NatWest's IPF implementation: the approach
To ensure NatWest’s new payments strategy aligned with its commitment of being ‘a relationship bank for a digital world’, Icon worked closely with the bank’s technology teams to support the development of a long-term vision for IPF implementation aligned with business needs and goals, leveraging standardised assets and tools.
When it came to development, NatWest used IPF to accelerate the in-house build of its new payments infrastructure to challenge the more traditional ‘vendor solutions’. The solution was deployed on a new cloud infrastructure, which ensured a scalable and agile foundation for the bank’s payment services.
The bank also committed to up-skilling its staff with three cohorts of IPF training. This was delivered across all levels of the team, from NatWest’s engineers to its Business Analysts and Senior Architects.
Key features of the implementation included:
- Revamped delivery approach: Inspired by the capabilities of IPF, NatWest Payments completely overhauled its delivery methodology, adopting a more agile and customer-focused approach
- Dedicated joint teams for CHAPS and SEPA Instant: NatWest Payments created two dedicated teams to tackle the complexities of CHAPS and SEPA Instant Payments, ensuring focused expertise and timely delivery of each solution
- Consultancy and delivery support: Icon’s payments consultants worked as one with NatWest, providing their expertise and playing a key role in building NatWest’s new delivery team, ensuring effective execution and a smooth transition, ensuring lineage from PayTech Strategy to Go-Live
- Leveraging optional IPF modules: The bank additionally utilised optional IPF scheme packs to create significant efficiencies in implementing the solution, optimising time, resources and costs
Benefits and outcomes
As a result of implementing IPF, NatWest achieved the following outcomes:
- Future-ready scalability: Modular design that supports ongoing innovation and evolving payment flows
- Regulatory compliance: Seamless adherence to complex payment scheme requirements
- Enhanced speed and reliability: Improvements for CHAPS, along with real-time processing for SEPA Instant payments, improving customer satisfaction while also
lowering cost of change and run - Commitment to innovation: NatWest was able to adopt
new technologies (Mongo, Kafka, AWS, etc.) in time to meet strict project and regulatory deadlines. This would not have been possible without the quick mobilisation of
technical and delivery teams, and the bank’s commitment to training its developers and bringing the wider team up to speed on the bank’s modernisation journey
The bank's partnership with Icon has also achieved significant milestones on its journey to modernise the NatWest payments ecosystem:
- First bank-wide, scalable implementation of SEPA Instant Payments: NatWest successfully launched SEPA Instant Payments, enabling customers to make euro transactions within seconds across participating European countries, 24/7
- Enhanced orchestration capabilities: All outbound payment initiation is targeted to leverage the IPF orchestration capabilities
- Accelerated cloud migration: NatWest was able to deploy 16 new Amazon Web Services across its SEPA and CHAPS workstreams. This includes seven flow services using MPS and the IPF Software Development Kit, six supporting apps provided by Icon and three event adapters using IPF core
NatWest recognised the advantages of building in-house and selected IPF to accelerate delivery and empower its engineering teams to focus on high value integrations and innovation. By embracing IPF’s capabilities and adopting a future-focused approach, NatWest has raised the bar for excellence in financial services.
What is the Icon Payments Framework (IPF)?
The Icon Payments Framework (IPF) is an internationally proven development framework encompassing flow creation, integration, as well as the required payments functionality.
It gives banks the power to accelerate the transformation of their own payment platforms by helping them build, test, integrate and deploy payment processing solutions much faster and more robustly. This ensures that development projects translate into solid value.
By using IPF for its payment solutions, a bank keeps ownership over everything it develops, with full control over timelines and costs.
