​Tata Consultancy wins AU$13.6m RBA core banking contract

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has awarded a AU$13.6 million contract to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for the provision and implementation of a core banking solution.

Under the two-year deal, TCS will be replacing the RBA's existing banking platform with its BaNCS solution.

With the new contract, the RBA joins the likes of Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in adopting the platform that is in use by 370 banks in 80 countries.

The RBA confirmed in February that work on building the infrastructure behind its new payments platform is on schedule and currently undergoing industry testing, with rollout expected to begin before the end of the year.

The new payments platform will allow for near real-time funds transfers between bank accounts, regardless of who people bank with. All a user will require to perform an "instantaneous payment" with the forthcoming system will be the recipient's email address or mobile phone number.

The payments project is a cooperative effort between the bank and the payments industry to modernise key parts of our electronic payments system, which has been actioned under the guidance of the RBA's Payments System Board.

The RBA kicked off the project in 2012 when a review of its internal innovation capabilities laid out "strategic objectives" for the Australian payments system.

These included the ability for users to make real-time payments; send more complete remittance information with payments; address payments in a relatively simple way; and make and receive payments outside of normal business hours.

Also announced on Monday was an "out-of-the-box technology platform" that TCS said will open up Australia's National Broadband Network to more competition from telecommunications providers in the country.

TCS developed an Australia-specific version of its cloud-based hosted operations support system/business support system, HOBS, that it said is specifically designed to help telcos migrate their customers onto the NBN, activate them, and manage services such as billing, sales, and customer care.

"Simply put, HOBS reduces the time and effort it takes for a retail telco to onboard customers onto the NBN. That's good news for retail telcos. And more competition from more telcos has to be great news for consumers," said TCS head of telecoms and media in Australia, Stephen Argyropoulos.

"We've have carried out end-to-end testing with NBN to make sure that the product is fully compatible with the National Broadband Network from a technical perspective."

The company expects to announce its first customers for the product in the coming months.