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Al Fardan Exchange – UAE, a leading money exchange and remittance house, has successfully gone live with IRIS switch for its integrated salary cards solution. With this implementation, Al Fardan Exchange is providing automated salary disbursement services to large number of employers in UAE and has empowered the end blue collared worker with the facility of electronic money. TPS’ IRIS – A versatile cards and switching product provides an end-to-end solution for wage payment and online remittances to Al Fardan Exchange, through various delivery channels like POS and ATMs.

As a brief background to this innovative solution, Ministry of Labour mandated that all companies should pay and automate salary disbursement of their employees through registered exchange houses or banks. TPS, being a cards and payment processing solution expert in the region, once again bridged this gap through its innovatory salary card solution for end-to-end automation.

This salary solution is based on TPS’ Switch and Prepaid Card System IRIS and TPS’ Web Portal PRISM product. It’s a corporate payroll solution designed to improve the salary disbursal process, enabling companies and their employees to process and manage salaries efficiently, in compliance with the stipulations of the UAE Ministry of Labour’s Wages Protection System. The innovative product infuses greater reliability to payroll management and has been a huge success in the UAE.

Al Fardan has branded the salary disbursement service for employers’ as “e-money”. Using e-money, the employer registers its employees online with Al Fardan Exchange and to avail payroll services powered by TPS’ PRISM Portal .This online interface improves operational efficiency and enables transparency throughout the process.

To enable salary cards Al Fardan Exchange is running TPS’ Switch and Prepaid Card System (IRIS) to connect POS and issue stored value cards to the employees of the companies. Al Fardan Exchange has deployed more than 70 POS terminals in all its branches and labor camps across UAE to offer salary disbursement. Leveraging the flexibility of IRIS, Al Fardan plans maximise the reach of salary disbursement and remittances by enabling extended delivery channels.

As millions of workers from around the globe seek employment in other countries, payments to their families back home are creating dynamic flows of money especially in the UAE. Al Fardan is positioned as one the most reliable exchange house in UAE offering remittance to millions of people. It has very successfully capitalized on this profitable market and by venturing in to offering WPS services its has been able to unite both Electronic Salary Disbursal and Automated Remittance services using TPS’ IRIS as a backbone under its e-money platform.

Till now TPS’ IRIS has processed over a hundred thousand of salary transactions. There are more three hundred satisfied employers using this service from Al Fardan. Numbers speak for its self; over the last six months the client base of Al Fardan has increased to more than thirty percent and the card base has crossed sixty thousand reflects the success of Al Fardan “E-money” project by opting for TPS’ IRIS and PRISM product.

“Al Fardan Exchange has already started its EWPS operations with renowned companies who are having thousands of workers/laborers in UAE and its going pretty well. Al Fardan is committed to provide services that deliver real value to its customers. It is a great privilege for us to help thousands of corporates across the UAE to disburse salaries as per the convenience of their employees, saving on the trouble of withdrawing and handling cash and the additional accounting required for cash transactions.

Employees on the other hand are enjoying the simplicity and convenience of receiving salaries directly on the Salary Card with an option to remit directly through e-money card. Employees can now withdraw their salaries and remit at the same time from the POS Terminals installed at our branches and labor camps spread across different locations in UAE”

Mr. Osama Hamza Al Rahma,
General Manager, Al Fardan Exchange.

Commercial Bank of Kuwait, one of the leading banks in Kuwait, has successfully implemented IRIS, the next generation switch and alternate delivery channel manager. With 53 branches conveniently placed throughout Kuwait, the Commercial Bank of Kuwait operates the second largest full service network in Kuwait. CBK is one of the forerunners in the region for having diversified e-banking products and capitalizing on it by delivering them through its alternate delivery channels.

It is noteworthy to mention that prior to current architecture; HPS was powering the ATM network and hosting Debit/Credit Cards of CBK. However, the bank was limited by the restrictions posed with the incumbent architecture, as the credit card and debit card products lacked specialization and were based on standard generic models. With the dynamics of both Debit and Credit Cards being dissimilar from operational as well as product life cycle perspective, CBK faced a major challenge at the hands of legacy system which had both high operations cost as well as limitations to expand product range and services. The architecture was not flexible which lead to a high time to roll out new service on each channel.

IRIS now not only drives ATM/CDM and host debit card, but also functions as a middleware and channel manager for efficient delivery channel operations and reduced budgets. The bank also takes advantage of the dispute resolution module for quick identification and removal of any disagreement issue of customer. CBK wanted to target a greater customer segment by introducing different Automated Deposit services, which the legacy system would not cater for.

The migration strategy was divided in clear and simple phases. The initial Phase catering to card migration to IRIS and driving of ATM, later stage involved shifting of credit cards to AFS and driving deposit machine as well. In the final stage all the delivery channels were to be connected to IRIS rather than host. In this migration, IRIS ensured that the customers should not face any sort of disruption during the cutover phase.

