Qatar Central Bank (QCB) awarded today the National Automated Clearing House (ACH) Project in the State of Qatar to ProgressSoft Corporation, the leading provider of real-time payments and imaging solutions.

Following the acclaimed history of their globally-renowned success in introducing and running the world-first Electronic Image-based Check Clearing Solution, QCB and ProgressSoft are now joining their efforts again to engage in yet another success story to further elevate the technological advancement of the Qatari banking body. Upon winning the tender that was issued by QCB and being awarded this massive project, ProgressSoft is currently preparing to implement its Automated Clearing House PS-ACH; the state-of-the-art solution which facilitates the transformation of consumer payments to electronic credits/debits.

"It is indeed an honor to win the National Automated Clearing House ACH Project in the State of Qatar. This award is in recognition of our outstanding contributions to the practice of National Payment Systems and our demonstration of success, excellence and leadership in the payment arena," expressed Mr Michael Wakileh, CEO, ProgressSoft Corp.

ProgressSoft developed PS-ACH upon considering the recent advancements in the global payment arena and implementing internationally accepted message formats (ISO 20022). The solution actualizes an end-to-end clearing cycle through which remittances and presentment messages can be exchanged between QCB and the banks in real-time. Accordingly, the solution results in accelerating transaction processing, reducing processing costs and banking fees and improving funds availability.

"The project scope was defined to connect QCB with all banks in the country in order to deploy Direct Debit and Direct Credit payment transactions, which provides a simple, secure and reliable means for banks to make payments via electronic transfer," explained Mr Bashar Ashal, PS-ACH Project Manager, ProgressSoft Corp. Direct Credit is primarily used for processing payment of wages and salaries, but can also be utilized for a wide variety of other applications such as supplier payments, pensions, employee expenses, dividends and refunds. The most prominent examples of Direct Debit are for payments of utility bills, insurance premiums, installment loan payments, as well as governmental payments such as taxes.