Comprehensive Payment Solutions
STS provides end-to-end payment technology solutions—covering the full spectrum of switching, clearing, processing, and digital payment systems. Each module can operate independently or as part of a national ecosystem.
Switch & Clearing Solutions
Role in National Payment Infrastructure
National-level switching and clearing systems form the backbone of modern payment infrastructure, ensuring seamless interoperability among banks, payment institutions, and card networks. STS consolidates these capabilities on a single national platform to securely route transactions, manage interbank transfers, and process high daily volumes with efficiency and resilience.
Architecture: Scalability and Resilience by Design
The STS architecture employs modular components engineered for extreme throughput, multi-layer security to protect sensitive financial data, and redundant infrastructure for continuous service availability. Beyond core processing, the platform generates high-value telemetry for analytics, fraud detection, and regulatory reporting—enabling data-driven supervision and operational excellence.
Benefits
For Banks & Payment Institutions: Lower operating costs through centralized processing, nationwide reach, streamlined compliance, and enhanced risk management via real-time monitoring and controls.
For the National Ecosystem: Greater financial inclusion, faster capital flows that stimulate growth, reinforced financial stability, and accelerated innovation across payment services.
Standards and Capabilities Supported by STS
Through this comprehensive solution set, STS strengthens a country’s payment backbone, supports policy and operational sovereignty, and accelerates digital transformation—delivering measurable, sustainable impact from design to deployment and long-term operations.
Third-Party Processing Infrastructure
Third-Party Processing (TPP) infrastructure offers a comprehensive, modular platform that empowers banks, fintechs, and payment institutions to rapidly launch and manage card issuance and acquiring services without the need for extensive in-house development and maintenance. This solution is crucial for institutions looking to innovate and scale quickly in the dynamic payments landscape, supporting both national and international payment schemes.
By leveraging TPP infrastructure, financial entities can significantly reduce time-to-market and operational costs. Our platform provides the technical backbone for various payment products, including debit, credit, and prepaid cards, as well as modern digital wallets and mobile payment solutions. It handles the complexities of transaction processing, fraud management, and regulatory compliance, allowing our clients to focus on customer acquisition, product differentiation, and their core financial services.
Card Issuance
Our platform provides a complete infrastructure for end-to-end card program management, encompassing the full lifecycle from customer application to card delivery and ongoing usage. This includes robust KYC (Know Your Customer) and onboarding processes, personalized card design and printing (for physical cards), and instant provisioning for virtual cards and digital wallets.
We manage all aspects of transaction authorization, fraud monitoring, and dispute resolution. Furthermore, the infrastructure supports card activation, PIN management, blocking/unblocking, replacement, and renewal, ensuring seamless cardholder experiences. This comprehensive suite enables financial institutions to offer diverse card products, including debit, credit, and prepaid options, tailored to various customer segments and market needs, while maintaining full regulatory compliance.
Acquiring Services
We deliver sophisticated merchant acquiring solutions that enable financial institutions to onboard, manage, and process transactions for businesses across multiple channels. This includes support for traditional Point-of-Sale (POS) systems, e-commerce platforms, and mobile commerce applications, ensuring merchants can accept payments wherever their customers shop.
Our infrastructure facilitates real-time transaction processing, from authorization requests to clearing and settlement, providing immediate feedback for merchants and efficient fund transfers. Advanced fraud detection and risk management tools are integrated to protect both merchants and institutions from fraudulent activities. Additionally, comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities offer valuable insights into merchant performance and transaction patterns, supporting business growth and operational efficiency.
Digital Wallets
Our solution offers seamless integration with digital wallet ecosystems, enabling institutions to support modern mobile payment technologies. This includes contactless payments via NFC (Near Field Communication) for quick tap-and-go transactions, QR code payments for diverse retail environments, and secure tokenized transactions.
