Banks and financial institutions today are under tremendous regulatory and competitive pressures - be it to mitigate credit card fraud with initiatives such as EMV (EuroPay, Mastercard, Visa) or Line Encryption implementations; or to reduce churn and increase consumer card spending with initiatives such as Loyalty programs or Customer Retention campaign; to optimize and streamline costs by outsourcing non-core banking operations or even just to keep up-to-date with the latest technological innovations to maximize productivity. In the meantime, they also have to keep a lookout for new competitors entering the fray such as telecommunications providers offering multi-purpose micro-payment schemes, financing, private-label credit schemes, or even traditional insurance companies offering mortgages.

As such, the management of banks and financial institutions are often caught in the difficult situation of trying to justify their returns on investment in spending millions of dollars in upgrading their existing payment infrastructure which have been serving them well for the past 15 - 20 years.

Compounding the situation is the fact that newer technologies are coming into the payments marketplace much faster such as new digital and wireless communication technologies, smart-card technologies, biometrics and the like, while consumers today are also becoming increasingly savvy and particular in terms of demand for convenience and service levels expected. Payment transactions have become more diverse as these transactions can now originate not only from EDC terminals, but also from mobile cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers (PCs), automated teller machines (ATMs), Internet web sites, call centres, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and more.

Recognizing the uphill battle that banks and financial institutions are currently facing in having to cope with an ever-changing payment landscape, continuous technological advancements and rising security threats, GHL Systems has engineered its Adaptive Secure Payment Architecture (ASPA) with the aim of specifically assisting Banks in overcoming these issues and more importantly, empowering them beyond merely existing as just another player within an increasingly competitive industry.

With ASPA, Banks have a robust and rapid deployment foundation which enables them to gain their competitive edge by introducing new applications and services quickly and securely with minimum technology obsolescence. This is achieved through a holistic treatment of the Banks’ entire payment infrastructure instead of taking a fragmented and silo approach to each payment channel.

For further information about GHL Systems and other products and solutions, please email us at int.sales@ghl.com (International) or my.sales@ghl.com (Malaysia).