A review of bank credit card system in mainland China __ Platform

Bank credit card system of mainland China

At present, since the people's bank does not allow other institutions outside the bank to carry out credit card issuance and processing, the credit card system is either developed by the bank itself or developed by the system manufacturer to serve the bank. The scale of domestic banks is different, technical capacity is weak, so there are differences in the development of credit card system: Four state-owned commercial banks large scale, strong technical force, the condition of self-development and maintenance of the credit card system; The investment in credit card systems typically requires 10 million of dollars, and the cost of running and maintaining And it will take 2-3 years to recover costs, so some weaker banks have to opt for system-wide outsourcing or partial outsourcing, such as Societe Generale, Everbright Bank and Pudong Development Bank.
Credit card System is a comprehensive information system, which includes the central processing module: application, card issuing, receipt, liquidation, collection and fraud control, peripheral processing module: Business card printing, print, mail and image processing, the core part is the card issuing module. The card-issuing module can also be considered as an independent system in terms of its complexity. Table 1 is the credit card issuing system of domestic banks.
As you can see, most of the card-issuing systems used by domestic banks are developed by Atos or FDC. All two companies entered the Chinese market in the mid 1990s, and they didn't get so many customers until the domestic credit card market started in the early part of the century. Their system products have more than more than 10 years of industry testing, card issuance is huge, and other manufacturers of the system in a huge amount of support is still lack of experience, not fully adapt to China's national conditions, not many customers in China.

Second, the international popular credit card system

The card-issuing system selected by domestic banks is provided by overseas manufacturers, and there is not a domestic company. The reason is that since the early 1980s, there has been a professional system information company for credit card system development, than domestic companies leading 20 years, and the domestic credit card business has just started, the business of the developer-the bank of its complexity has not fully mastered, Domestic professional system Information companies have no such business and technical experience. Therefore, the domestic emergence of the development of credit card system of local manufacturers, it is estimated to be 5-10 years time.
Table 2 introduces the international popular credit card system from four aspects of its company, System profile, module composition and system evaluation (these credit card systems either currently occupy a certain domestic market, or have tried to enter the Chinese market, and then exit for various reasons). The common features of these systems are either to focus on several separate modules and to make them as complex and professional as possible, or to meet the needs of the market and the customer, with numerous functional modules to cover all the associated businesses. In addition, from the use of advanced technology, most of the system is not deliberately pursued, in order to pursue the stability of practical technology, still use the older development tools for product development.

Experience shows that the stability of an application system running on an open platform is worse than that of a professional platform. As a result, most of the systems in table 2 run only on os/390, os/400, and UNIX professional platforms. At the same time, table 2 shows a technical development trend of the application system: from the host direct-connect terminal mode to the client/server mode, from the direct file storage mode to the professional database storage data, from the professional operating platform to the open platform. A typical example is Atos's series of products: Cardlink runs on a professional mainframe operating system os/390, uses the host direct terminal mode, uses the sequential file to store the data, Semacard is produced later than the Cardlink, runs on the professional operating system os/400, Use the DB2 database to store the data; Essentis is the Atos company in recent years to launch a new system in the country, using the client/server model, DB2 database. New technology and new ideas in the IT industry are also being applied to the development of credit card systems, but they do not use technologies and ideas that are not yet mature. According to the development trend of this technology, the future credit card system should have the following features: Cross-platform, client/server mode, distributed database storage and access technology, multi-language support.

Credit card System is a very large software system, in addition to the strict requirements in the technical, its business functions of the completeness and professionalism more important. Now the system is becoming more professional and more functional. Independent modules contain more and more functions, and some functions are separated from one module to form new modules, and functional processing becomes more professional. such as VisionPlus and Cardlink card-issuing receipts are integrated into one module, and Essentis is split into two professional independent modules. In addition, bonus points have previously been integrated in the card-issuing module, and now more systems are equipped with specialized modules to achieve this function; fraud prevention and collection before the credit card system vendors themselves to develop the corresponding modules, the new system is integrated with professional manufacturers of products, Essentis is so. Some systems correspond to the VISA/MC interface modules, which used to develop a module for each interface, and Essentis use a module Essentis interchange to handle the clearing interface with multiple external card organizations. Because of this, the system software's scale expands unceasingly, the function is more formidable.

