Central Bank of Oman selects BHMI’s Concourse Financial Software Suite

Central Bank of Oman (CBO) has selected Baldwin Hackett & Meeks' (BHMI) Concourse Financial Software Suite to perform back office transaction processing for its national ATM/POS switch.

Concourse Financial Software Suite is a PCI-compliant back office software solution specifically designed to manage electronic payments including credit, debit, POS, ATM, mobile, and prepaid transactions.

With user-configurable business rules, an online transaction repository, and a continuous processing architecture, Concourse assesses and allocates fees for all business relationships, settles and reconciles all transaction types, and automates the process of identifying and facilitating disputes.

This new Oman National Switch (ONS) will support financial institutions in Oman and the surrounding region, processing more than five million electronic transactions per month.

According to BHMI, the Concourse Financial Software Suite will meet CBO’s business and functional requirements for back office fees and settlement processing. It will provide multi-institution support and will allow CBO to centralize processing and provide superior client services to Omani financial institutions.

Using Concourse’s continuous processing architecture, CBO will not be hindered by the limitations of a traditional batch-processing environment – ATM and POS transactions can be processed throughout the day and incorporated into fee and settlement positions as soon as they are presented to Concourse.

The Concourse rules-based architecture will also allow CBO to integrate new methods of processing into its business model without the time and expense of custom software development. Furthermore, CBO will be able to provide access to valuable transaction data for internal users and financial institutions via secure browser-based viewers, claims BHMI.

BHMI is implementing the Concourse solution in Oman with support from Hewlett Packard Company (HP), which is the prime contractor to CBO for the ONS project, and Industrial Management Technology and Contracting, a local technology partner working closely with CBO.