Capgemini,  one of the world's foremost providers of consulting, technology, and outsourcing services, announced it has formalized a strategic relationship with VocaLink and is adding VocaLink's PayPort Managed Payment Service to Capgemini's Connected Banking solution. PayPort will provide banks and Payment Services Providers (PSPs) alike with comprehensive, yet simple access to the core UK payments infrastructure. 

Designed to be flexible, agile and capable of rapid evolution, Connected Banking is an innovative solution for a cloud or hosted banking ecosystem based on Temenos T24 that connects industry leading products to provide superior banking services. Connected Banking is designed for customer centricity across every channel for a better customer experience, supported by a robust digital framework with powerful analytics.

With availability through Connected Banking from Capgemini, VocaLink's PayPort will initially provide Financial Institutions (FIs) with a single point of access to the Faster Payments Service [2] , without the need for FIs to build or maintain their own costly infrastructure. Over time, PayPort is expected to expand to also enable access to many other payment types, such as Bacs, Swift, SEPA instruments and CHAPS.

"In today's digital world, where customers demand real-time payments, banks need the agility to keep up with new and alternative payment services," said Kartik Ramakrishnan, Senior Vice President, Capgemini Financial Services. "By integrating VocaLink's PayPort within Connected Banking from Capgemini, banks can compete with newer providers without maintaining costly payments infrastructure. They can provide fast, secure and immediate payments services that are completely scalable on Connected Banking powered by Temenos."

By integrating a rich ecosystem of proven-industry solutions for pricing, payments and decisioning, across the complete front, middle and back-office, Connected Banking allows banks, to quickly adopt new technologies to deliver seamless customer transactions and create richer, more customer-centric programs. Pre-integrated capabilities for core banking, fraud monitoring and prevention as well as integrated regulatory reporting are just a few examples of other capabilities found on the Connected Banking platform. Connected Banking from Capgemini can be delivered as a hosted private cloud.

"As a trusted payments partner in the UK for many years, VocaLink is pleased to be able to offer a solution that simplifies and broadens access to the Faster Payments Service in the UK, together with Capgemini," Jim Wadsworth, Product Director, VocaLink. "By making PayPort available through Connected Banking from Capgemini, more banks will have the peace of mind that their payments services will be available in real-time, while being maintained and updated to keep pace with changes in technology and the evolving payment environment."