Transforming Into a Leader of International Card Payments

The Challenge

Rabobank’s transformation project started with the Transaction Processing Infrastructure Renewal (aka TAPIR). Although there was a risk of missing out on unique selling points, Rabobank executives felt that the uniqueness would come by offering new standard services faster than the competition.

The Solution

The main solution used for this project was BASE24-eps for switching, authentication and authorization on real-time balance and real-time transaction processing together with other ACI solutions, such as ACI Interchange for the clearing and settlement, ACI Automated Dispute Manager for disputes and ACI Payments Monitoring for dashboarding, alerting and monitoring.

The first decision was to create a new transaction processing environment next to the existing one, so both solutions were able to run in parallel and gradually migrate transactions to the new system.

The Results

The TAPIR project started in 2014. Millions of accounts and cardholders are dependent on absolute certainty their retail payments go through, every second of the day without a second of downtime, so timing was critical. In 2016, the first transactions were migrated, and by 2017, all transaction flows were running through the new system:

• Rabobank is now able to add schemes and select both national and international central infrastructures
• Additional business case benefits include increased speed to market, standardization, ability to move to Linux and public cloud, and more

The Challenge

Rabobank had a relatively small credit card portfolio and had outsourced that business to an external party. This contract was ending, so a replacement solution had to be found within one year. Bringing it back in house was the best option because it offered:

In addition to these benefits, Rabobank wanted to replace the Maestro debit card with the Mastercard and Visa debit cards due to their higher acceptance rates worldwide. This required a credit card management and transaction processing setup. The perfect stepstone to moving Rabobank closer to their desired goals.

The Solution

Rabobank only offers charge cards that need to be paid off fully by the end of each month. They made the decision not to move the full credit card account over, but rather to issue a brand-new account and a new credit card. This decision would have an impact on its clients, but Rabobank felt this was an acceptable advantage for end users.

The Results

Given the very limited timelines for implementation and replacement, the project was a complete success:

• The process was transparent to the end user, except for the replacement of the physical card
• The modernization generated a major cost savings for Rabobank’s credit card processing arm
• Rabobank created a direct connection with Mastercard to reduce the processing cost per transaction, especially cross-border transactions

The Challenge

The credit card project allowed Rabobank to move into the final phase: replacing their debit card portfolio. They had an in-house management system but it blocked innovation. A primary account number debit account (PANDA) was created to replace the Maestro debit card solution. Moving from Dutch PAN to the real PAN would prepare Rabobank for increasing demand from its consumers. This project focused on specific product settings that needed to be implemented around debit card payments versus new technology being introduced.

The Solution

Rabobank expanded the existing ACI Issuer deployed solution to activate the debit card management capabilities and move from an in-house proprietary solution. The bank also chose to use any payment type support, optimized consumer experience, parameters-based configuration, consumer payments flexibility, advanced analytics and reporting, loyalty and alternative financing, and enhanced customer segmentation.

The Results

In 2021, the PANDA project began to replace all Maestro debit cards with Mastercard and Visa debit cards. Rabobank’s next goal is to offer new debit card solutions and expand into other digital payment possibilities by early 2023.