NatWest has taken a significant step towards payments modernisation by adopting the Icon Payments Framework (IPF), a move aimed at aligning the bank with the new global ISO 20022 payment data message standards.
This partnership enables NatWest to harness a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) processing engine initially, supported by pre-designed scheme packs, including the recently mandated SEPA Instant capability.
The addition complements NatWest’s existing Credit Transfer and Direct Debit capabilities, thereby offering customers greater choice and paving the way for future innovation.
The modernisation initiative aims to elevate the overall end-to-end customer experience, granting them enhanced flexibility in initiating payment flows.
At the core of the IPF framework is its low-code approach, empowering business payment experts to design industry-leading workflows. Meanwhile, software engineering teams can efficiently extend and customise integrations into the bank’s existing systems, focusing on high-value integrations and innovative features.
Tom Kelleher, co-founder and director of Icon Solutions, says IPF provides the best practice platform to enable Natwest to accelerate the bank’s payments modernisation.
“The mission at NatWest is to deliver a sector-agnostic payments platform to connect everything to everyone, IPF provides the best practice platform to enable the change the bank is working towards, increasing the opportunity to enhance business growth,” says Kelleher.
“The relationship between the two companies is a close one, where we both strive to achieve best practice on a daily basis. There are many challenges and opportunities ahead, such as New Payments Architecture (NPA), which we will face together.”
Ian Povey, CIO payments technology at NatWest, also commented: “The low code aspect of the framework (Icon’s IPF) empowers and enables organisations to control its delivery and feature richness while the simple extensibility of the capability allows software engineers to focus on high value integrations and innovation.”
