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Corporate Banking Payments: bring down costs and improve efficiency and security using Hitachi’s VeinID and Cybersecurity Tools

20 Apr 2018

Transaction processing for corporate banking operations are on a completely different scale to the retail banking world in terms of both value and volume. The resultant revenues form one of the main profit drivers for banks and according to the 2017 Cap Gemini World Payments Report, it is estimated that there will be a staggering 108bn corporate non-cash transactions globally in 2018 with around 27bn of these in Europe.

The corporate payments sector is competitive with strong growth and although moving along with the digitalisation process, it is held back by a number of historical inefficiencies that make it challenging to ride on the crest of the digital wave including a high reliance on manual process and a low level of automation.

On the corporate side the banks therefore tend to focus on the relationships with their business customers and are strongly motivated to provide innovative and secure services that both improve their customer’s operational process and efficiency as well as securing both end-customers and themselves against potential loss from fraudulent transactions and identity theft.

In that race then to gain digital advantage, banks and businesses could be left vulnerable to cybercrime. When chip and PIN based PKI cards are used for online payments authorisations, users sharing cards and PIN numbers, malware attacks (especially man-in-the-browser) and internal fraud, can all expose business to significant risk.

According to the 2017 AFP Payments Fraud Survey, there was a dramatic rise in the number of businesses hit by payments fraud in 2016 when compared to 2015. Around 70% of the treasury and financial professionals surveyed said they were reluctant to embrace mobile payments for their enterprises due to lack of confidence in security.

The same report further highlights how little some companies are spending on cybersecurity as a percentage of the overall IT budget despite the growing risk from ransomware, phishing and other malware. With predictions by IDG’s CSOOnline.com in their Jan 2018 Cybersecurity Business Report that cybercrime damage costs will hit $6 trillion by 2021, we see that there is still a long way to go in securing the world of online business.

Hitachi is able to help corporate payments providers on several levels.  On the authorisation side, VeinID provides identity assurance for login and transaction signing, using state-of-the-art biometric technology to protect the end user from identity theft. In essence, PKI cards are still used but a user’s biometric data becomes their PIN, which means any transaction is tied strongly to an individual person, rather than shareable credentials.

This step change in digital security doesn’t just prevent fraud, it presents some compelling savings for banks too:

• Save on operational overheads — cards can be shipped blank straight to the customer
• Reduce costs — with a simplified process and cards that can be re-used
• Avoid non-working time — new cards can start working immediately, saving an estimated 2 man years of non-working time per corporate customer
• Increase productivity — with a faster process of transactions
• Boost ROI by over 160% — based on 20,000 users over 3 years.

On the cybersecurity side, with an impressive track record in hundreds of banks, Hitachi can provide the necessary tools to secure the bank’s central web-server systems as well as the browser-based and native applications for business users in both mobile and fixed channels.

Hitachi’s VeinID and cybersecurity tools make a significant contribution in securing digital frameworks — and maintaining digital advantage. To make the most of the opportunities in this digital business era, contact us at Banking.Solutions@Hitachi-eu.com to learn how to boost ROI for corporate banking operations by over 160% — based on 20,000 users over 3 years.