Fast and Agile Transaction Processing With The Concourse Financial Software Suite™

The Challenge

Back office transaction processing systems have traditionally performed batch processing, which means a group of electronic payment transactions are processed at a set period of time. At the scheduled time, transaction data is collected, entered, processed, and batch results are produced. In the past, batch processing was considered an efficient way to process a high volume of transactions all at once. However, times have changed. Today, financial service companies, as well as their clients and business partners, want real-time access to transaction data and their financial positions.

Additionally, clients and business partners have unique and increasingly complex demands as to how they want their electronic payment transactions to be processed. Financial institutions, networks, processors, and merchants that are able to meet these unique, complex, and ever changing requirements have a distinct competitive advantage over financial service providers who are limited by their slow and rigid transaction processing environments. The bottom line is clients and business partners are demanding better customer service and only those companies that can process electronic payment transactions quickly, reliably, and cost effectively will survive.

The Solution

Your electronic payment transaction processing environment can be fast and agile with the help of Concourse Financial Software Suite™, a powerful PCI PA-DSS compliant back office software suite. It is specifically designed to manage electronic payment transactions such as credit, debit, POS, ATM, mobile, and prepaid. Its continuous processing architecture and user-configurable business rules make it the fastest and most flexible transaction processing solution on the market today.

Concourse is comprised of four business services that can be implemented as stand-alone products or as an integrated solution.

• Concourse – Extended Settlement™ ensures the settlement, clearing, and funds movement of electronic payment transactions.
  
  
• Concourse – Reconciliation™ validates the matching of electronic transactions between internal and external data sources such as authorization systems, external networks, and third-party processors.
  
  
• Concourse – Disputes™ provides workflow management for dispute-related activities such as adjustments, chargebacks, and representments.
  
  
• Concourse – Fees & Commissions™ automates the assessment and processing of transaction-based fees, including interchange, gateway, and processing fees. It also calculates commissions, royalties, and rebates.

Concourse is FAST!

Concourse breaks the batch barrier because it continuously loads transactions from a wide range of data sources and begins processing the data as soon as it arrives. Since Concourse spreads processing throughout the day, it alleviates the end-of-day pressures associated with meeting service level agreements and increases the ability to quickly deliver time sensitive information. Concourse also provides real time access to transaction data via a secure PCI PA-DSS compliant browser-based viewer. This streamlines research procedures and enhances customer service.

All Concourse business services leverage a continuous processing architecture. As data is committed to the centralized transaction repository, it is shared with each Concourse business service so that service-unique processing can occur. Below are a few examples of the benefits the Concourse continuous processing architecture provides:

• Concourse – Extended Settlement™ – Concourse continuously loads electronic payment transactions from multiple sources and concurrently calculates the resulting settlement positions. Because the data is being loaded in real-time, settlement processing is spread across the day. This not only ensures on-time funds movement, it also provides continuous access to financial positions.
  
  
• Concourse – Reconciliation™ – As transaction data is received, it is automatically linked with the same transaction data from other sources to form a complete life cycle view of a transaction. Once all required transaction data has been received, equivalency processing is performed. Concourse also reports any data that is not received within a configured timeframe, allowing all transactions to be reconciled quickly and reliably.
  
  
• Concourse – Disputes™ – Because of the continuous processing architecture, Concourse – Disputes will allow you to monitor dispute-related activities in real-time. It will also provide you a real time view of disputed transactions so that customer inquiries can be promptly researched and successfully resolved. The browser-based viewing facilities will also allow you to share transaction research and dispute initiation responsibilities with your clients, which will reduce call center costs and improve customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Concourse – Fees & Commissions™ – As a transaction arrives in the Concourse system, it is assessed fees, commissions, or rebates based on the configured fee schedule. Concourse can be configured to assess fees based on any transaction data element, allowing fee schemes to be highly granular and uniquely tailored to any customer. Concourse will also provide you continuous access to fee-related information so proactive business decisions can be made.

Concourse is AGILE!

Concourse is more flexible than any other back office processing solution because of its rules-based architecture. With Concourse business rules, you can differentiate your company by implementing new transaction processing methods and services that your competitors cannot support. And you can do this with no code changes or software downtime.

Concourse provides an intuitive, browser-based rules builder making it easy for business analysts, not programmers, to configure and implement new business rules. This interface replaces the programming changes required by traditional back office systems.

Below are just a few example of how the business rules can be used within the Concourse business services to help create a competitive advantage:

• Concourse – Extended Settlement™ – Because of the rules-based architecture, Concourse – Extended Settlement provides market flexibility by allowing you to support multiple settlement schedules, such as intra-day, daily, weekly, and monthly. As a result, you will be able to move funds based on individual customer agreements.
  
  
• Concourse – Reconciliation™ – The business rules will allow you to perform two-way or multi-way reconciliation. Concourse – Reconciliation also makes it easy to identify discrepancies by allowing transaction equivalency to be based on precise matching or on tolerance levels. Since Concourse – Reconciliation automates the matching of transactions between different data sources, personnel time and accounting errors will be reduced.
  
  
• Concourse – Disputes™ – Through the configuration of the business rules, Concourse – Disputes will make it easy for your company to to administer complex network regulations and ensure network compliance is maintained. Workflow steps, notifications, and reminders are also configured with the user-configurable business rules to ensure all disputes are properly managed.
  
  
• Concourse – Fees & Commissions™ – The rules-based architecture will allow you to implement a wide range of fee structures, including tiered, flat, percentage, and pass through. Concourse also provides trial run and auditing facilities for use in validating the accuracy and financial impact of new fee structures. As a result, you will be able to leverage new business opportunities and be more creative in the sales cycle. The possibilities are unlimited in the types of pricing and fee structures you can configure for your customers.

Conclusion

Fast and agile transaction processing is possible with the Concourse Financial Software Suite. Call today to schedule a personal phone consultation to learn how your business can benefit from the level of speed and agility afforded by Concourse.

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