IRIS was selected because of its proven track record, flexibility and robustness of the solution and its unparalleled feature set. After a detailed review IRIS at CBK constitutes of ATM Switch, Card Management System, EMV Acquiring and Issuing, Cash Deposits, Bill Payments, ATM Monitoring, Host Interface, Call Center CRM, KNET and VISA interface, Channel Manager, Middleware, EJ, SMS integration, Remote Distribution and other modules as part of single platform.

The transition has brought flexibility for both debit and credit card products, as the respective teams can own and pursue tailored products. With Iris, CBL has embarked on a strategic path to enhance its market share through the delivery of greater customer service and increased coverage.

“CBK has a clear objective to be technologically innovative to achieve its business goals. We selected IRIS over the other options because of the flexibility and scalability the solution offers. The improved process efficiency and the ability to market new services quickly, helps CBK to increase its competitive edge in the region.”

United Bank Limited, one of the largest banks in Pakistan with a solid track record of fifty years and over 1112 branches, has inked a deal with TPS for migrating from Phoenix switch to IRIS for its complete remote banking program. Phoenix, driving the complete remote banking program, at UBL is one of the most complex sites managing a multitude of e-Banking services. With this deal, UBL becomes an example of one of the first and the largest site, driving transactions of over 1.5 million debit and pre-paid card base customers in Pakistan, to migrate from Phoenix switch to IRIS.

Currently, Phoenix at UBL is sitting at the heart of transaction switching and is the hub of all e-Banking activities at UBL. The bank’s decision and trust to migrate from Phoenix to IRIS is another challenging agreement between the teams as the current architecture is a complex one with various modules connected with Phoenix.

IRIS is the next generation of transaction switch with built in end-to-end integrated delivery channel and will provide UBL with the following benefits:

To ensure excellence in its customer service, UBL is committed to continue the expansion of its alternate delivery channels and service offerings. To keep up with its dynamic service offerings, UBL has new requirements each day. UBL wanted an architecture that will simplify the complex network of heterogeneous systems and solutions, by providing a singular interface to the hosts, shielding all the intricacies of the front-end channels and effectively isolating their complexities from back end systems. Hence the plan to migrate is the result of a) UBL’s desire to consolidate its operations on a single platform from its complex desperate platform b) and also its requirements to launch newer services all the time quickly and effectively.

“Following an extensive review of the market, IRIS was the best choice to fulfill its requirement. The proven live site, the flexibility and the robustness of the solution, made IRIS the perfect choice for UBL”, Dr. Khalid Aslam, UBL

“UBL’s experience and successes with TPS goes a long way with several e-Banking initiatives taken up and successfully implemented. Based on the track record, proven successes, time to market the solutions, UBL opted for TPS once again as their technology partner to help them move ahead with their ambitious growth strategy. UBL has aggressive plans to go live with IRIS very soon and we are confident that TPS will work hand in hand with us to meet our stringent deadlines and aggressive growth plans.”

S.M.Abbas,
UBL

Today’s competitive banking landscape demands world class services while the ferocious competition stresses the need for service differentiation. Committed to service excellence, banks are now offering a wide array of innovative services that are dependent on a series of complex software applications and advanced systems to deliver real time information to staff and customers and enhance its operational efficiency. These systems and applications are hence mission critical and it is vital that the applications are accessible at all times.

However, Inherent to every technology license agreement is a level of risk. Banks are constantly in the process of preparing, preventing and recovering from incidents that may cause disruptions in their businesses. After all, the disruption of banking services can be catastrophic in terms of the businesses reputation, customer satisfaction, revenue and the brand name as a whole.

TPS holds the trust that is placed by its valued customers at the highest regard and recognizes the responsibility for ensuring a long term performance and availability of products deployed at client sites. Hence to ensure peace of mind and business continuity of mission critical services used by banks, TPS has partnered with NCC Group UK to provide protection solution of its software applications. This step has been taken as a measure to reassure the customers of TPS stability and commitment to best practice.

NCC Group, being the largest software escrow provider, protects client worldwide with the most comprehensive solution designed specifically to assist organization which are increasingly dependent on crucial assets which they do not own or control. Under the escrow agreement, the NCC group securely holds a copy of the source code on the end user’s behalf, which is released to the end user if TPS fails to meet or maintain it contractual obligations or becomes unavailable to support the application, for example through going out of business or being taken over.

Under the agreement, the customers can utilize NCC group’s most comprehensive escrow solutions which, in addition to holding the source code, verify and test the source code for readability and completeness through integrity tests, to ensure that they could be used to achieve a successful rebuild if necessary. Optionally the customers can opt for 'Full Verification' testing process which involves testing consultants carrying out a full build of the application with the co-operation of the software supplier and documenting the process in an audit report.

Several banks are already in the process of evaluating the escrow agreement, whereby Commercial Bank of Kuwait is the first bank to sign the NCC’ escrow services for IRIS with TPS. This agreement serve as an insurance policy to make sure that the bank can have access to the source code upon the occurrence of an agreed upon ‘Release Conditions’,for the purpose of maintenance, update and enhancement of the software.