Perago, a SIA-SSB Group company specializing in infrastructures for central banks, has won the tender issued by the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) to design and develop the new interbank payments technology infrastructure in Palestine.
The creation of the new interbank payments system is a strategic development towards the Palestinian State as it constitutes the basis for the establishment of a modern financial infrastructure. It will enable the efficient clearing and settlement of payments within the banking system in Palestine, providing a resilient and secure platform for the development of the financial services industry to the benefit of the entire Palestinian business community.
The new payments technology infrastructure envisaged for Palestine will be the world first implementation of a packaged solution capable of processing both wholesale and retail payments, offering RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement) as well as retail payments clearing functionalities, within the same system.
The integration of these two requirements is compliant with the recent guidelines issued by the World Bank, aimed at promoting the concept of a single platform for the clearing and settlement of interbank payments within a national economy characterized by limited volumes (so called ATS Automated Transfer System).
The RTGS system, thanks to the advanced features and flexibility of the SIA-SSB Groups Perago:rtgs software, will fully automate and manage in real-time the payments flows exchanged across the banks accounts. Currently there are 20 banks (10 of which are foreign) operating in the Palestinian territories offering access to the banking system through a network of 205 offices. The infrastructure is expected to process a daily average of around 10,000 payments.
The Palestinian payments system will reach levels of technology that are on par with those of the most advanced economies, allowing for the development of further innovative services such asonline banking and mobile banking.
Thanks to its advanced multi-currency capability, the new system will be able to manage all four currencies currently accepted within Palestine on the same platform. The currencies initially catered for are the Euro, US Dollar, Israeli Shekel and Jordanian Dinar.
It is envisaged that the projectwill be completed during the course of 2010.
With the project for the Palestine Monetary Authority, the SIA-SSB Group consolidates its position of international leader in the field of financial infrastructures for central institutions and further extends its presence in the Mediterranean area. The project in Palestine follows on the go-live, in the first four months of 2009, of the Perago:rtgs system as the engine for the new interbank payments infrastructure in Norway, Sweden and Egypt.
D.C.