Insights

During TAS Group’s workshop at the recent Payvolution virtual event, Stefano Macchi, Global Payments’ subject matter expert, illustrated the great potential of the new SEPA standard developed by the EPC. R2P, together with instant payments and open banking, enables PSPs to offer a more digital, efficient and end-to-end user experience, irrespective of the target segment: consumer, business customer, merchant or public admin.

While the actual roll-out of the standard has been postponed to March 1 2021, from a technical point of view, everything is ready for the first initiative launched by EBA Clearing, whose testing phase began in July, with 27 partners from the financial world from 11 European countries that have joined the project.

R2P is not an additional payment instrument but a new, all-digital way of requesting a payment for which a payee and a payer electronically exchange structured data through a message workflow, before exchanging money. Being initiated by the creditor, R2P allows for a 100% automatic reconciliation of the subsequent payment, even if done in several instalments and deferred instead of in real time.

On the application platforms and channels of TAS, a series of competitive services for customers on both the beneficiary / payee side and the customer / payer side are created on the basis of calls to the standard R2P infrastructure. These services integrate domestic use cases already implemented in the PayTAS scenarios for B2G / C2G interaction as well as on CBI Globe (the leading Italian Open Banking Ecosystem standard), but are ready for billers, PSPs and clients throughout the entire SEPA area.

Milan, October 13, 2020– TAS Group, (Italian Stock Exchange: TAS), a global provider of innovative solutions in card management, digital payments, financial messaging and capital markets, has announced that it has been ranked among the Top 100 in the 2020 IDC FinTech Rankings for the 12th consecutive year. The 17th annual vendor ranking represents the leading hardware, software and service providers to the financial services industry from around the world. Vendors are ranked based on 2019 calendar year revenues attributed to financial institutions. The full list for 2020 can be viewed HERE.

Executive Chairman of TAS Group, Dario Pardi, remarked, "We are proud to have been recognized once again among the top fintech players in these prestigiousrankings. Such a result confirms our domain expertise and reinforces our commitment to invest in and deliver innovation and agility to financial operators in today’s dynamic payments ecosystem. We will continue to strive to be the best and to serve the Financial Industry, offering both incumbents and digital challengers alike best-of-breed, leading-edge solutions solutions that are real game changers in today’s highly competitive market place. By empowering our customers to adopt new enabling technologies, they can make digital transformation a reality and overcome legacy challenges.”

The Fortune 500-style ranking categorizes and evaluates the top global providers of financial technology based on calendar year revenues from financial institutions for hardware, software and/or services. These providers supply the technological backbone of the financial services industry, an industry in which IDC Financial Insights forecasts worldwide spending on IT across the globe to exceed $577 billion (USD) by 2024. 

To thrive in a digital economy, financial services organizations must embrace innovative and integrate cutting-edge technology effectively to enhance the customer experience and achieve operational excellence. TAS Group and the vendors featured in the IDC FinTech Rankings, represent those providers committed to helping financial institutions successfully execute their digital transformation initiatives for the betterment of their customers around the world. IDC Financial Insights publishes a comprehensive report about the year's findings that is available to view or download HERE.

TAS has played a key role in supporting Europe’s financial community following the recent regularity and compliance changes mandated, with projects such as the T2/T2S Consolidation and the wider changes to Eurosystem’s TARGET services, the upcoming introduction of ESMIG and a general migration towards ISO20022. As a trusted and experienced partner during past Eurosystem migrations and with its payments solutions running at the heart of the ECB, TAS has been well positioned to offer both technological and advisory support to its customers in light of such challenges. 

In the Issuing and Acquiring domain, TAS continues to lead the way as a provider of innovative digital payments and financial software solutions to banks, PSPs and Fintech throughout Europe and the Americas. Most recently it further enriched its offering by adding a new cloud-native, API-based full microservices proposal that manages all types of payments including a fleet/fuel card solution.   

This innovation-driven strategy and investment in product development have contributed to the Group’s strong financial results this year, seeing a double-digit increase in EBITDA. TAS management is optimistic about the future where digital payments, boosted by the pandemic and the new norm, are expected to continue to grow.

For more information about the rankings, visit HERE and follow on Twitter @IDC and look for #IDCFinTechRankings.

Read the Press Release

The Eurosystem has communicated the milestones in the lead up to the final migration on November 2022. The main changes can be summarised as follows:

1. No milestones to reach until March 2021
2. New milestones have been added (User Testing activities started, Training for user testing started, Network connectivity tests on production started, Network connectivity tests on production completed)
3. Milestones not completed in 2020 will be postponed between 8 and 12 months.