Tokenization replaces sensitive card data with a unique, encrypted token during a transaction, significantly enhancing security by protecting cardholder information from breaches. We facilitate integration with major digital wallet providers like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other regional mobile payment systems. This ensures broad acceptance and convenience for cardholders, while also supporting value-added services such as loyalty programs and personalized offers within the digital wallet environment.
The technical architecture underpinning our TPP infrastructure is designed for extreme resilience, scalability, and security. It features cloud-native modular components that can dynamically handle immense transaction volumes, robust encryption, and advanced cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive financial data. Redundant infrastructure and disaster recovery protocols guarantee continuous service availability, minimizing downtime and ensuring uninterrupted financial operations. Furthermore, the platform is built to adapt to evolving industry standards and regulatory requirements globally, providing a future-proof solution for our partners in the ever-changing payment ecosystem.
Instant Payments Platform
In today's fast-paced digital economy, the demand for immediate financial transactions has surged. An Instant Payments Platform represents a critical evolution in national payment infrastructure, facilitating real-time fund transfers that are available 24/7. This fundamental shift from traditional batch processing to continuous, instantaneous settlement not only enhances efficiency and liquidity across the financial ecosystem but also lays the groundwork for innovative financial products and services, driving economic growth and greater financial inclusion.
24/7 Real-Time pransfers
Our platform provides a robust infrastructure for 24/7 instant transfers, connecting banks and payment service providers in real-time. In practice, this means funds are moved and made available to the recipient almost immediately, typically within seconds, regardless of the time of day, day of the week, or public holidays. This stands in stark contrast to traditional payment methods like ACH or standard wire transfers, which often operate on a batch-processing schedule, leading to delays of hours or even days before funds are settled and accessible.
The underlying technical infrastructure demands high-speed networks, sophisticated real-time fraud detection engines, and dynamic liquidity management systems to ensure continuous operation and transaction integrity. API-driven connectivity allows for seamless integration with diverse financial systems. For consumers, instant payments mean immediate access to wages, faster bill payments, and the ability to handle urgent financial needs without delay. For businesses, it translates to improved cash flow, instant supplier payments, streamlined payroll processing, and reduced risks associated with payment failures, fostering new business models in areas like the gig economy. This increased liquidity and speed significantly impact overall economic activity, accelerating commerce and supporting innovation.
ISO 20022 Compliance
Our platform ensures full compliance with the ISO 20022 messaging standard, a globally recognized framework for developing financial messages. This standard is not just a technical specification; it's a foundational shift for the future of payments, replacing a multitude of disparate, legacy messaging standards (like SWIFT MT). By providing a common, XML-based language for financial messages, ISO 20022 enables universal understanding and processing of payment instructions and related information across different financial institutions and payment systems worldwide.
Its importance stems from its ability to enable significantly richer data exchange within payment messages. Unlike older formats that offered limited characters, ISO 20022 allows for highly structured, granular data to be included with every transaction. This means payment messages can carry extensive details such as invoice references, remittance information, regulatory reporting data, and even structured beneficiary details. This richer data improves transparency, simplifies reconciliation for businesses, enhances fraud detection capabilities, and facilitates compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. Ultimately, it is crucial for global payment system interoperability, making cross-border payments more efficient, transparent, and less costly by standardizing communication across diverse payment landscapes.
QR Interoperability
Our solution offers seamless QR code payment integration across multiple providers, driving universal acceptance and enhanced financial inclusion. QR code payments typically work by allowing a customer to scan a merchant's QR code using their mobile banking app or digital wallet, or for the merchant to scan the customer's QR code. This action initiates a payment request, which the customer then approves, leading to an instant transfer of funds.
Historically, the proliferation of proprietary QR code systems has led to fragmentation, where different apps or wallets could only pay at specific merchants, creating inconvenience and limiting adoption. Our platform addresses this by promoting interoperability, achieved through adherence to common standards (such as EMVCo QR Code specifications) and the use of standardized APIs that allow various payment service providers to connect and transact. This ensures that any compliant QR code can be read and processed by any participating payment application. The benefits are profound: for financial inclusion, QR payments offer a low-cost, mobile-first payment solution accessible to the unbanked and underbanked populations, requiring only a smartphone. For merchants, especially small and micro-businesses, it significantly lowers the barrier to accepting digital payments, as it negates the need for expensive POS terminals, expanding their potential customer base and streamlining their operations.
