ISO8583
The ISO8583 standard deals with Financial transaction card originated messages.
The i-Con platform enables banks and other financial institutions using a local or internal Switch to be integrated with National, or even International, Switches whilst ensuring that all functionalities such as ATM, POS, and USSD are offered by the original Switch and addressed through new processes and systems.
In addition, i-Con’s ISO8583 solution enables financial institutions to integrate with other m-commerce (mobile commerce) and integration platforms to provide new services to their customers such as:
- Bank Balance Enquiries
- Mini Statements
- Utility Payments
- Money Transfers within the institution (Internal Account to Account Transfers)
- Airtime Recharge
Case Example 1
A bank was using a local Switch to perform the switching of all ATM transactions. With the current switch, the Banks’ customers are restricted to using only the Banks’ ATM to do any ATM transactions. Debit cards that are not issued by the Bank cannot make use of any of the Banks’ ATMs.
The main goal of this project was to migrate the Bank off of their local Switch and to integrate it with the National Switch and ensure all the functionalities that are offered by the local Switch are addressed through new processes / systems.
This enabled the Banks’ customers to make use of any other bank’s ATM and POS machines (permitted the ATM is integrated to the National Switch) and for non-customers to make use of the Banks’ ATMs.
Case Example 2
A Bank desired to get into a strategic partnership with the national switch in order to launch mobile banking services for the benefit of its clients. The Mobile Switch was offering a complete m-commerce (mobile commerce) solution as a shared infrastructure that is now available to all financial institutions operating within the country.
The “shared infrastructure” approach that the Mobile Switch uses means that costs for each participating financial institution can be minimised, resulting in customer transaction costs being affordable while a single trusted brand name will help ensure consumer confidence. The Mobile Switch allows all financial institutions to launch their own brand of mobile banking services on a secure and expert managed platform.”
The mobile banking offering is a totally new offering to the Bank and the following standard mobile banking services will be delivered over the mobile banking channel:
- Bank Balance Enquiry
- Mini Statement
- Utility Payments
- Transfer Money within the bank (Account to Account)
- Direct Airtime Recharge
The following additional mobile banking services will also be delivered over the mobile banking channel:
- Instant Payment Interchange Technology Payments to other banks
- Instant Payment Interchange Technology Payments to any Cell Phone user in the country
- Cash Withdrawals from any bank or bank based agent, i-Con was used as the middleware platform to integrate the switch into the Banks’ core systems.
The interface made use of:
- OFS message component
- TCP/IP socket calls
- ISO8583 component to encode and decode the messages as well as field 127 ISO8583
- Mapping component
- SQL component
- Custom components
