08 Mar 2023

This year we all felt how vital remote banking services are: to receive and transfer money to loved ones, to donate for the army, to pay bills or taxes – to help, support, survive... Therefore, all year long we have been developing our front-office systems and introduce new online services for the clients in Ukrainian banks.

iFOBS internet banking

ISO 20022 support

First of all, it is worth mentioning the improvements connected with the transition to the new ISO 20022 payment standard:

• In accordance with the requirements of the new pain.001 payment format, we have expanded the fields for entering the document number (up to 35 characters), the payer and recipient name (up to 140), ID code (up to 35), payment purpose (up to 420) – for all forms of payment documents in the national currency, including the regular payments, information debit documents, reference books, printed forms, import-export formats.
• We’ve tested the iFOBS.AutoClient\OCI module with the ISO 20022 mode enabled.
• We’ve implemented a tool for information sync on the pacs.008 payment message (“Credit transfer of client funds at the agent level”) from CBS B2 to iFOBS: parameters of the debtor, creditor, payment initiator, actual payer, actual recipient and details of the payment purpose. Now we are working on displaying to the client in iFOBS a payment instruction built on the basis of CBS B2 data. The functionality will be implemented in web-, win- and mobile-clients as an additional option on the document view form in the national currency.
•  There are also plans to build a statement in the camt.053 format in the client bank.

NBU BankID protocols updating

As for the BankID remote identification service. During the past year, the NBU updated the protocol specification four (!) times (“Specification of the interaction of the subscriber node with the central node of the NBU BankID System”). In accordance with these requirements, we implemented the necessary changes to the iFOBS.BankID module for all banks that use our solution: Ukreximbank, OTP Bank, Bank Lviv, Motor Bank, Crystalbank, PINBank.
All improvements were of high quality and made on time, and today all our customers have received updates and work with the up-to-date version of the NBU BankID protocol.

New version of the web client

We continue to transfer our customers to the new iFOBS web version for corporate clients. The application is based on new technologies and has a number of advantages compared to the old version:

• a fundamentally new design that allows the client to independently configure invoice and document widgets on the main page and quickly move on to basic operations;
• new options for statements: more export formats, the ability to generate a statement by a specific correspondent, send it on e-mail, additionally – an asynchronous mode for statements composing with a large amount of data;
• extended basic set of document import and export formats;
• advanced signing tool, bulk signing of payments, signing on behalf of another user and much more.

The new web version has already been chosen by Kredobank, Bank Lviv, Avangard Bank, iBOX Bank, PINBank, and the list is constantly updated.

Clients onboarding

We continue to develop solutions for online customer registration, which becomes even more relevant in wartime conditions. For private customers which are already the bank clients, we implemented the opportunity to register in the iFOBS system by the number of a deposit or loan agreement (Bank Avangard) in addition to the existing possibility of registering by a bank card number (Bank Lviv) or by a current account number.
For new bank clients – private customers, we implemented an online identification process in Avangard Bank, including registration via a mobile app, the ability to download or receive client documents from Diia, perform all necessary checkups and, as a result, open accounts and connect to the system.
Now we are working on schemes for registering corporate customers, in particular, sole proprietors. We possess all the necessary tools for this:

• internet and mobile banking for setting a client's cabinet, where they can apply for registration, receive, and sign the necessary documents;
• module for working with electronic signature for authorization and documents signing;
• modules for interaction with Diia and Diia.Pidpys services;
• modules-connectors to the external sources of information about the client;
• services to CBS B2 and the card system for the financial monitoring application formation, accounts and cards opening;
• services for third-party video verification solutions;
• AnyService module for creating online applications, questionnaires, etc.;
• DocUpload module for uploading and two-way signing of electronic documents.

The integration platform based on CFRONT allows to combine all the process components, perform the necessary verification and, if necessary, quickly deploy changes to the process.
Several banks have already applied to us for online registration automation, and we are actively working in this area.

Cards

A bank payment card is becoming even more popular payment means both within the country and abroad. An increasing number of our customers are implementing a card module for their clients – private customers (Bank Portal), corporate customers (PINBank), small and medium-sized businesses (Motor-Bank), providing the opportunity to manage cards both in iFOBS internet banking and in iFOBS.Mobile banking.
The list of available card operations has been expanded with several interesting services:

• viewing the CVV code of a payment card in a mobile app (Bank Lviv);
• requesting a CVV code in the web client (Sense Bank).

The clients of these banks have the opportunity to use the new cards for online payment immediately after issuing, without visiting the bank branch.

• 3DS Authentication (Crystal Bank) – the bank clients have the opportunity to confirm payments on the internet using biometric authorization in the iFOBS app.

Other services
It is worth mentioning a few more of our banks, which have launched new services for their clients this year.