National Card Schema Development
STS is actively developing and supporting national payment system modernization projects across multiple regions. These are not merely technological upgrades but complex, multi-year national infrastructure initiatives, often spanning 3-5 years or more, requiring significant investment and meticulous coordination among diverse stakeholders including government bodies, central banks, commercial banks, and technology providers. Each project aims to strengthen local financial infrastructure, improve regulatory capacity, and enhance interoperability with global networks, ultimately driving financial inclusion, fostering economic growth, and paving the way for a more robust and digital national economy.
Infrastructure Development
Building robust national payment platforms from the ground up with scalable, secure architecture. Our approach focuses on developing cloud-native, microservices-based architectures capable of handling peak loads of thousands of transactions per second (TPS) with sub-second response times, ensuring high availability and resilience. Key technical details include end-to-end encryption for all data in transit and at rest, advanced tokenization techniques to protect sensitive cardholder data, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all participants. AI-driven fraud detection engines are integrated to identify and prevent suspicious activities in real-time. The platforms are designed for both horizontal and vertical scalability, allowing seamless expansion to accommodate future growth in transaction volumes and new services. Furthermore, we provide comprehensive APIs and SDKs to facilitate easy integration with existing financial systems, point-of-sale (POS) terminals, e-commerce platforms, and mobile payment applications, ensuring a unified and efficient payment ecosystem.
Regulatory Enhancement
Strengthening oversight and compliance frameworks to meet international standards. Our projects embed stringent compliance frameworks tailored to national and international requirements, such as Basel III guidelines for capital adequacy and liquidity, and PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) for securing cardholder data. We implement robust anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) protocols, including real-time transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and comprehensive audit trails. Regulatory oversight mechanisms are built into the platform, providing central banks and financial intelligence units with real-time dashboards and analytics for effective supervision. Automated reporting tools ensure that all required data for regulatory compliance, including transaction reports and risk assessments, are generated accurately and promptly. This alignment with global best practices not only fosters trust in the national payment system but also simplifies international financial partnerships and attracts foreign direct investment.
Global Integration
Connecting local systems with international payment networks for seamless cross-border transactions. We facilitate direct technical integration with major international card schemes such as Visa, Mastercard, China UnionPay, JCB, and American Express, as well as regional payment networks and SWIFT for specific interbank messaging. The integration process involves meticulous API mapping, gateway service implementation, and rigorous network certification to ensure full interoperability and compliance with global standards. We establish efficient cross-border settlement mechanisms, utilizing both real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and net settlement systems, coupled with robust foreign exchange management capabilities. This enables faster, more transparent, and cost-effective international payments for both individuals and businesses. Users benefit from simplified cross-border remittances, e-commerce purchases, and international travel, while local merchants gain access to a global customer base and faster settlement for international sales, significantly boosting economic activity and international trade.
E-Money & Digital Wallet Solutions
A comprehensive digital wallet and e-money framework designed to support a wide array of mobile and web-based payment services for both consumers and merchants. Our robust infrastructure facilitates a full spectrum of financial services, ensuring stringent regulatory compliance and seamless integration of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.
Understanding E-Money and Digital Wallets
E-money represents monetary value stored electronically, accepted as a means of payment by parties other than the issuer, and typically backed by fiat currency. Digital wallets, on the other hand, are software-based systems that securely store users' payment information and allow them to conduct electronic transactions. They act as a secure container for e-money and other payment instruments, simplifying transactions and enhancing user experience.
