RegionsEEARBS Launches SEPA Accelerator as Aid to Migration

RBS Launches SEPA Accelerator as Aid to Migration

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has launched the RBS SEPA Accelerator; designed as a solution to help corporate clients quickly and cost-effectively migrate to mandatory single euro payments area (SEPA) standards, while its US subsidiary has added an elctronic payments (e-payments) services.

The banks says that the SEPA Accelerator will lessen the burden for treasurers moving business process and technical compliance to the SEPA standard.

“Although all large corporates are well informed of the compulsory 1 February 2014 migration deadline for SEPA, it is clear from a ‘Eurofinance’ survey that more than 52% of regionally-organised enterprises have yet to finalise and implement their migration project,” said Steve Everett, global head of cash management, RBS. A gtnews payments survey also shows a state of ‘unreadiness’ for SEPA.

“This is further evidenced by the 30% and 5% market penetration for SEPA credit transfers [SCTs] and SEPA direct debits [SDDs] instruments respectively across the entire eurozone as at end of 2012, according to European Central Bank [ECB] figures.”

The RBS SEPA Accelerator aims to offer corporate clients a cost-effective solution for the migration of electronic payments (e-payments), collections and core master data management. While converting and enriching legacy formats into SEPA formats, the solution enables corporates to bridge the time-gap between now and the 1 February 2014 migration end date, to ensure that their internal standardisation projects are appropriately funded, without time and expertise pressure.

For a corporate implementing SEPA XML file format to their systems, the solution includes a feature which allows a corporate to independently initiate, monitor and amend file testing, validation and end-to-end simulation. This ensures that a corporate can quickly self-test their SEPA readiness, saving rejection costs and negotiation with their bank and enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider.

US e-payables service launched

Separately the bank’s US subsidiary, RBS Citizens Treasury Solutions, has launched an e-payments service for corporate clients to source revenue from their accounts payable (A/P).

The service, titled ‘accessPAYMODE-X’, is an automated clearing house (ACH) payables service that aims to generate revenue back to corporate customers.

“Instead of paying a fee to issue payments to their suppliers, our customers will actually get paid,” said James Gifas, head of treasury solutions at RBS Citizens. “In other words, customers can open a revenue stream that never existed before. Plus, accessPAYMODE-X reduces the significant staff and processing costs associated with cheque-based payments.”

RBS Citizens Treasury Solutions customers using accessPAYMODE-X will be linked to the e-payables network Paymode-X developed for businesses and their suppliers and powered by Bottomline Technologies. The network is drawing over 3,000 new suppliers each month, with more than 200,000 suppliers already enrolled.

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