VIENNA, Austria, September 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- Bankdata adopts Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT to transform 
its payments processing.

Microsoft Corp. today announced at Sibos 2008 that Bankdata, a leading
provider of IT services in Denmark owned by a consortium of 15 banks, is
transforming its payments processing with a new payments platform using
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 including
Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT and BizTalk FileAct and InterAct
Adapters. The solution will help enable faster payment processing times,
reduce overall operating costs for Bankdata and bring significant cost
efficiencies to each of Bankdata's member banks, delivering deeper industry
value. The project went live on time at the end of January 2008 and is part
of the SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) Scheme, which enables organizations to make
Euro credit transfers domestically and across borders within a maximum of
three days.

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Bankdata is transforming its payments system in multiple phases. Four
member banks are now sending Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments via
the Microsoft technology-based platform, and since June 2008, Bankdata has
been able to send SEPA payments via home banking applications, significantly
increasing the number of payments being processed.

"We invested in our back-office operations to respond to SEPA deadlines
and the fast-changing payments landscape in Europe," said Soren Vesterager,
department manager at Bankdata. "By allowing us to simplify the back office,
Microsoft BizTalk Server has provided our member banks with reduced
transaction processing costs. When we started this SEPA project, we realized
our existing system could not support Extensible Markup Language (XML)
messages, which was critical for us to meet SCT requirements. We then
evaluated our options and found that Microsoft technology could support XML,
along with the core functionality of BizTalk Server, which handles our
business processing needs and offers an adapter to SWIFTNet FileAct. By using
Microsoft technology, we were able to build an agile, fast, stable, highly
secure and cost-effective solution, and, because we have other solutions
using BizTalk Server, it made sense for us to put them all on the same
platform."

"Many of our customers are looking to modernize their SWIFT
infrastructure, simplify their back office and improve the interoperability
of payments systems with legacy applications," said Sheida Hadji-Ashrafi,
worldwide industry manager, Payments at Microsoft. "To do this, banks turn to
Microsoft for our industry-leading business process management and advanced
enterprise application integration technology and for our deep understanding
of the issues that the payments industry faces. Microsoft is pleased to offer
the platform of choice for Bankdata and will continue to provide innovative,
enterprise solutions to help ensure that its payments system has the agility
and scalability needed to compete in the ever-changing payments marketplace."

In the future, Bankdata will consider extending its enterprise payments
platform and leveraging its Microsoft technology investment to implement SEPA
direct debit schemes.

About Microsoft in Financial Services

Microsoft's Financial Services Group helps financial firms leverage
technology to amplify the impact their people can deliver to drive business
success. We help our customers in banking, capital markets and securities,
and insurance achieve four business outcomes: develop relationships, drive
innovation, improve operations and build connections. To do this, we focus
our products and technologies, and our work with leading solutions, services
and hardware partners, on key areas where we believe we and our partners can
deliver exceptional value. Those areas include advisor platforms, channel
renewal, core banking, insurance value chain, investment management, risk
management and compliance, and payments. For more information, visit
http://www.microsoft.com/financialservices.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.

Web site: http://www.microsoft.com