Thai interbank platform starts ‘bulk payments’

Thailand’s National Interbank and Transaction Management and Exchange (ITMX) platform announced it can make real-time “bulk payments” after going live on a new platform.

The platform, which has been created by payment service provider ACI Worldwide, will also increase operability between payment systems, ITMX said. The new platform has been integrated into the systems of all 33 users of the ITMX.    

National ITMX, which was established in 2005, is owned by Thailand’s largest commercial banks but supervised by the Bank of Thailand. The central bank also oversees the Automated High Value Transfer Network (Bahtnet) and the Imaged Cheque Clearing and Archive System (Icas).

Bahtnet processes high-value interbank transfers and settles interbank payment transactions that occur through Icas and the ITMX. The ITMX is responsible for card-based, non-card-based and account-to-account payments.

The majority of payments processed by ITMX are corporate. They include payroll, loans, securities, government bonds and tax refunds, among others. ITMX also processes government welfare payments including farmer subsidies and those made from the senior citizen welfare fund.

In 2020, ITMX’s bulk payment system processed 96 million transactions, worth $143 billion, representing a 60% increase in transaction volume from 2019. During the pandemic, the platform processed payments from the government’s Covid-19 relief fund.

ACI said it hopes the new system will increase the operability between payment systems. It said the platform will “drive growth with ISO 20022-compliant bulk processing”.

ISO 2022 was first published in 2004 by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) as a global standard for payment messaging. This standard creates a common language for payments data.

According to a report from Deutsche Bank, European banks were the first to deploy the standard for mass payment transactions. In other markets, individual standards remain common although ISO 2022 has become the common standard for cross-border payments.

ACI says its platform will help “bridge” ISO 20022 with the existing ISO 8583 standard used in Thailand.

Developing digital payments

In 2015, the Thai government outlined its 12^th National Economic and Social Development Plan with the aim of making the country more digital over the next 20 years.

The economy and the development of a more digital payment infrastructure was a core focus. In October 2015, Vocalink – which has since been bought by Mastercard – partnered with ITMX to deliver the country’s first real-time payment system.

In 2017, PromptPay was launched. Since going live, it has contributed to the 169% increase in digital payments in Thailand between 2016 and July 2020, according to Vocalink.

The proportion of real-time digital payments in Thailand is expected to rise from 13.3% in 2020 to 30.1% by 2025, according to ACI.

Last year, the Bank of Thailand announced it would link PromptPay to its Singapore counterpart, PayNow. Both systems are built by Vocalink. The idea is that cross-border remittances will, as a result, become cheaper and quicker.