equensWorldline to process de Volksbank's Multi-Currency Payments

Utrecht — 28 / 11 / 2018

De Volksbank, the fourth largest bank in the Netherlands, has chosen equensWorldline SE, a subsidiary of Worldline [Euronext: WLN], the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, to process its Multi-Currency Payment transactions. This step consequently follows de Volksbank’s strategy to strengthen their focus on delivering value-added services to their customers even further and move the processing of their non-euro payments to equensWorldline as highly reliable, future-proof and efficient payments service provider. Last March the bank already selected equensWorldline as their Instant Payments Back-Office Processing partner. The contract will initially be for five years.

The decision of de Volksbank to outsource parts of their back-office payments processing is a logical choice, given the rapidly changing customer demands and the accelerating digitalization of the payments arena. Moving towards a global end-to-end real-time and technically standardized payments world, banks are now seriously reconsidering their business and operational model for their payments processing business. Because of the massive investment needs and running costs for establishing and maintaining an end-to-end stable infrastructure, sourcing models for payments processing are more and more becoming a viable solution for banks of all sizes, as this will lower their costs, reduce complexity and free up resources.

De Volksbank is a Dutch holding which has four distinctively positioned customer-oriented bank brands: ASN Bank, BLG Wonen, RegioBank and SNS, and is one of the first Dutch banks taking steps towards outsourcing their payments processing back-office.

The Multi-Currency Payments service will ensure that non-euro currency payments around the world of de Volksbank´s customers will be processed in an efficient and future-proof way. This flexible Multi-Currency Payments solution, which offers very rich functionality, is part of the extensive and modular Back-Office Processing product portfolio of equensWorldline, which also handles other payment types such as Instant Payments and SEPA and supporting services, like Embargo- and FATF Check. This modular EPC and PSD2 compliant portfolio can be used by any bank; large, midsized or small.

Michael Steinbach, CEO of equensWorldline SE: "We are very pleased that de Volksbank chose equensWorldline as their preferred provider for processing Multi-Currency Payment transactions, following their previous decision to select us for the processing of Instant Payments. It demonstrates their trust and satisfaction regarding the way we’ve been supporting them. Outsourcing parts of their payments business will lower de Volksbank’s complexity and costs and will allow them to focus on the front-end, where they can differentiate themselves and strengthen the relation with their customers.”

"Last year we started up a program with equensWorldline for the instant payments back-office engine accompanied with clearing and settlement, as a first step for us to outsource parts of the payments processing chain. The successful instant payment program is for us extra proof  that we chose the right partner and therefore it was not a difficult choice  to select equensWorldline’s  Multi-Currency Payments service as a natural follow-up. Of course equensWorldline offers outstanding value for money, a fast time to market and has a track record in offering demanding and critical services which were for us other important decision criteria", added Terry Smit, Manager Payments & Savings at de Volksbank. "We value their modular and future-proof concept of services. With this flexibility we can focus on items where we really can make a difference to our clients and save costs.”