ProgressSoft Starts Running its Electronic Check Clearing Solution in all the Banks of Kuwait

Kuwait City - May 17, 2015

ProgressSoft Corporation, the leading provider of real-time payment solutions, started running live its Electronic Check Clearing solution (PS-ECC) in all the banks of Kuwait, declaring officially the complete stop of using the old manual check clearing process.

Aiming to improve their efficiency of current processes related to the realization of checks; the banks of Kuwait completed implementing PS-ECC setup with ProgressSoft in a record time of 9 months; while managing to roll the system out for the 24 banks within the State of Kuwait; which will run from all the banks' head offices and the entire 521 branches.

PS-ECC will seamlessly integrate with the banks back-end system along with Kuwait Real Time Gross Settlement System (KASSIP), achieving a complete end-to-end straight through clearing process between banks in Kuwait.

PS-ECC was fine tuned to meet the exact needs of the Kuwaiti banks, some of the special features include the implementation of international security standards such as UV Image Capturing, the support of 2FA (Smartcards), Digital Signing between banks, and Client SSL Digital Signing upon check approval.

ProgressSoft's PS-ECC successfully met the requirements of the Kuwaiti banks, which included opting for the best technology, solution, and industrial standards in the market that run over high-end secure platforms, and accordingly won the bid over other international vendors that have submitted their proposals as well in the year 2014.

Having PS-ECC in place will help the banks in Kuwait to complete the clearing cycle of their checks faster and in a controlled manner, which would expedite the monetary circulation and influence Kuwait's GDP positively directly reflecting on the country's economical growth. Kuwaiti banks are foreseeing the direct system positive impact on individuals as well; this includes direct business owners, merchants, employees, citizens and expatriates.

Today's success is an outcome of the outstanding support of the Kuwaiti banks that ProgressSoft received over the period of the project where all parties had one target in mind and that is to better serve the country's economical and banking sectors.

This successful implementation deployed the latest version of PS-ECC with the most advanced features and customizations, where 25 years of experience in payment solutions - including electronic check clearing - was utilized, and after 7 successful countrywide implementations around the world serving over 350 banks and central banks with their 4,500 branches.

PS-ECC has reached more than 500,000 users worldwide until now, while clearing over 185 Million checks with a total value of one and a half Trillion US Dollars.

ProgressSoft CEO, Mr. Michael Wakileh expressed his pride in ProgressSoft achievements saying "I am pleased with the trust being put in our banking and technological capabilities by the regional and international banking communities. I would like to commend the efforts of the whole ProgressSoft team. Our success stories confirm to the world our supremacy within payment solution providers."

PS-ECC will reduce the 4-day clearing cycle to a same-day check clearing and settlement; in addition, it will eliminate non-standard checks and mandate Check Standardization, which will include MICR and UV images.

Furthermore, PS-ECC will increase the security of the check exchanging process by allowing the monitoring and tracking of all the check exchanges between the participating banks, in addition to applying the latest security policies.

PS-ECC will help provide better cash management services to the banks' account holders. It is also expected to reduce check fraud, and help in minimizing paper work, time, effort and money required to clear a check.