Solution Overview
Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution
Agile and Efficient Transformation to a Lower-Cost, Market-Responsive
Payment Solution
For too long, the financial services industry has been forced to compromise when it comes to transforming and upgrading their payments environment. In today’s payments environment, institutions can no longer afford to compromise - they must evolve to business models that enable them to meet regulatory demands, launch new capabilities, address emerging payments opportunities, AND, at the same time reduce expenses and protect their assets. The limitations of either/or need to be replaced by the benefits associated with “AND” and a culture of doing both.
What You Will Learn
The Cisco® Comprehensive Payments Solution combines Cisco partner Distra’s modern, open-standards-based payment application with the flexibility and performance of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ to provide an integrated platform that financial institutions can employ to transform their payment environments. Financial institutions and payment processors can use the agile and efficient Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution to:
● Improve payment revenue by delivering solutions quickly to meet market needs
● Better manage the payment business with real-time alerts, operational statistics, monetary and liquidity positions, processing performance, and system status
● Provide 24/7, secure payment services
● Process multiple types of payments on a single platform, allowing organizations to quickly address cost, regulatory, and competitive challenges
© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 5 ● Decrease infrastructure costs and scale dynamically, using only needed resources
● Decrease operational costs, making configuration changes in minutes versus months
Challenge
In the payments processing area, there has been incredible growth in the number and types of payment
transactions over the past 10 years. According to industry reports, credit and debit card transactions in emerging markets will see double-digit growth for the foreseeable future. At the same time, new payment terminals, ATMs, and mobile phones will offer new payment channels and features. And now, payment systems are subject to new government regulations, and new fraud attacks. Legacy payment systems are costly, and not agile enough to meet the needs of today’s rapidly changing payments environment.
As a result, financial institutions are looking for a reliable payments solution that is agile and more cost effective. Payment transformation is driven by three core objectives:
● Protection of payment integrity, security, and reliability
● Reduction of costs necessary to operate, maintain, and adapt payment solutions
● Differentiation of payment services to increase market share and revenue
Universal Payments Platform
The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution supports the need of banks, payment processors, and retailers to reduce transaction costs, increase business with innovative payment offerings, and better manage the payments business with accurate and up-to-date information. The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution enables real-time convergence and consolidation of payment types for financial and nonfinancial institutions. It enables different payment and message types to be run across a single platform, allowing organizations to quickly address cost, regulatory, and competitive challenges, with minimal risk and maximum reliability (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution: Convergence and Consolidation of Payment Types for
Financial Institutions
Prebuilt Payment Components and Integrated Payment Solutions
Within the Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution are many prebuilt payment components that have been integrated into payment processing solutions. Distra’s modern payment processing solutions include a Retail Switch and a Wholesale Payments Switch. The Retail Switch and Wholesale Payments Switch applications can coexist on the same platform, enabling payment processing and infrastructure convergence for multiple payment types. The solutions offer complete point-of-sale (POS) and ATM functionality for the retail switch, and batch or real-time, Automated Clearing House (ACH), and other account-based transactions for the wholesale switch.
Improved Monitoring, Reporting, and Customer Experience
© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 4 of 5
Figure 2. Improve Cash Management and Regulatory Compliance through Access to Real-Time Monetary Positions
Security and Compliance
Security and compliance are critical to all payment processing. Security options include encryption, use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections, masking of sensitive information, and more. The underlying Distra Universal Payments Platform is certified as fully compliant with the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), the global security standard developed by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council.
Intelligent Load Balancing, Fault Tolerance, and Dynamic Scalability
At the heart of the Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution is the Distra Mission-Critical Application Server (MCAS). MCAS distributes the switch across a number of standard specification servers, operating as a single logical entity even though the deployed platforms may be distributed across the data center or across geographic locations, including the organization’s disaster recovery site. MCAS includes robust fault tolerance, automated congestion control, dynamic scalability, and real-time performance.
Business Benefits
The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution is an integrated platform that financial institutions can employ to transform their payment environments and improve business results:
● Reduced total cost of ownership: The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution uses the scalability of the Cisco Unified Computing System, catering to a client’s specific performance and scalability
requirements. The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution offers fail-safe fault tolerance in software, providing the same - and often better - levels of performance, reliability, and availability than is possible with traditional payments processing platforms.
● Improved service agility and regulatory compliance: In conjunction with ready-to-deploy components, unique tools can make rapid changes to the system with little effort or reliance on specialist skills, making compliance with regulatory requirements and responses to competitive activity significantly simpler.
● Increased customer satisfaction: Customers want improved insight into their payments business, and the Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution provides real-time business and operational alerts. Unparalleled real-time access is provided to operational statistics, monetary and liquidity positions, processing
performance, health, and system status.
Why Cisco?
Cisco is the industry leader in delivering highly secure, flexible, and scalable networking solutions, including converged IP and wireless networks. The Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution combines Distra’s modern, standards-based payment application with the flexibility and performance of the Cisco Unified Computing System. The result is an integrated platform that financial institutions can employ to transform their payment environments. Banks, payment processors, and retailers no longer need to compromise. Now they can address new payment business opportunities and new regulations and at the same time reduce transaction costs by transitioning to the modern and agile Cisco Comprehensive Payments Solution. This highly configurable solution enables low-risk transformation over time, provides a reliable infrastructure that scales so that you pay for the performance you use, and promotes better management of the payments business.
