Online Banking Solution for Leading Bank in Africa

QBurst developed a banking application that provides better financial services to Front End Customers (FECs) of the bank. FECs include financial institutions and other units within the bank’s network. The application we built also has web interfaces that can be used by customers, agents, and staff of these FECs.

The e-Business Suite (EBS) is a middleware that connects the core banking system and delivery channels such as ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) and POS (Point of Sale) for the client. EBS maintains the virtual account details of customers of FECs and enables them to use the bank’s IT infrastructure.

• The QBurst team played a vital role in the requirement study, preparation of consolidated SRS, and functional specification, design and development of the e-Business suite and FEC applications.
• This was followed by a major phase-1 release of the EBS application and Portfolio Manager (a front-end application for a premium financial company who is the client’s customer).
• The portfolio application includes functionalities that enable customers, staff, and agents to view and manage national certificates.

The co-branded portal and ATM cards turned out to be beneficial to customers, FECs, and the bank.

• Customers had to visit the branch for service requests.
• Accessibility to cash and asset information was limited and time bound for customers.
• FECs could not afford to set up and maintain the infrastructure required, such as ATMs and self-help kiosks.

QBurst managed product development from inception to deployment.

• The application acts like a middleware that connects the bank's core banking system, delivery channels like ATM, and the external systems owned by FECs. Application has EJB services (Enterprise Java Beans) exposed to cater to requests from the web application as well as those from delivery channels like ATM. Communication with the external ATM Transaction Processing Middleware happens using PHX8583 (customized version of ISO8583) over TCP/IP.
• Financial portal with access to customers, FEC employees, agents, and general public. The portal provides customers the ability to manage their individual accounts. Staff and agents have the ability to manage customers. Public can buy certificates.
• Customized Spring Security based authentication and authorization at the client tier and enterprise server layer, meeting OWASP guidelines.

• Java 1.6
• Spring 3.1.1
• Hibernate 4.1.1
• EJB 3.1, Spring Security
• HTML/CSS, Apache Tiles
• Oracle 11G - DB Server
• JBoss 7.1.1 App Server
• JasperReports
• AJAX
• PL/SQL
• Eclipse
• j8583

• ATM Message Interceptor capable of intercepting and processing ISO8583 messages representing financial transaction requests from ATM, IVR and Point of Sale (Phase 2); includes operating virtual customer accounts in EBS and core banking systems.
• Notification framework capable of sending multilingual notification messages via delivery channels like SMS and email.
• Efficient and extensible file management system supporting multiple file formats.
• Search APIs to perform extensive searches on products, customers, staff, agents, and other roles.
• Reporting framework providing export functionality in multiple formats such as Excel, CSV, XML.

• Well-defined interfaces capable of providing fast and easy integration to external systems.
• Web Services and SP calls support integration with external systems.
• Portfolio Manager as the front-end application featuring:
  • A bilingual (English/ Arabic) portal designed based on reusable template APIs.
  • Out-of-the-box reusable component pages for common functionalities such as login, about us, contact us and feedback.
  • Role-based navigation and content demarcation.

For Bank

• Increased brand value and widened customer base
• New source of revenue
• Improved quality of service

For FECs

• Better service provided to customers
• Improved efficiency and better response time
• Increased customer satisfaction

For Customers

• Fast and easy access to cash (via ATM)
• Easy access to customer’s account information
• Easy access to promotions of newly launched services
• Immediate notification of service usage such as cash withdrawal