International Remittance System Renewal

Background

International remittances are settled through a global network called SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication). The protocol uses a data format known as “Message Type”, established in the 1970s and a new XML-based protocol known as ISO 20022 will replace it by November 2025. This transition aims to address emerging needs such as the strengthening of international anti-money laundering regulations, utilization in data-driven businesses, and the improvement of operational efficiency. Financial institutions, including client companies, are required to adapt to this change.

The challenge

At the client company, the system infrastructure had deteriorated. Repeated additions and alterations to the system to meet changing business needs had resulted in an increasingly bloated and complex system. As a result, it required a significant amount of manual effort for operations and led to high system operation costs. Therefore, as part of its adaptation to the new international remittance protocol, the company planned to overhaul not only the application but also the underlying infrastructure and decided to migrate to a cloud-based system.

The solution

In response to a request from an SIer (System Integrator) that decided to bid on the client’s public tender, Akkodis assembled a team with cloud development expertise and participated in the proposal planning. Based on the client’s requirements and the SIer’s grand design, Akkodis provided architecture design for system reliability functions, focusing on security and backup measures. After the team won the bid and proceeded with development, the project was structured so that Akkodis would handle the infrastructure, while the application development would be outsourced to another vendor.

Assuming that security systems would be regularly upgraded with the latest technologies, we designed various security systems on AWS based on industry best practices. These included:

  1. data leakage prevention
  2. continuous vulnerability management
  3. data and system configuration backups
  4. …and an integrated management system for these security measures.

Additionally, since the specifications for external connections were not publicly available and the exact behavior could not be determined in advance, Akkodis incorporated a testing phase into the plan. This involved connecting to a test environment to analyze API behavior.

Solution Architecture

The result

The renewal project is still ongoing. Akkodis team completed the design, construction, and infrastructure testing phases as scheduled. The connection tests, aimed at investigating the behavior of external systems, were also successfully carried out as planned, and the API behavior was confirmed. Currently, comprehensive testing is underway in preparation for the release scheduled for July 2025.