Citi Expands Its Payments Innovation Toolkit with Investment in Icon Solutions

New York, NY: Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS), within Citi’s Services organization, has made an investment in Icon Solutions, a leading fintech provider of payments technology and consultancy services. In addition to the investment, Citi plans to expand its use of the Icon Payments Framework (IPF) to enhance its micro-services orchestration architecture. This investment and relationship with Icon Solutions demonstrates Citi’s strategy of working with fintechs to strengthen its technology and payments capabilities.

Citi is working on a multi-year modernization effort of its payments platforms. As part of the program, Citi is working with and has invested in Icon Solutions to expand its innovation toolkit and futureproof its payments services. TTS will be using the Icon Payments Framework (IPF) as part of its micro-services architecture.

Citi’s new payment platform will prioritize flexibility and accelerate the bank’s ability to respond to the exponential pace of change in payment infrastructure and the regulatory environment, as well as evolving client demands in an increasingly 24/7, real-time, digital-first environment.

Debopama Sen, Head of Payments, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions, said: “We are on a journey to unlock the full potential of the Citi network and respond to the need for a streamlined and efficient payment processing system. Through this relationship, we are removing platform complexity across our multiple products by following a process of ‘de-platforming’ common business services and creating reusable and extensible services that can be orchestrated using the IPF framework.”

“Our new approach will empower our engineering teams to respond quicker and more efficiently to industry developments, such as ISO 20022, and deliver high-quality innovation and functionality for our clients,” she added.

Benefits of the payment transformation program include:

• True end-to-end ISO native payments that meet evolving industry and regulatory requirements, and deliver richer data to clients
• Futureproof solutions that are scalable and cloud-ready
• API-driven interfaces to enhance and accelerate client access to data

Citi TTS manages a global network that spans more than 95 countries with membership in over 270 clearing systems. Clients can make payments in 145 currencies through an interface that is intuitive and globally consistent. With ongoing investments such as this, it will continue to meet clients’ needs for feature-rich, low-latency, high-throughput, always-on, 24/7 borderless payments.

Nick Nadgauda, Head of Technology, Citi Services, said: “The IPF enables Citi’s engineers to build, deploy and test capabilities rapidly. Coupled with independently deployable and evolvable micro-services, Citi will be able to horizontally scale for growing payments volumes and improve time to market.”

Tom Kelleher, Co-Founder and Director, Icon Solutions, adds: “We are proud to be working with Citi on their journey towards a truly efficient, flexible payments platform. By reimagining its payments processing to reflect a rapidly evolving ecosystem and emerging customer requirements, Citi can meet the opportunities and demands of tomorrow. IPF offers a sustainable alternative to traditional infrastructure to support this change, empowering Citi to take control, overcome complexity and simplify payments transformation across the organization.”

Citi TTS helps enable its clients’ success by providing an integrated suite of innovative and tailored cash management and trade finance services to multinational corporations, financial institutions, and public sector organizations across the globe. Based on the foundation of the industry’s largest proprietary network, with banking licenses in over 90 countries and globally integrated technology platforms, TTS continues to lead the way in offering a comprehensive range of digitally enabled treasury, trade, and liquidity management solutions.

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Media Contacts

Nina Das, Citi Global Communications
+1 (212) 816-9267 Nina.Das@citi.com

Ellie Fingleton at iseepr on behalf of Icon Solutions
+44 (0) 113 350 1922 ellie.f@iseepr.co.uk

About Citi

Citi is a preeminent banking partner for institutions with cross-border needs, a global leader in wealth management and a valued personal bank in its home market of the United States. Citi does business in nearly 160 countries and jurisdictions, providing corporations, governments, investors, institutions and individuals with a broad range of financial products and services.
Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi
Media Contacts:
Nina Das Citi Global Communications
+1 (212) 816-9267 Nina.Das@citi.com

About Icon Solutions

Icon Solutions is a leading specialist provider of payments technology and consultancy services simplifying banking transformation.

Icon is the past, present and future of payments. With a proven track record of delivering mission-critical solutions for Tier 1 banks, Icon is driving innovation in banking and payments. Icon combines industry-leading domain experts, services, accelerator assets and technology that empower customers to solve problems, fight complexity and embrace change.

Icon has applied its payments, technical and integration expertise to create the Icon Payments Framework (IPF), a low-code, cloud-native, open source-based technology framework. IPF enables banks to develop their own payment processing solution by leveraging the IPF software development kit and any desired optional modules or ready-made scheme packs. This can be done by the banks themselves or with help from Icon or a System Integrator. This is a fundamentally different approach to traditional vendors, with Icon’s software development kit being an integral part of the bank’s CI/CD pipeline, enabling banks to take control. This limits vendor technology lock-in but still enables banks to leverage Icon’s payments strategy and architecture pedigree.

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