Servantis Systems Inc. last week announced plans to develop a version of its popular automated clearing house processing software designed to facilitate the handling of an anticipated surge in transaction volumes.
The Norcross, Ga.-based company will incorporate relational data base technology into the new Pep Double Plus system. Servantis estimates that its Pep line of software is used by 87% of U.S. banks that do automated clearing house processing.
The move to a relational data base, which allows information to be easily manipulated, is in response to the anticipated increases in automated clearing house volumes, as regional banks press forth their merger and acquisition activities, officials said.
Servantis partnered with First Union Corp., NationsBank Corp., Northern Trust Corp., and Firstar Corp to develop the system, which officials said will be in a beta test by the end of 1996.
Servantis made the announcement at the National Automated Clearing House Association's annual conference in New Orleans.
"The consolidation of banks into fewer and fewer operations centers is amplifying the number of transactions that people are trying to process out of single operations centers," said Doug Williams, senior vice president with Servantis.
"The pressure is on them to process a far greater number of transactions while still providing a high level of functionality. That's caused us to rethink what we need to do with our software."
The new system will allow for multiple streams of automated clearing house processing, as opposed to the single stream the system currently processes - as many as 200,000 transactions per hour.
Servantis' new pricing schemes have not been determined, but officials said costs in the $200,000 to $400,000 range can be expected.