MTB Bank has improved its mobile banking for corporate clients, introduced many interesting features and launched several new services, e.g. online deposit ordering, displaying the bank's facsimile stamp on the statement, mass signing of documents.

Motor Bank has implemented services for remote management of deposits and loans for SME clients, the iFOBS.Facsimile module for corporate and private clients in the iFOBS web version and mobile banking.

BIS bank has launched mobile banking for corporate clients, and also implemented the iFOBS.MultiKeys module, which allows clients to work in the iFOBS system with external CA keys (e.g. tax keys).
The iFOBS.PushMessages module, which provides the delivery of data via push notifications, was ordered by Ukreximbank and Bank Lviv. Now confirmation codes and other important information from the bank will be sent to customers via a more reliable channel.

OTP Bank is working on launching of several interesting projects for corporate clients at once, including electronic contracts, centralization of foreign exchange operations (integration with the Baxter trading platform) and a new design of the OTPay Mobile.
By the way, this year several banks approached the issue of updating the design, and we hope that they will soon please their customers with modern and convenient updated versions.

Redesign of all iFOBS products for the new Sense Bank brand book

Separately, the iFOBS redesign project for Sense Bank should be highlighted.
As you know, on December 1, Alfa-Bank officially completed the procedure for changing the name of the bank's brand to Sense Bank. In connection with the rebranding, our company, in cooperation with the bank, carried out a large project to redesign all iFOBS software products for the new Sense Bank brand book.
By the way, Sense Bank uses the most modern version of iFOBS internet banking for corporate clients, based on microservice architecture and cloud storage of iFOBS.iSignCloud keys.

CFRONT integration platform

There were also many interesting implementations based on the CFRONT integration platform.

Lending

For Globus Bank (Ukraine) we’ve implemented the following:

• a new online process for obtaining loans for goods in online stores, which gives customers the opportunity to obtain a credit for the purchase without coming to the store;
• a universal scheme for opening accounts in a mobile application or linking a virtual card to an existing account;
• receiving and processing requests for changing the amount of the card limit from the mobile app;
• opening cards under the ePidtrymka program (virtual or binding pre-personalized) from a mobile app.

We continue to work on a loan automation project for the bank of Moldova – a process for corporate customers has been implemented, including searching for information about the borrower in B2 CBS and external sources, transferring data to verifiers to make a decision on issuing a loan, generating printed forms of documents, etc. The project is quite complex and interesting due to the large number of integrations with third-party solutions. After the launch of the system in prod, we will inform you in greater detail about this project.

Online registration

Online registration with the process based on the CFRONT integration platform has become a separate area. There is a successful project for online registration of clients – private customers in Avangard Bank, which we mentioned above (see "Clients onboarding"). Recently, we have received several requests to automate online registration for corporate customers, in particular, sole proprietorships.

Service Provider Platform (UPBS)

The project of building a new version of the UPBS system on the CFRONT platform turned out to be rather exciting experience.
Recall that UPBS is a universal system for receiving and processing utility bills and payment for provider services from bank customers, the core of the system is an integration gate that interacts with providers' online services and bank information systems.
Recently, a new system architecture has been developed, which is based on the CFRONT platform and has the following advantages:

• the ability to fully diagnose the business process change it quickly;
• Email-informing in case of errors/failures;
• improvement of the administration system, response speed, support quality;
• more flexible setting of commissions and tariffs;
• automatic registers sending to CBS.

The updated version of UPBS successfully works on the industrial environment of PINBank, and we recommend that all our customers gradually migrate to the new version.

iB2 and SyncGate

MTB Bank continues to increase the integration of the iB2 Single Account system in CBS B2 with the Way4 card system. At the same time, the iB2 system in the bank works with the IS-Card card issuance system and FUIB processing, and thus ensures the automation of maintaining and servicing card accounts simultaneously in several card systems.

Bank Lviv implemented the SyncGate module in 2022, which is responsible for receiving advice messages from card processing system and processing them. This time we have implemented the receipt of advice messages from the FUIB processing, and this is already the third processing (after UPC and SmartVista), advice messages from which can be processed in the banking system, which speeds up the receipt of information on the funds movement on card accounts.

VISA B2B

The integration of CBS B2 with the services of the VISA B2B Connect system allows bank clients – corporate customers to make the expedited foreign currency transfers to accounts of other banks in the world or to receipt the funds.
For the first time in Ukraine this product was introduced in 2021 at the BIS Bank, and in 2022 one more bank started VISA B2B Connect system implementation.
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Dear colleagues, we are grateful for reading our report to the end!

These are far from all the interesting features we have implemented during this extremely difficult year. Therefore, do not feel offended if some projects are not included in the list.

As we continue to work for both you and your valued customers, for all Ukrainians.

We are doing our best to support our financial system and bring the Victory closer.

See you soon!