The Bottomline Universal Aggregator™ is the only one of its kind to support the most common types of payments for multiple payment service providers, including the recently accredited Faster Payment Service. The aggregator service has been designed to give banks, corporates, governments and non-financial banking institutions an easy plug-in to an array of payment clearing and settlement systems around the world.

Traditionally organisations had to invest significantly to implement and access each of these systems. As each system operated separately, it was inefficient and expensive.

Now, Bottomline’s first-of-its-kind service provides a single interface into the most widely used payment infrastructures such as Bacs, SWIFT, Bank of England services, Paym, CHAPS, CASS, NACHA, CREST, cheques and Faster Payments.

The service has been introduced as the UK financial services market undergoes a wave of change, with the Payments Services Regulator (PSR) seeking to drive a higher level of innovation, competition and more open access to the £75 trillion market of payment systems and infrastructures.

Craig Tillotson, Chief Executive of the Faster Payments Scheme in the UK comments: “We believe that the introduction of a competitive technical aggregation model is a critically important step in delivering our real time 24x7 service to all end customers in the UK. This direct access to Faster Payments and potentially other payments services in the UK will really benefit new entrants. We are delighted that Bottomline Technologies has achieved Faster Payments Scheme technical accreditation.”

The solution is easy to adopt and manages a wide variety of financial messages and payment instructions across multiple formats. Secure, highly scalable and resilient, it has been designed to handle significant volumes, whilst ensuring 24x7 continuity of mission-critical transactions.

“Millions of Pounds and Euros have been spent on managing and accessing legacy payment, clearing and settlement systems across Europe” said Ed Adshead-Grant, General Manager of Payments and Cash Management at Bottomline Technologies. “The Bottomline Universal Aggregator™ makes that a thing of the past. It delivers a highly cost effective, ‘plug-and-play’ way of accessing global clearing and settlement systems that can be managed as a single service.”