Voca obeys call for cheaper Euro payments

Payment processing company Voca is to change the underbelly of its IT infrastructure in a bid to make European transactions cheaper.

The firm, formally known as Bacs, is working with BEA Systems, Sun and Oracle to replace mainframe computers to comply with the European directive, the Single European Payments Area (Sepa) - aimed at driving down cross-border transaction costs by 2008.

Chris Dunne, commercial business manager for Voca, said: "The payments market is changing very quickly. Processors need to be practical, flexible and robust. We need to cater for a growing list of customer expectations and regulatory requirements. And we need to drive down cost.

"We needed a flexible, generic and modular payments infrastructure - one that comprised reusable common elements of hardware, network and software. And one that delivered an industry-wide generic security model."

Sepa stemmed from a meeting in 2000 of European politicians, who pledged the EU would "become the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010".

The new payments engine will have to accommodate the five billion transactions Voca manages each year.

Research from Voca found nearly a quarter (22 per cent) of 800 European firms believed the expense of cross-border payments had damaged business. Only 15 per cent of UK organisations were said to be aware of Sepa.

The Bank of New York has just completed a migration to Voca's Bacstel-IP.