With specific regard to the most operational impacts:

• NSP selection and contract preparation to be completed by 31 March 2021
• Software development for the required adaptation changes to TARGET2 to be completed by 30 June 2021
• Testing of the internal applications to be completed by 31 August 2021
• User Testing activities to be started by 1 December 2021

In addition the ECB has communicated that, as disclosed by the ECB’s Governing Council in July:

• All PSPs which have joined the SCTInst scheme and are reachable in TARGET2 should also become reachable in a TIPS central bank money liquidity account, either as a participant or as a reachable party (i.e. through the account of another PSP which is a participant)
• All ACHs offering instant payment services should migrate their technical accounts from TARGET2 to TIPS.

In order to implement the new European Instant Payments interoperability paradigm, a project has been launched starting in January 2021 where all participants must be live by 15 December 2021 and follow the additional milestones to ensure their go-live readiness in a synchronised manner across all national communities. In summary the TARGET2 participants have today:

• 6 months to confirm, review or fine-tune their NSP choice for TARGET2
• 9 months to complete TARGET2 developments and 11 months to finalise testing
• Less than 15 months to set up their TIPS central bank money liquidity account

Many banks will be using the TARGET2/T2S Consolidation delay to absorb the impacts of COVID-19 priorities and the implementation of TIPS accounts. However, the extra time will allow participants to improve their digital transformation and consider cloud strategies, improve data management and analytics, and embrace ISO 20022 more deeply and extensively. TAS is ready to support market participants ensure the best possible implementation of these projects, focusing on:

• NSP access in Cloud
• Intraday Liquidity
• Payments transformation
• Instant payments management in the new framework

Find out more on our dedicated page or get in touch with our experts

The consolidated half-year report of TAS Group, approved yesterday by the Board of Directors, highlights a growth in all financial indicators compared to the same period of the previous year, with double-digit increase (13.9%) in the Gross Operating Margin (EBITDA).

Dario Pardi, President of TAS Group, commented: "We are undoubtedly satisfied with the results obtained in the first half of 2020 which see an increase in all indices, in particular in margins, despite the period being characterized by an unprecedented pandemic and which led to containment world-wide, with important repercussions on the economy. These have been important months for us, marked by the conclusion of the corporate reorganization of Global Payments Spa and TAS International S.A., which led to an optimization of skills and an enhancement of assets for the domestic and international market. In addition, we have completed important transactions that will allow us to grow further in the future, particularly internationally. In fact, in June we completed the acquisition of Infraxis AG, a reference reality in the digital payments sector, in the Swiss and German markets, laying the foundations for consolidating our presence in the European market ".

"TAS Group - added Valentino Bravi, CEO of the Group - will continue focusing on technological innovation as the foundation of its business strategy, after an absolutely satisfactory first half. Although the future global economic outlook is uncertain, given the current crisis generated by the pandemic, we can look to the coming months with optimism, also thanks to the boost that digital payments are having, particularly in our home market. We therefore continue our commitment to complete software development projects with the usual determination, focusing investments on innovation and working to confirm our leadership as a company of Italian excellence recognized abroad ".

Geneva and Milan, September 14, 2020 - Information Technology and Solutions and Services (ITSS), a global banking software integrator, and TAS Group (TAS), a global provider of digital payments software solutions, are pleased to announce their new strategic alliance aimed at accelerating innovation in Financial Services. Through this partnership, ITSS together with TAS, both Temenos partners, will strengthen their services and be able to offer best-in-class solutions in the area of Payments, Card Management Services and Intraday Liquidity management to Temenos T24 Transact core banking customers worldwide. TAS’s state-of-the-art software allows banks, both incumbents and digital-first challengers, to deliver innovative payments products with a short time-to-market, integrating with and leveraging the latest technologies and making use of rich-data APIs to offer end users a superior customer experience. For over 35 years, TAS, through its deep domain expertise and advanced technology has brought its flexible, secure and high-performance solutions to financial operators around the world. Now, supported through this synergistic partnership, T24 Transact customers can leverage CARD 3.0 IE, a flexible, modular and scalable card issuing, acquiring and processing platform that can be easily and quickly deployed either on-premise or on the cloud. Since 2001, ITSS has been committed to delivering banking technology services and solutions to banks and financial institutions worldwide. As a Temenos partner, it has supported over 220 Temenos clients as a system integrator for all Temenos products including T24 Transact, FCM, Islamic banking, TAP, Multifonds, Inclusive banking and Infinity. ITSS’ global delivery capability and extended service offering enables it to establish long-term partnerships with its clients. Umberto Pardi, Executive Vice President of International Channel Sales, TAS said: “We are delighted to cooperate with fellow Temenos partner, ITSS, a leading system integrator with a global reach and excellent reputation, to bring powerful payments solutions through an extensive library of APIs integrated into T24 Transact core banking to clients in a matter of weeks. Together we enable banks to elevate their market agility in an ever-changing payment ecosystem”. Patrick Jaccoud, CEO, ITSS Global said “We are excited to embark on this mutually beneficial partnership with TAS to offer sophisticated payments solutions to our clients from a renowned partner. As we join forces to strengthen and expand our service delivery to our T24 Transact clients, we are confident that we will accelerate business growth for our clients to remain competitive”.

