Fides is in the midst of a multi-year project to create a new and improved multi-banking platform. The new platform will be better, faster, and go beyond multi-banking, with the ability to deliver even more financial services to our customers.

Effectively, we are replacing all of our existing backend systems with a new and more flexible solution. We are creating a new multi-banking platform from scratch that will deliver all the functionality that our system today offers but will also have the capability to extend our service offerings, provide additional value to customers, and continue to extend our market leadership.

The project has been underway since November 2016, with the technology RFP process, vendor selection and the initial test build. We completed our first development phase at the end of August, in which we created a minimum viable product (MVP) with our technology vendor — an exciting milestone which paves the way for delivery of the new platform.

Pilot phase

We started the pilot phase of creation in September and plan to have it completed at the end of February 2019.  This will involve implementing the core functionality of the solution and testing it out. Key components of our scope include connecting the new multi-banking platform with all the input channels and output channels and setting up the payment services and reporting services. In this first phase we are going to implement MT101 messages, pain.001 messages and on the reporting side, MT940s and MT942s.

We’ll be running the new platform in parallel with the current solution throughout the development phases, to ensure there are no issues with this core functionality. As soon as the design and testing is solid, we’ll do a pilot, or beta test, with approximately ten clients.

Parity phase

In the parity phase, we’ll be making sure that the new platform can deliver all of the services that Fides offers today.  This also includes simplification and optimization of our entire landscape of applications, such as streamlining client setup, bank connectivity and message format conversions. The goal is to provide all the functionality in our current system in better and more efficient ways. During this phase, we’ll be doing continuous migration of customers but still running in parallel with our current solution.

Once everything is working — client messages are forwarded or processed exactly the way they should be — we’ll switch off the old system. From the client side, it will be completely seamless: clients will not even know that they are on a new system.

Innovation phase

The final phase is the most exciting: implementing new services that we do not offer today. The new multi-banking platform will also offer open APIs to facilitate innovation and new integrations, opening up even more potential.

We have many ideas for new services, but are waiting until development is further along to lock them down and prioritize which services will be rolled out first. Our client relations, client services and client implementation team will be actively soliciting input, feedback and ideas from customers.

Streamlining ARS and EFT web services through centralization

Today there are two separate portals for our ARS web application and EFT web application. With the new multi-banking platform in place, we’ll be able to offer a single, unified portal to the clients. Having a single login will streamline the process for our customers and also gives us the ability to provide additional services in future.

Our timeline for completion of the new Fides multi-banking platform is end of year, 2019 (of course, subject to change based on the development process) but we will keep you up to date!