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One Standard For All Transactions

Article translated from the original that appeared in the Card-Forum magazine.

Following a tender process that took place during May 2002, Commerzbank AG selected ASx, the authorization, routing and switching solution from eps Electronic Payment Systems AG. ASx shall replace Commerzbank's legacy solution, allowing existing proprietary hardware to be replaced by standard components.

Business Environment

Commerzbank's 37,000 employees take care of six million customers, managed from their headquarters in Frankfurt Germany. As an integrated financial service provider, Commerzbank operates a network of 700 branches with more than 1,000 ATMs and 1,300 Statement printers. Through a subsidiary, Montrada GmbH, the bank operates a network of POS Terminals for electronic payments at retail outlets. The data processing center authorizes all transactions initiated by Commerzbank customers at POS devices belonging to other financial institutions. The transaction banking department (ZTB) is responsible for the complete electronic payment transaction business, taking into consideration the bank's future business requirements and the increasing popularity of self service banking machines. The transaction processing has become more and more complex due to many new products and services (i.e. statements of securities accounts) and the modified general framework.

Today, Commerzbank authorizes 36 million eurocheque, electronic Purse, savings accounts and service card transactions and the volume is continuously increasing. 24 hour availability is crucial to enable Commerzbank to provide a complete service to their customers.

Against that background, the project was launched to replace the old authorization and device management system by a modern standard solution.

Manfred Schulmeyer (Service Department TransAction Banking Payments ZTB P, Commerzbank AG) has been assigned to manage the Plasma project.

Technical Requirements

Commerzbank's existing system is based on fault-tolerant hardware and after ten years service, the application has reached the end of it's life cycle and shows serious limitations. These support related issues meant that Commerzbank was facing an enormous explosion of the total cost of ownership. To continue operations of this system would be uneconomic, therefore Commerzbank undertook a thorough investigation and search for modern alternative solution. Following the first tender phase, four international service providers were selected to present their solutions. As the tender process progressed, three of these suppliers were discounted and Commerzbank accepted the bid by eps Electronic Payment Systems AG.

In addition to the significant cost reduction potential, the existing reference installations were most convincing to prove the unique concept of Hot-Synchronization that allows the application to offer business contingency, independent of proprietary hardware, beyond that offered by using fault-tolerant hardware alone. The ASx system is fully scalable and enables the bank to react flexibly to future requirements. The state-of-the-art transaction System provides options for value added services even beyond financial services to create new business opportunities. The processing of electronic loading transactions for prepaid mobile phone cards at POS/ATM is just one example. The unparalleled interface modeling technique offers time-to-market advantages for the integration of new products. The development period for new interfaces has been more than halved. Furthermore, workflow processes can easily be modeled and optimized in short time. With the implementation of ASX, all device connections will be migrated to TCP/IP to support software distribution.

The hardware choice of Commerzbank was Sun; Host-providers have not been considered at all due to the costs involved. The service department responsible for systems operations ("Information Technology Production ZIT P") possess knowledge and experience on SUN-platforms, which allows Commerzbank to be independent of service providers for maintenance and support. Sun has supported Commerzbank intensively with the selection and sizing of the hardware, running corresponding benchmark-tests within their performance laboratories.

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