Download the press release

TAS recently contributed to ESMA’s (European Securities and Markets Authority) regulator consultations on Outsourcing to Cloud Service Providers, offering valuable recommendations on key requirements for financial market participants. The contributions were made as part of ESMA’s three-month public consultation phase on their June publication and will shortly be made available on the Regulator’s website. At TAS we continuously monitor regulatory guidelines and industry best practices to improve our solution delivery capabilities, both for SaaS and Cloud delivery models. We are therefore proud to state that we fully comply with ESMA’s guidelines in all our outsourcing offerings. Below are just a few of our most popular outsourcing solutions for the financial market community: PAG€ - the most convenient way to connect to ESMIG TAS SWIFT Service Bureau – beyond pure network access TAS 3DS Access Control Server (ACS) – secure buyer authentication for e- & m-commerce Hosting/Housing/Cloud @ TAS France (learn more) With more than 35 years of experience in software solutions for e-money, payments and financial markets and playing an active role in the Eurosystem Consolidation Project, we believe we have a responsibility to share our expertise and views with the European Financial Community and are always happy to do so. Working with TAS as your outsourcer means being guaranteed that we have the right focus on the business, as well as the full knowledge and control on the underlining application developed by TAS digital sw factory experts inhouse.

Mario Mendia, TAS Group’s International Markets SVP and Raphael Barisaac, Global Head of Cash Management and Global Co-head of Trade at Unicredit, were recently invited by Fintech Finance to speak with Ali Paterson in his Virtual Arena.

The topic was the dynamic European Payments scene today, how it’s evolving, the COVID-effect on payments, how ISO20022 is set to be a game-changer, and the challenges (and opportunities) of the T2/T2S Consolidation project.

Mario Mendia offered viewers valuable insights and shared his views on the upcoming changes to the Eurosystem, where TAS Group is playing an active role in the T2/T2S Consolidation Project.

In case you missed the Fintech Finace Virtual Arena discussion on the European Payments Ecosystem, you can watch it  on our YouTube channel.

 

As expected, the ECB has given the green light for the T2/T2S Consolidation 1-year postponement upon the request of the main representatives of the industry and as a reaction to the impact of COVID 19 on banking budgets. The Big Bang migration is now scheduled for November 2022 and the TCCG (Target Consolidation Contact Group) will meet on September 22^nd with the objective to issue the revised project roadmap milestones. Twelve more months give banks the opportunity to reassess some of the choices to be made. Here are just some areas that could benefit from further consideration:

• Network Service Provider and how to connect to ESMIG
• Management of ISO 20022 within the payment architecture of the bank. With more time available some of the payment back offices may be upgraded to ISO 20022 to improve quality of service and reduce operational costs linked to maintenance and processing complexity
• Alignment with Cross Border payment processing, in light of the SWIFT ISO 20022 migration
• Digitalisation of the liquidity management process
• Review of payment data governance and use of analytics

This is where we at TAS are ready to offer our contribution. We are already helping many customers in their Target2/T2S consolidation, supporting them in seizing the opportunities deriving from the postponement and are ready to help new customers profit from the Cloud for their NSP and ESMIG connectivity, in digitalizing their liquidity or just in making their payments infrastructures better able to process ISO 20022. Find out more on our dedicated page or get in touch with our experts

The merchant acquiring business landscape is undergoing major transformation. Two main things are driving this change: increased competition and technology.

Despite continuous growth in market volumes, regulation and increased competition from non-traditional players are putting pressure on already squeezed acquirer margins.

In this Mercator Advisory Group Research Brief commissioned by TAS Group, you’ll discover how ISOs and niche players in the Merchant Acquiring landscape can compete and thrive by leveraging the latest technology and applying smart thinking. The report is especially relevant given the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Download the white paper here to get all the insights and recommendations.