional vendor models, continued support from Icon throughout the deployment of IPF was accompanied by knowledge transfer to BNP Paribas. This, coupled with the transparency of IPF’s architecture, has empowered BNP Paribas to respond to future needs such as growth, volatile transaction volumes and the deployment of value-added services, with greater speed and at a reduced cost.
