SLIPS Module for Finacle Core Banking System

Abstract

Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System (SLIPS) is an Inter-Bank online Funds Transfer System. It is used to carry out Interbank Payments by digitally signed files through the Clearing House. The Clearing House routes transactions from the originating bank to the receiving bank and also creates a settlement file to update the Banks‟ current accounts at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). All Sri Lankan Banks are engaged with the Clearing house and provide this facility to their customers. But due to lack of functionality and operational support of the available systems of the banks, they are facing more difficulties during the SLIPS operations. Currently any core banking system does not have comprehensive in-built SLIPS module to do the operations and banks use 3rd party software solutions to achieve this. In 3rd party software solutions, user intervention is needed and time consuming for operations and the licensing cost are very high. Therefore banks are very happy to have Core Banking Integrated SLIPS module to operate bank to bank payments. Considering the above, we decided to develop the Core Banking Integrated SLIPS module for Sri Lankan Banks. For this, we selected the Finacle Core Banking system and more than four leading private sector banks are using same. The Finacle is three tire architecture systems and it contains web server, Application server and Database server. The presentation layer is running on web server and it is IBM Websphere. The backend Application server is running on the UNIX platform and functionalities are developed using C and C++ Languages. Oracle 11g is using as Database and it is providing high availability solution. During the development, properly follows the software engineering methodologies and standards. End to end testing was carried out for each module and complete UAT. Therefore Core Banking Integrated comprehensive SLIPS module could develop. The SLIPS module is 100% comply with the central bank and clearing house guide lines and finally implemented on two local private sector banks. It is fully automated the banks SLIPS transaction process and minimized the high user intervention during the operations.