Technical Architecture and Mobile-First Design
Our solutions are built upon a scalable and secure technical architecture, prioritizing a mobile-first design philosophy. This ensures optimal performance and user experience on smartphones and other mobile devices, which are often the primary access points for financial services in emerging markets. The architecture typically involves secure API gateways, robust database management, real-time transaction processing engines, and advanced encryption techniques to safeguard data and funds.
Regulatory Framework and Compliance
The implementation of e-money and digital wallet solutions necessitates a strong understanding and adherence to local and international regulatory frameworks. This includes licensing requirements, capital adequacy, consumer protection, and strict transaction monitoring. Our infrastructure is designed to integrate seamlessly with these regulatory demands, providing features that support compliance out-of-the-box.
Impact on Financial Inclusion
These solutions play a pivotal role in fostering financial inclusion, particularly for unbanked and underbanked populations. By providing access to affordable, convenient, and secure financial services through mobile devices, digital wallets empower individuals and small businesses, enabling them to participate more fully in the formal economy. This access facilitates savings, extends credit opportunities, and allows for more efficient management of personal finances, driving broader economic development.
Service Areas and Detailed Explanations:
Cash-in and Cash-out Services
These services form the backbone of any e-money ecosystem, allowing users to convert physical cash into digital funds (cash-in) and vice-versa (cash-out). This often relies on an extensive agent network – a distributed system of local businesses (e.g., convenience stores, pharmacies) equipped to handle these transactions. Funds flow through secure digital channels, linked to user accounts, ensuring accessibility even in areas with limited traditional banking infrastructure. Different channels, such as bank transfers, debit/credit cards, and direct deposit, also enable varied cash-in options.
Bill Payments and Utilities
Digital wallets streamline the process of paying recurring bills and utilities. Our platform integrates directly with utility providers, telecommunication companies, and other service providers, enabling real-time processing of payments. This provides immense benefits to merchants through immediate payment confirmation, reduced reconciliation efforts, and expanded reach, while offering users convenience, transparency, and often lower transaction costs.
Person-to-Person (P2P) Transfers
P2P transfers allow users to send money directly to other individuals using their digital wallets. This typically involves linking transfers to mobile numbers or unique wallet IDs. Robust security measures, including multi-factor authentication and transaction encryption, are embedded to protect users. Common use cases include splitting bills, sending money to family, and small informal payments, all executed instantly and at minimal cost.
Government Disbursements
Our solutions facilitate the secure and efficient distribution of government funds, including social welfare payments, salaries, pensions, and disaster relief. Digital disbursements enhance transparency, reduce fraud, and ensure timely delivery of funds directly to beneficiaries' digital wallets, bypassing potential intermediaries and reducing logistical challenges associated with cash distribution. This significantly improves accountability and efficiency in public spending.
Merchant Payments
Digital wallets empower merchants to accept payments seamlessly. This includes support for various technologies such as QR codes (where customers scan a code to pay), Near Field Communication (NFC) for tap-to-pay transactions, and direct integration with Point-of-Sale (POS) systems. This broadens payment acceptance, reduces reliance on cash, and provides merchants with real-time transaction data and simplified reconciliation processes.
AML/KYC Integration and Financial Ecosystem Development
Robust AML/KYC integration is critical for combating financial crime and ensuring the integrity of the digital payment system. Our framework incorporates advanced identity verification tools and transaction monitoring systems that comply with international standards. This secure and compliant foundation not only protects users but also supports the broader development of a transparent and trustworthy financial ecosystem, encouraging innovation and economic growth.
Cross-border and domestic money transfer infrastructure connecting banks, MTOs, and digital wallet providers. Designed to reduce costs, increase transparency, and support international remittance corridors with instant delivery and compliance-ready monitoring.
Multiple channels for remittance initiation including mobile, web, and agent networks.
Real-time AML/KYC checks and regulatory compliance monitoring.
Immediate fund availability through bank accounts, wallets, or cash pickup.
