Temenos solutions selected by Middle East’s digital wallet STCPay

By Edil Corneille

Today, banking software company Temenos, announced that Saudi Arabian digital wallet STCPay has selected its cloud-native and cloud-agnostic Temenos Payments and Temenos Transact.

The Real-time, API-first solutions will provide a single, digital platform on which STCPay can rapidly create and update innovative digital services for retail customers. Using Temenos’ cloud and microservices-based technology, STCPay aims to double its customer base by 2021. In the long-term, the business aims to establish itself as the leading digital challenger in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.

Temenos Payments is said to provide Straight-Through Processing (STP) rates over 99 per cent and will underpin STCPay’s digital customer experiences. It will be integrated with Temenos Transact, a core banking product, and deployed on the private cloud to provide resilience and scalability to support the volumes of digital payments. This will provide STCPay with timely benefits in light of regional trends towards cashless banking as a result of COVID-19. According to the recent Economist Intelligence Unit report released by Temenos, 60 per cent of banking executives in MEA think cash will dip below 5 per cent of retail transactions in the next five years.

The new platform

Significant cost-efficiency gains are expected from the platform along with sustainable business growth. According to the Temenos Value Benchmark, a survey-based program providing an in-depth analysis of ways in which software capabilities impact a bank’s profitability, banks with STP rates over 90 per cent can achieve up to 8x higher revenues per customer, compared with banks with lower STP rates.

Temenos Saudi model bank will deliver pre-configured, country-specific capabilities and regulatory compliance to support STCPay to roll out its new platform in the shortest possible timeframe and at minimum cost. With model bank capabilities for more than 150 countries, Temenos’ software will support the seamless onboarding of new geographies across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and scale as STCPay’s business grows.

Temenos is collaborating closely with Red Hat to create a standardised cloud operating model for STCPay based on a collection of enterprise-grade, open-source technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Quay, Red Hat AMQ Streams, and Red Hat Storage. The collaboration will provide STCPay with the combined strengths of market-leading cloud-native and open source technologies.

Quotes

Ahmed Alenazi, Chief Executive Officer, STCPay, commented: “We are excited to partner with Temenos and unlock the vast opportunities of digital payments in the Middle East. Temenos brings to this partnership 20 years’ experience deploying advanced banking software and delivering next-generation digital experiences in Saudi Arabia. With Temenos’ market-leading technology and rich banking functionality, we aim to redefine payments, offering outstanding digital experiences that integrate into our customers’ lifestyles.”

Abdulrahman Tawfiq Almutairi, CIO, STCPay, added: “Temenos’ cutting-edge cloud and microservices-based architecture perfectly aligns to STCPay’s growth and innovation strategies. Temenos’ unique architecture will power DevOps and support continuous innovation by facilitating faster deployments that reduce time to market for new products and services. This agile technology will enable us to remain at the forefront of digital payments innovation by helping us to quickly respond to the evolving market landscape and needs of our customers.”

Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director, Middle-East & Africa Temenos, said: “It is a true privilege to embark on this exciting partnership with STCPay. We are seeing a significant increase in demand for digital payments across the Middle East and Africa region – the COVID-19 pandemic is only accelerating this trend. Our cloud-native, AI-driven software supports the exceptional digital experiences that customers want, but it also provides the business resilience and security that banks need now more than ever. As the only technology provider offering cloud-native banking software in this market, we are excited to deliver Temenos Transact and Temenos Payments and witness another use case for powerful and transformative cloud technology.”