Published: October 01, 2008
The European Payment Council (EPC), the coordination body of the European banking industry in relation to payments, has embraced the ISO 20022 standards for the SEPA project. When designing the so-called SEPA Rulebooks for Credit Transfers and Direct Debit, the UNIFY (ISO 20022) XML Message standards developed by SWIFT, TWIST, OAGi, IFX and UN/CEFACT were always at their core. The focus thus far has been on Rulebooks that would apply for payment messaging between banks. But national banking communities have interpreted the designs for credit transfers differently for the receipt of payment instructions from their customers. The differences in some specific detailed technical respects have now been recognised as undesirable by the EPC. It published in June 2008 proposals on harmonizing specifications in this area. When accepted by the national banking communities, the resulting corporate-to-bank standards for SEPA throughout the EU will be the customer-to-bank UNIFI (ISO 20022) XML Message Standards as originally developed jointly by SWIFT and TWIST.
An ad-hoc working group of TWIST led by Steven Hartjes, senior partner at Ernst & Young, has written a white paper about the control framework for e-voicing.
As a result of a European Commission Decision, an EU Expert Group on e-Invoicing started its work early 2008. This group, with representation from TWIST, has the task to identify business requirements and responsibilities for the execution of specific work, as well as to steer the creation -by the end of 2009- of a European e-Invoicing Framework. The group issued in June this year its first status report. In the area of standards for invoice content, the report states that “there is substantial evidence that convergence between a number of European and global standards initiatives (within UN/CEFACT, ISO TC68 (the ISO20022 standard) and CEN (various Workshops) has and is continuing to take place. The Expert Group will encourage and promote full transparency of these activities, and ensure that its recommendations are submitted where appropriate to these standards processes, so that its recommendations can be validated by stakeholders and practical approaches found. It is unlikely that a single standard for the invoice will emerge or even be desirable given the diversity of user needs, but with careful design a core cross- industry invoice with appropriate extensions is within reach.”
Today’s business processes are to a large extent still paper-based, which results in inefficiencies as paper needs to be forwarded from one employee in a firm to the next either in the same firm or in another firm before it reaches its final destination. Many companies have implemented some form of dematerialisation, turning paper into electronic messages. A good example is the exchange of invoices, which allows electronic exchange of data, not just within a company but also with a company’s main trading partners, such as suppliers, customers and banks. Automation often comes with fear for weakened business controls. An ad-hoc working group of TWIST led by Steven Hartjes, senior partner at Ernst & Young, has written a white paper about the control framework for e-invoicing. This control framework presents an end-to-end analysis of how to control the purchase to pay process of a company, in which various controls will be linked to the objectives they aim to achieve.
Award TWIST and GE for Billing Standard
The Billing Standard for Bank Services (BSB) is increasingly successful. General Electric and TWIST were awarded the 2008 Adam Smith Awards in the category Bank Relationship Management. GE and TWIST won the award for the development of the BSB standard and their role in the successful implementation by Danske Bank and Barclays Bank. These awards are sponsored by Treasury Today magazine and aim to highlight “Best Practices and Innovation” in the field of treasury management.
Status Bank Billing Standard Roll Out
The first banks that implemented the BSB standard, Danske Bank and Barclays Bank, are reporting implementations beyond General Electric, the firm that pushed for realization of the standard. A range of other banks are reporting impending implementations of the standard. [[[PAGE]]]
Collaboration With the AFP for Bank Billing BSB Service Codes
The BSB standard makes use of a standardized service code list, which was originally created and is maintained by the Association for Finance Professionals. There is a need to expand this set of codes to cover additional bank services that are only offered outside of the US. The AFP has offered to work with a group organized by TWIST to expand the AFP Service Codes. Steve Weiland and Paul Burstein are organizing banks, service providers and corporates on behalf of TWIST to work with the AFP to identify and codify these additional services.
ISO 20022 Submission TWIST BSB standard
TWIST has for some years proudly hosted the Global Electronic Bank Services Billing Standard (BSB). BSB is a standard intended for use by banks and their wholesale transaction services users. BSB facilitates a monthly electronic communication of banking fees to their corporate customers and others incurring those fees.
TWIST has for some years proudly hosted the Global Electronic Bank Services Billing Standard (BSB)
It is TWIST’s intention to submit this standard with ISO 20022 in the near future. BSB registration with ISO 20022 will give users of both standards the assurance of a complete, coordinated, globally relevant set of standards. Recent developments related to ISO 20022 make the incorporation of BSB under the ISO 20022 banner a possibility. ISO 20022 now allows for interoperability between standards, which means the ability to selectively incorporate standards in the ISO 20022 portfolio without radical change to the native syntax of these standards. As a result this will allow incorporation of the TWIST BSB standard into ISO 20022 without adverse impact to the existing users of TWIST BSB.
In the coming months the management of TWIST will make preparations for submission of the BSB standards to ISO 20022. These preparations will be made together with the co-ordinator of the BSB Working Group and TWIST’s Architecture Committee. Existing users of the BSB standard, such as GE and a number of banks, will be involved in the process.
The AMQP open protocol for the transport of messages, has obtained the active support from Intel. Where earlier Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Borse had joined the AMQP working group that already consisted of JPMorgan, RedHat, Cisco, TWIST and others, Intel took the plunge and behind the scenes tested the protocol in its laboratories.
Using RabbitMQ AMQP* from Rabbit Technologies Ltd, and Pantor FAST*, high volumes of OPRA market data feeds and ranges of 45nm Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processors, AMQP handled message rates peaking at 5 million per second. In a white paper called “AMQP: A New Way to Connect” Intel published its finding and stated that “when extrapolated across all pre- and post trade messaging functions [...] it is clear that AMQP is capable of handling most workloads - including intra and interbank, bank to corporate, and corporate to corporate.”
In the white paper Intel further explains the need for such a ubiquitous open message transport protocol and the value of AMQP. “Many new technologies have promised to revolutionise the world of financial services. Yet, unlike innovations that are either tied to the motivation of a particular vendor, or based on technologies originally developed for other industries, AMQP is a dedicated de facto standard. For banks, there are clear cost benefits to a system that eliminates the need for proprietary solutions. For corporates the benefits extend even further. With interest growing in peer-to-peer payments and e-invoicing over low cost networks, AMQP opens up a range of new possibilities for businesses operating in all sectors. Crucially, AMQP is capable of rivalling proven proprietary solutions. [...] Like the internet, which quickly outgrew its academic origins, AMQP’s potential reaches far beyond the financial services industry. [...] By taking advantage of the foundations laid by the internet in terms of ubiquity, acceptance, connectivity and communication, AMQP can provide a solid foundation for business messaging in a truly connected world.”
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