Comprehensive POS Solutions
In today's rapidly evolving retail landscape, robust Point-of-Sale (POS) solutions are not just a convenience but a necessity for merchant digitalization. They are critical for efficient transaction processing and for bridging the gap between traditional and digital commerce. Many merchants, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-merchants, face significant challenges in adopting digital payment methods due to high costs, complex hardware requirements, and a lack of technical expertise. Our comprehensive suite of POS and QR payment solutions is designed to address these diverse market needs, covering everything from fiscal memory POS to advanced Android POS terminals, versatile SoftPOS applications, and universally interoperable QR standards. These systems empower businesses of all sizes to enhance retail acceptance, streamline operations, and accelerate their digital transformation journey across the entire economy, ensuring seamless and secure payment experiences for both merchants and consumers.
Android POS
Feature-rich Android-based terminals offer unparalleled flexibility and power, integrating multi-payment acceptance with comprehensive business management tools. They typically boast:
SoftPOS
SoftPOS technology transforms any NFC-enabled smartphone or tablet into a secure payment terminal, making digital acceptance accessible and affordable for a wider range of merchants:
QR Payments
QR code payment solutions offer a simple, secure, and widely accessible method for transactions, driving financial inclusion and merchant digitalization:
Fiscal POS Solutions
In an era where governments worldwide are intensifying efforts to ensure tax compliance and combat evasion, fiscal Point-of-Sale (POS) solutions have become indispensable. These specialized systems play a crucial role in creating transparent and accountable business environments by securely recording and reporting transactional data to tax authorities. For retailers, implementing fiscal POS systems is not merely about adhering to legal mandates; it's about fostering trust, streamlining operations, and avoiding severe penalties associated with non-compliance. Our comprehensive fiscal POS solutions are designed to meet these rigorous requirements, offering a robust framework that supports businesses in navigating complex tax regulations while enhancing their operational efficiency.
Fiscal POS Types
Our comprehensive range of fiscal memory devices is meticulously engineered to comply with diverse local tax regulations and reporting requirements. Fiscal memory devices are specialized hardware components, either integrated into POS terminals or standalone units, designed to immutably record sales transactions. Governments mandate these devices to prevent undeclared sales and ensure accurate tax collection, making them a cornerstone in combating tax evasion.
These systems are vital for ensuring tax transparency, as every transaction is sealed and verifiable by tax authorities, creating an auditable trail and fostering a fair competitive landscape.
TSM Platform
Our Trusted Service Manager (TSM) infrastructure provides a secure and centralized platform essential for the lifecycle management of cryptographic keys and digital certificates critical for fiscal compliance. A TSM acts as a secure broker between service providers (like payment processors or fiscal device manufacturers) and devices (POS terminals, smartphones), ensuring secure provisioning and management of sensitive data.
Tax Backend Systems
Our sophisticated tax backend systems are designed for robust, real-time reporting and seamless integration with governmental tax authorities, ensuring complete compliance and transparency. These systems serve as the central hub for collecting, processing, and transmitting fiscal transaction data.
End-to-End Operation
We provide complete lifecycle management for fiscal POS solutions, ensuring smooth operation from initial setup through ongoing support and maintenance. Our end-to-end approach guarantees that merchants can focus on their business while we handle the complexities of fiscal compliance.
Bill Payment Gateway
A central bill payment gateway serves as a critical nexus in the digital payment ecosystem, seamlessly connecting diverse billers, financial institutions, and end-users across both B2B and B2C segments. This robust platform is engineered to streamline the often-complex process of bill payments, transforming it from a manual, fragmented task into an efficient, real-time digital transaction. It acts as an intelligent intermediary, handling the secure exchange of data and funds, thereby significantly reducing operational friction and enhancing the overall user experience.
