Deutsche Bank’s Global Transaction Banking (GTB) division, one of the leaders in payments clearing and settlement across all major currencies, and Logica, a leading IT and business services company, have today announced their strategic alliance to launch an outsourced solution for SEPA Direct Debits (SDD)*1. Powered by Logica’s All Payments Solution (LAPS), Deutsche Bank will combine a new SEPA Connector offering with its existing, market leading SEPA processing solutions to provide its financial institution clients with low cost ‘plug and play’ SEPA functionality. The SEPA Connector will initially be targeted at debtor banks requiring a solution for complying with mandatory SDD reachability requirements in readiness for the November 2010 deadline, but also supports SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT)*2. The combined offering is available now and will be demonstrated at the International Payments Summit today in London.

The introduction of the SDD scheme, alongside the Payments Services Directive (PSD)*3, presents significant business and technology challenges for banks, The SEPA Connector is an easily implemented off-the-shelf product designed to address these challenges. Additionally, this model provides a roadmap for banks to either move to a broader partnering or outsourced service for payments processing with Deutsche Bank and Logica, or establish their own payments infrastructure upgrade using Logica’s All Payments Solution.

In the first phase of this partnership, the SEPA Connector will enable debtor banks to view SDD transactions, manage rejects and returns, as well as upload files for further validation and processing. Deutsche Bank will also provide connectivity to EBA Clearing*4 and its bilateral partners.

Michael Mueller, Managing Director of Wholesale Solutions, Global Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, said: “Attaining SEPA reachability and complying with SEPA Direct Debits places further strain on legacy technology for many banks. Through our partnership with Logica, we can provide our financial institution clients with access to SEPA clearing services based on best of breed technology. The SEPA Connector forms an integral part of our strategy for expanding the provision of outsourced services, while also presenting a strong business case for banks.”

Nigel Turner, Business Development Director, Payments at Logica, commented: “The parallels between Deutsche Bank and Logica in terms of SEPA progression make this partnership a powerful move. With regulatory pressure mounting and the business drivers becoming more apparent, the attraction of outsourced SEPA services will increase. The SEPA Connector enables banks to achieve SEPA reachability without having to make immediate major investment in infrastructure – giving them more time to plan for payments transformation. Having achieved economies of scope and scale, Deutsche Bank is well-positioned to deliver this service using our high volume payments hub, which has the necessary flexibility to support outsource models. We look forward to working together.”

Deutsche Bank already uses Logica’s payments hub to support its operations in 15 countries, which further enables easy roll-out of the SEPA Connector to the bank’s financial institution clients.