The IT system which supports the UK's
Faster Payments system was created, in 18 months, by a team of
"obsessional planners" facing a non-negotiable deadline and no room
for compromise.
APACS and UK banks decided to create a service which could
clear payments in a day at the end of 2006. It went live as planned
in
May 2008.
Faster Payments was the first new UK payment system to be
introduced in 20 years. It offers shorter times to clear payments
than the three days needed for the Bacs payment system. Within six
months of its launch, Faster Payments had processed about 60
million
transactions worth £24.9bn.
Any system that handles money and payments relies totally on the
trust of users if it is to be accepted, says
Nick Masterson-Jones, director of information technology at
Vocalink.
"The key challenges in this programme were driving to a hard end
date while ensuring that there were no compromises, at all, on
quality," he says.
Vocalink used standard
Prince 2 methodology for the project management. But
Masterson-Jones says this project differed from other IT projects
in theway the emphasis was on quality, time and cost. "A payments
system needs to be engineered to a very high level of quality
because any issues could destroy confidence," he says.
The system is designed with no single point of failure so the
service continues when there are problems.A lot of effort went into
thinking through the consequences of a failure of every
component.
The technology system, which runs Faster Payments, is in two
parts: a front office that links to banks to capture all payment
details, and a back office that records, stores and settles
payments.
The front office uses an application from eFunds which Vocalink
has customised. This sits on HP non-stop servers. There are two
sets of servers which can both handle the complete load alone if
required. These two stacks also communicate so they both know the
status of the other.
Information sent to the front office from the banks' systems is
captured and sent to the back office. The back office system then
calculates how much the banks owe each other. It runs three times a
day and sends the information to the Bank of England.
Keeping to schedule
At its peak, 150 people worked on the project, made up of a
mixture of permanent and contract staff. The firm brought some of
its offshore developers onshore for the project.
"With a fixed programme schedule, we needed the maximum level of
interaction between designers and coders," says
Masterson-Jones.
A team of engineers from Perot Systems in India worked alongside
UK staff. "It worked well and cut down the length of time it took
to resolve issues," says Masterson-Jones.
The system is built to last using modular design so upgrades can
be done without disrupting the service. "We avoid the 'Big-Bang'
approach to replacement by keeping the system constantly up to
date."
When you are used to running IT projects where mistakes are not
an option,being methodical and, in the words of Masterson-Jones,
even obsessive are essential qualities.
Banks involved
Abbey
Alliance and Leicester
Barclays
Citi
Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks
Co-operative Bank
HBOS
HSBC
Lloyds TSB
Nationwide Building Society
Northern Bank
Northern Rock
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Monthly figures since launch - full months only
Volume Value
June 4.16m £2.26bn
July 6.98m £3.62bn
August 7.94m £3.78bn
September 11.65m £4.85bn
October 15.82m £6.19bn
November 16.14 £5.45bn
Figures from APACS