Technically, our gateway operates on a scalable, cloud-native architecture that leverages advanced APIs and microservices. This allows for resilient and high-volume transaction processing, ensuring that payment requests are handled swiftly and securely from initiation to settlement. It's not just about processing payments; it's about creating a unified, compliant, and accessible channel for all types of recurring and one-off bill payments, supporting a wide array of services including utilities, telecommunications, government services, insurance premiums, and more. By centralizing this function, the gateway plays a pivotal role in fostering financial inclusion, enabling digital payment access for a broader demographic, and integrating seamlessly into the broader payment infrastructure to drive economic efficiency.
Multi-biller Integration
Our platform facilitates rapid and secure integration with an extensive network of billers. The onboarding process is meticulously designed to be efficient, involving secure API key exchange, data mapping, and rigorous testing in a sandboxed environment before production deployment. We support various industry-standard API specifications (e.g., RESTful, SOAP) to ensure broad compatibility. This allows the gateway to connect effortlessly with diverse biller systems, from large utility companies managing complex consumption data to telecommunication providers handling subscription-based billing and governmental agencies processing taxes and permits.
Data flow is meticulously managed: bill details are securely fetched from biller systems, presented to the user, and upon payment, transaction confirmations are relayed back in real-time, updating the biller's accounts. This eliminates manual reconciliation efforts for billers and ensures users have access to the most current outstanding amounts, regardless of the biller's specific back-end infrastructure.
Real-time Payment Processing
At the core of our solution is a high-performance real-time payment processing engine. Built on a distributed, fault-tolerant architecture, it ensures instant processing of transactions. When a payment is initiated, it flows through a series of secure microservices that validate, authorize, and transmit the payment request to the relevant financial institution (banks, payment networks). Confirmation messages are then relayed back to the user and biller within seconds.
Beyond the immediate transaction, our system incorporates sophisticated settlement processes. Funds are typically batched and settled with billers daily through established banking channels, ensuring accurate and timely fund transfer. Robust error handling mechanisms are built-in, including automated retries, clear status notifications, and dispute resolution workflows, minimizing payment failures and ensuring a smooth financial operation.
B2B and B2C Support
The gateway is engineered to cater to the distinct needs of both business (B2B) and consumer (B2C) segments. For B2C, it provides a user-friendly interface for individual consumers to easily manage and pay their household bills, fostering convenience and reducing payment friction. For B2B, it offers advanced functionalities such as corporate bill payment management, allowing businesses to process multiple vendor invoices, utility bills, and other recurring expenses in bulk.
This includes features like batch processing for large volumes of payments, approval hierarchies, and detailed cost allocation reports, which are crucial for corporate financial management. The underlying architecture ensures that whether it's a single consumer payment or a multi-million dollar corporate transaction, the security, speed, and accuracy remain uncompromised.
Quick Integration Framework
To accelerate adoption and reduce time-to-market, our gateway provides a comprehensive and developer-friendly integration framework. This includes well-documented RESTful APIs that allow financial institutions, fintechs, and other platforms to seamlessly embed bill payment functionalities into their existing applications.
Developers benefit from client-side SDKs for various programming languages, pre-built UI components, and dedicated testing environments (sandboxes) that mirror the production system. These tools, coupled with extensive developer support and detailed integration guides, ensure that partners can go live quickly and efficiently, expanding the reach and utility of digital bill payments across the ecosystem.
Comprehensive Reporting
Transparency and accountability are paramount in financial operations. Our gateway provides comprehensive reporting tools accessible through intuitive analytics dashboards. Users and partners can access detailed transaction reports, payment statuses, and historical data. This facilitates efficient reconciliation, auditing, and performance monitoring.
Beyond operational reports, the system generates compliance-ready reports, ensuring adherence to regulatory standards (e.g., anti-money laundering, data privacy). Customizable filters and export options allow for tailored data analysis, enabling businesses to gain deeper insights into payment trends, identify areas for optimization, and maintain a verifiable audit trail for all financial activities, supporting robust internal controls and external regulatory scrutiny.
We welcome inquiries from governments, financial institutions, and technology partners seeking to collaborate on national payment and fintech infrastructure projects.
Explore collaboration opportunities for national payment system projects and joint ventures
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