Nationwide goes cloud native to transform payments

Nationwide Building Society has recruited Accenture to support its move to a cloud-native payments platform as real-time digital payment volumes rise.

Accenture is working alongside Nationwide and account-to-account payments platform provider Form3 to move all retail payments from on-premise systems to the Form3 platform.

The project, which began last year, will be completed in a series of phases, with Accenture supplying cloud engineering and architecture expertise. Once on the platform, Nationwide payments will meet the ISO 20022 global standard for a common language for payments worldwide.

Otto Benz, payments director at Nationwide, said there had been “massive growth” in cashless payments, with Nationwide processing around 450 million retail transactions each year.

“We needed a solution that will evolve alongside our business, facilitating an increasing volume of payments whilst meeting the expectations of our customers,” added Benz. “This project, in collaboration with Form3 and Accenture, is a major step in simplifying and strengthening our payments processing.”

Nationwide has been on a long tech investment journey. When most financial services firms were slashing spending due to the global financial crash of 2008, Nationwide was investing heavily in IT. At that time, it embarked on a £1bn project to transform its technology, which followed years of under-investment. This created the foundations for the company to adopt the latest technology when it emerges. Today, it is using fintech to transform the business.

Sulabh Agarwal, global payments lead at Accenture, said: “The accelerating digitisation of payments, coupled with ongoing economic turbulence, is shaping how consumers transact and move their money.”

Accenture is currently working on a number of major payments technology projects, including with the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) and the Bank of England.

Alongside suppliers G42 and SIA, the digital payments arm of Nexi Group, Accenture was selected by the CBUAE to build and operate the UAE’s Instant Payment Platform (IPP) over the next five years.

The IT services supplier is also leading a project to update one of the UK’s core payments systems. In 2020, it was chosen as the technology delivery partner to coordinate the replacement of the Bank of England’s 24-year-old Real-Time Gross Settlement system.

Due for completion in 2025, the replacement of the core system that is used to settle payments between banks will harness the latest digital technologies. On an average day, the system settles about £685bn worth of transactions.