Perago Financial System Enablers (Pty) Ltd, has been awarded the contract to provide a new national inter-bank settlement system for Namibia.
Perago was appointed ahead of international competition and will install its CRISP system, a system designed and built in South Africa by Perago. The system provides Namibia with a state-of-the-art solution settlement system that complies with the international guidelines for systemically important payment systems.
The Bank of Namibia is driving a banking industry initiative aimed at establishing a payment system infrastructure in Namibia. To date the Namibian banks have depended heavily on the South African banks to provide payment and clearing services through Bankserv, the interbank payment services utility company. While the Bank of Namibia is driving the settlement leg of the project, commercial banks are busy seeking solutions for the Namibian payment and clearing arrangements.
The implementation of the new inter-bank settlement system, based on real-time gross settlement principles, will, once implemented, enable the Namibian banks to exchange payments electronically, in real-time, among each other and between themselves and the Bank of Namibia. These fund transfers will also, in line with international practices, be final and irrevocable, bringing the Namibian system in line with international requirements for national payment systems.
All commercial banks in Namibia will be connected to CRISP via SWIFT, the international de facto financial message carrier. They will access the system through the CRISP-Entry user interface also provided by Perago.
The application will be hosted on high availability HP9000 L1000 servers provided by Hewlett-Packard. This implementation by Perago on Hewlett-Packard infrastructure is another successful outcome of the global alliance entered into between Hewlett-Packard and Perago in December 2000.
CRISP utilises IBM`s MQSeries middleware and Oracle as database management system thereby providing a highly reliable solution for this critical component of the Namibian financial system. The technical infrastructure will be provided by Perago`s implementation partner Intrinsic, which has also partnered successfully with Perago in Malawi.
The introduction of this system enables Namibia to join a select group of countries in Southern Africa that have the capability to provide real-time inter-bank settlement. The system provides the Bank of Namibia with the tools to manage the national liquidity position more effectively as the bank will have minute-to-minute information on each banks` position during the day.
The implementation of the new national payment system in Namibia is an outflow of the national payment system reform project of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Committee of Central Bank Governors initiative to improve the financial system infrastructure in the SADC region. The CRISP implementations in Malawi and Namibia will be compatible on a message-exchange level with the South African system thereby providing the first components of an integrated regional financial system that could facilitate cross-border transactions.
CRISP was conceptualised, designed and developed by Perago based on their experience of the development and implementation of the South African Multiple Option Settlement (SAMOS) system. The decision by the Bank of Namibia to implement CRISP follows close on the heels of the first implementation of CRISP in Malawi. Given its central bank background, Perago is able to assist and guide central banks in formulating the policies and business rules required for the effective functioning of the national payment system.
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Perago, a company in the Comparex Holdings group, specialises in financial systems on a national level, including national payment systems and financial market systems.
The experience of Perago in the national payment system domain extends from the core of the payment system, namely the interbank settlement system, and covers interbank payment clearing and payment instrument development.
Perago has also been active in the South African financial markets. A forum of 15 participant organisations in the South African money market appointed Perago to re-engineer the market in order to create an electronic marketplace. Perago was also involved in the South African STRATE initiative, the dematerialisation project of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange and the South African banks.
Perago has assisted STRATE with project management, business analysis and in integrating their SAFIRES system with the SAMOS system of the SA Reserve Bank in order to achieve delivery-versus-payment.
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