Comprehensive analysis on the processing ability of credit card system

The industry often has this discussion: "The domestic credit card system, which is a more powerful processing capacity." "In fact, it is difficult to have a clear conclusion on this question." Because the credit card system construction involves the product manufacturer, the implementation of manufacturers and business units, the operation of which involves various maintenance and operation units, while various aspects of the role and the various stages of work, any one link problems, will affect the credit card system construction, operation, for the future disposal of hidden dangers, It has a significant impact on the processing capacity of the system.

Domestic credit card system construction is not very smooth, the reasons are manifold. Doubts about the ability of the systems to deal with them are, in fact, unnecessary. Credit card is a new business, we are lack of relevant experience, the choice of systems are provided by foreign manufacturers, these systems do not adapt to China's national conditions, the need for a large number of transformation, and in this regard both sides lack of recognition, resulting in delays in system construction or project cost overruns, Thus, the processing capacity of the established system can not achieve the expected effect.

In any case, you can always find a way to compare these systems, but this needs to be done by a professional organization or organization. First of all, must establish the comparison premise, then carries on the analysis from each aspect. The following is the comparison premise: ① the same resource conditions, including hardware resources and human resources. Hardware resources can be different system platforms, but require the overall cost approach required, and human resources include human costs (levels, quantities, and usage cycles) for system development, maintenance, and operations. The main amount of data supported by the ② card-issuing module is close. The main data should be the number of accounts or cards, the number of cardholders can also be used as one. ③ Card Issuing module can provide the functions, at least to include licensing, customer service interactive interface and batch operations. Here, the metrics of the authorization and customer service interfaces are the response speed of the system to the event, and the bulk job is its whole batch running speed. The main events of batch operation are: Transaction processing, Billing day account closing, producing audit/reconciliation/statistic data, producing all kinds of report/letter/output document data and liquidation treatment of external organization.
In the above comparison premise, can be compared in the following aspects: ① system stability. Comparable indicators include: the maturity of hardware, operating systems and applications, the proficiency of the operator, and whether there are too many platforms, machines and systems involved. These elements can affect the processing power of the system, resulting in the system downtime or processing time increase. ② system error rate. Comparable indicators include: the number of bugs applied to the software, system error correction capabilities, system monitoring and prevention capabilities (monitoring of real-time operations, and the use of post-report monitoring methods). ③ the frequency of system updates, that is, the ability to upgrade. The system always has to do regular maintenance, clean up garbage data, regular data backup, standard specification and so on will cause system transformation. The evaluation of these events depends on the time it takes and the resources it consumes. ④ system development, operation and maintenance of the normative. It is necessary to analyze the development language, tools and quality management methods used in developing and maintaining systems to evaluate whether they conform to certain specifications and to avoid errors and improve efficiency under these specifications. The adaptability of the ⑤ system to banks. This includes the time and cost that the bank is familiar with the system, the degree to which the system can meet the business requirements, and whether it can help the business to handle specific transactions.
It is too difficult to collect detailed data according to the above conditions, this paper only compares the card quantity, system stability and function completeness that the system can support at present, the results are as follows: First, visionplus; second, Cardlink; third, Semacard; four, Essentis V, Unicard VI, Comex system, Bankworks, eighth, SLM system, Nineth, BULL system.

These systems, VisionPlus has the longest history, its stability has been running for nearly 20 years, the single system in foreign banks to support the largest number of cards, at the same time with the various modules associated with the business development function has been enhanced, it is listed in the first place. The second Cardlink history is shorter than VisionPlus, and it is developed by reference to some visionplus experience, mainly used in Europe and Southeast Asia, its system can support the card quantity and not visonplus much, stability and module function is not bad up and down. Semacard market is mainly in Southeast Asia, card support has been more than 2 million, the system has been running for nearly 10 years of history, so ranked third. Essentis's main market in Europe, is 2000 years after the launch of the new system, its stability and the number of supporting cards compared to the first three systems lesser, but technical ideas more advanced and more professional. The Unicard system currently has a worldwide card support capacity of only 4 million ~500, because it is based on the UNIX operating system (the first three systems are based on IBM's operating platform), so the stability is slightly worse. Systems in the sixth to eighth place, they have no more than millions of support cards. Bull system in China also has an application example, but for the debit card, in the credit cards, the function is weak, so this article will be in the end.