Atos Origin’s Rob Pols (left) with Robert Heisterborg of ING Dutch banking heavyweight, ING, and Franco-Dutch IT services company, Atos Origin, have formed a partnership to offer back office payments processing to banks and corporates within Europe. The companies have been in extensive contact for the last two years, following ING’s outsourcing deal with Atos, and this partnership has been discussed for the last eight months.
Robert Heisterborg, global head of payments and cash management at ING wholesale banking, describes the offering as ‘a combination of the strengths of both organisations’. ‘ING has a leading position in the European payments and cash management area, and Atos Origin is a well established company helping out various banks and corporates in their IT environments,’ he says. According to Rob Pols, CEO of Atos Origin in the Netherlands, the vendor ‘saw a real opportunity in what ING has built with its SEPA factory’, and believes ‘payments are a very important strategic direction for Atos Origin as well as for ING. We definitely saw an area where we could both benefit from each other’s experience’.
The partnership will see ING act as the payments processor to corporate clients and to banks, with Atos Origin being the IT solution provider and dealing with the connectivity into the bank’s SEPA factory. ‘We know our bank; we know how we’ve organised it. We don’t know other banks and we’re not in a position to help other banks in changing their environment. That’s the strong part of teaming up with a partner like Atos,’ explains Heisterborg.
The target for this partnership is small to mid-sized European banks and corporates, but also big global banks where the euro is a relatively small currency. ING has made a considerable investment in its SEPA payments factory, something that this partnership should help it to get a return on investment from. For Pols, the question facing other banks and corporates is, ‘do they want to make that kind of investment when they can hook up with ING and Atos to make use of what has already been built?’.
Despite the obvious hype around the partnership, Heisterborg is taking a ‘realistic view’. ‘Taking these types of processes and ring fencing them, then airlifting part of the whole payments processing system and sharing it with another environment is not easy. There’s a lot of work to do.’
The firms have identified a list of 80 prospects, and Pols confirms they have ‘engaged with some’ and are ‘in bidding stages’ with others. He believes that the first win for the new partnership is ‘not too far away’.
Cláudia Wada on