FSS (Financial Software and Systems), a leading global provider of integrated payment products and a payments processor, announced its Business Support Suite enables BancNet, the Philippines ATM switch operator, bring efficiencies of speed and scale to automate billing, and settlement for all switched transactions among participants, and to provide their members with an efficient dispute platform facility.  In 2020, BancNet processed a record one billion transactions through its platform, significantly contributing to the growth of the country’s digital payments economy.    

BancNet is a consortium of 124 members comprising banks, cooperatives, electronic money issuers, affiliate switch networks and independent ATM deployers in the Philippines. It has a 31-year track record of building digital payments infrastructure and currently operates a network that spans more than 22,000 ATMs and 400,000 POS terminals. 

In the wake of a rapid shift to digital, FSS Business Support Suite helped BancNet modernize legacy, disparate Billing and Settlement systems and improved flexibility and agility to respond to evolving market and regulatory requirements. A full stack offering, the Business Support Suite consolidates critical operations, such as Partner Management, Fees Computation, Partner Settlement, , Billing and Dispute Management, for a wide set of transactions, onto a single platform. The resulting benefits of an integrated approach include reduced operational costs, improved control and visibility across payment processes and lower risk exposure for member banks.

Speaking on the partnership, Krishnan Srinivasan, Chief Operating Officer, FSS PayTech stated, “The Asean market is of strategic importance to FSS. We are proud to collaborate with Philippines’ largest payments consortium to modernise core billing, settlement processes and dispute management among participants for smooth functioning of the payments system. The partnership affirms FSS’ ability to work with central institutions and deliver large-scale digital transformation projects. We remain fully committed and confident that this partnership will contribute to significant digital payments growth in the Philippines and the region.” 

BancNet Chief Operations and Technology Officer Arnel Lim said, “For three decades, BancNet has been at the forefront of the payments revolution in the Philippines, building critical payments infrastructure to enable its members to make formal financial services accessible to more people, including financially underserved segments. The efficiency from automating billing and settlement processes, including dispute management among the participants, helps us gain member trust, attracts more participants and more transactions onto our network, advancing our efforts to build inclusive digital payment ecosystems at scale.”

The Business Support Suite automates critical back-office functions and helps maintain financial integrity of the ecosystem, mitigate risk, and foster trust amongst scheme participants. With the Business Support Suite, BancNet can streamline billing, settlement, and dispute management between member institutions for transactions originating from any delivery channel such as ATM, POS, and   Internet Gateway. Through partnerships with multiple interchanges – Visa, MasterCard, KFTC , JCB and UnionPay -- the system supports billing and settlement for transactions between member and non-member institutions. Built on a standards-based, open architecture framework, the Business Support Suite simplifies integration with upstream and downstream financial systems such as partner systems, multiple Interchanges, Switch and Core Banking systems. The system is PADSS and OWASP compliant.