Bulgarian BORICA-BANKSERVICE and Equens Cooperate in SEPA Processing

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Sep 19, 2011, 10:00 ET

UTRECHT, The Netherlands and SOFIA, Bulgaria, September 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

10th Inter-CSM Agreement for Equens with Bulgarian ACH

BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD, Bulgaria's national clearing house, and Equens SE recently signed a bilateral agreement for the exchange of SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) payments. For Equens, one of the largest European card and payment processors, this 10th inter-CSM agreement underlines its continuous dedication to SEPA. The partnership is scheduled to go live before the end of this year.

This agreement is an important step in optimising the financial flows between Eastern and Western European countries. The collaboration provides the banks of both communities with a fast, cheap and low-risk method of achieving reach with the banks of the other community and enables simple and effective exchange of SEPA payments. The partnership is based on the Interoperability Framework of the European Automated Clearing House Association (EACHA).^[1]

The partnership with BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD represents Equens' 10^th CSM interoperability^[2] agreement. As one of the major processors in the SEPA region, Equens offers full reach to all its clients throughout Europe. The company is currently processing SEPA transactions for banks and CSMs in sixteen European countries, and is constantly expanding its CSM community and interoperability with other CSMs across Europe and beyond. In addition to the agreement with the Bulgarian BORICA-BANKSERVICE, recent developments include the exchange of SDD transactions with SECB (Switzerland) in August and the signed agreement with TransFond (Romania) for SCT last June.

Michel Stuijt, General Manager of Market Management at Equens: "We are very pleased to establish this bilateral link with BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD. We truly believe in the importance of SEPA. Our SEPA transaction volumes and client demand consistently show progressive growth. Based on our strong European foothold and promising outlook, we will continue to invest in SEPA, both for inter-bank and intra-bank processing. The connection to BORICA-BANKSERVICE is an important step for us to improve our reach in Bulgaria as it offers substantial benefits for our clients with connections in Bulgaria in terms of reachability, speed and costs."

Aleksandar Stanev, Procurator and Chief Director of Business Development - Payment, Information and Software Services at BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD: "BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD, one of the founding members of EACHA, strongly supports SEPA development as an important milestone for the integration of payments across Europe. Links between CMSs are essential bridges between communities and they will ensure SEPA benefits for banking clients. The connection to Equens will enrich the current reachability^[3] of our clients and is an important step in our continuing effort to expand the SEPA reachability of our community."

Note to editors:

About BORICA-BANKSERVICE:

BORICA-BANKSERVICE plays an important role as an infrastructure provider for the Bulgarian payments industry - both for retail and card payments. Among the company's main priorities is the development and operation of payment systems. Those priorities ensure high-quality, reliable and innovative payments for all participants.

Another important focus of the company is to develop and offer value-added services with the purpose of expanding the scope of payment services. These services include electronic invoicing presentment and payments, as well as electronic identities for secure transactions.

BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD strongly supports SEPA development and is one of the founding members of EACHA.

For additional information on BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD, please visit http://www.bobs.bg.

About Equens

Equens SE is one of the largest payment processors in Europe, leading the market for future-proof payment and card solutions. Thanks to an extensive and competitive range of services, the company seamlessly meets the requirements and wishes of the European payments market. Equens supports the development of a single, uniform European payments market (SEPA), and is dedicated to the standardisation and harmonisation of European and global payments. With clients and partnerships in multiple European countries, the company offers pan-European market coverage from offices in four countries - the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Finland. With an annual processing volume of 9.7 billion payments and 3.9 billion POS and ATM transactions, Equens SE has a European market share of more than 12.5%.

For additional information on Equens, please visit http://www.equens.com.

1. EACHA - the European Automated Clearing House Association - promotes and ensures harmonisation in terms of technical interoperability between European automated clearing houses (http://www.eacha.org).

2. Equens' CSM is also connected to DIAS (Greece), Iberpay (Spain), ICBPI/Banca d'Italia (Italy), KIR (Poland), OeNB (Austria), SECB (Switzerland), VocaLink (UK) and soon Deutsche Bundesbank (Germany) and TransFond (Romania).

3. BORICA-BANKSERVICE AD has been successfully connected to Deutsche Bundesbank's SEPA-Clearer system since December 2010.

SOURCE BORICA–BANKSERVICE and Equens