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Introduction

aplonHUB™ is a fast and simple way for banks to add financial messages routing functionality to existing legacy systems. Its light footprint and extensibility make it an ideal hub for banks of any size to manage and route messages such as SWIFT, ISO20022, SEPA, TARGET2, or local.

It can function as a standalone solution or be fully integrated with the existing core systems. The interfaces provided can be used directly by core systems to manage and route Credit transfers, Instant credit transfers, and Direct Debits, with minimal impact on the back-office system since you will not need to implement complex logic directly in the legacy system. Its routing and scheduling features will simplify your operations and add the necessary control to your payments process.

aplonHUB transacts with the core banking or legacy payment systems in a number of methods to handle all the advanced routing and message transformation needs.

  • It performs all the needed transformation and validation of your SWIFT, ISO20022, SEPA, TARGET2, or local messages before and after the connection with the Swift Alliance or Service bureau.

  • It integrates seamlessly with external AML systems to guarantee compliance.

aplonHUB™ Features

Functional

  • Supports incoming and outgoing SWIFT MT, ISO20022, TARGET2, SEPA, CBPR+, MEPS, P27

  • Handles Credit transfers, Direct Debits, Instant Payments, MT to ISO20022 translations

  • Checks and validates all messages and generates alerts where appropriate

  • Alerts are highlighted in separate views where an operator can review

  • Supports rich search capabilities on archived messages based on dates, status, or message contents.

  • Messages can also be exported on well-defined and user-friendly PDFs.

  • It correlates related messages (e.g., Replies, Returns) and displays them side-by-side for easy reconciliation.

  • Incoming MT300 and MT320 are compared with equivalent outgoing messages. The differences between the two will be highlighted.

  • Ability to automatically generate replies/requests for cancelation/returns/Rejects for SWIFT MT, SEPA, or ISO20022 messages

  • Integrates with SWIFT ACKs/NACKs

  • Connects with external AML systems and bypasses messages according to rules

Security & Auditing

  • Role-based access control (maker, authorizer, viewer, administrator, AML officer, etc.)

  • Audit log availability with an extensive search on date, object, action, or user.

  • Local Authentication (LAU) is implemented as recommended by SWIFT to provide integrity and authentication and protect files in transit between the application and the AutoClient.

Non-functional

  • Modern and user-friendly UX/UI

  • Secured by design (three-tier)

  • API architecture by design

  • High availability by design

Components & subsystems

The basic ingredients of aplonHUB are the SWIFT MT, ISO20022, CBPR+, TARGET2, SEPA, etc., libraries of PaymentComponents. These libraries are updated annually as the new rules and validations are published by the controlling authorities every year. At these times, a newer release of aplonHUB is published and distributed.

aplonHUB depending on the functionalities supported includes the relevant subsystems and components. See below the list of the subsystems available.

Available Schemes

  • SEPA Credit Transfers

  • SEPA Direct Debits

  • SEPA Instant Payments

  • SWIFT MT

  • CBPR+

  • TARGET2

  • P27

  • MEPS+

  • FedNow

Available Translations

  • SWIFT MT <> CBPR+

  • SWIFT MT <> Target2

Technical specifications

  • aplonHUB™ is a Java-based web application that can be deployed using any J2EE-compliant application server or servlet container.

  • It supports all leading RDBMSs, including MySQL, DB2, and SQL Server (preferred).

  • Requires Java 8 and above.

  • Clients can access the application from any web browser

Roles

aplonHUB provides a variety of distinct roles. Each role has specific permissions in the platform. This way, actions can be distributed to various users with different levels of access.

These roles are:

  • Admin

  • AMLOfficer

  • Authorizer

  • Maker

  • Viewer

  • Start/Stop Scheduler

  • Direct Debits Config

Admin:

The administrator of the system has access to the configuration of the system. The user is provided access to the system properties, which can be edited. Through the basic system properties, for example, the global configuration is available ( interconnections with  SFTP, FTP, MQ, BICs, and password policies).   Through the custom system properties, the option of customized configuration for different clients is given.

From the schedulers and their settings, the user can configure:

  • The input/output folder

  • Emails to notify on process end

  • File pattern for the files to read (i.e., *.csv)

  • Configure the scheduler execution

  • The AML status and its name can be edited

The user also has access to the users of the system. From this menu, the user can:

  • view the users

  • edit roles

  • enable/disable user

AML Officer:

The AML Officer has access to both incoming and outgoing messages (SEPA and MT).

From the Incoming and Outgoing menus, the following actions are available:

  • View SEPA messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • View MT messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • Search messages

  • View File logs

  • Change the AML status 

Authorizer:

The Authorizer Officer has access to incoming and outgoing messages (SEPA and MT).

From the Incoming and Outgoing menus, the following actions are available:

  • View SEPA messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • View MT messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • Search messages

  • View File logs

  • View all the pending transactions waiting for authorization. Note that the user who authorizes it should be different from the user that initiates the action

  • Use the Custom Notification setup events to send notifications from the schedulers, like when a rejection is received, send an email

  • Add rules to be handled by the schedulers. For example, when the amount is greater than 100, then do a specific action

  • Add holidays to avoid scheduled runs

  • Use Audit Trail to watch for actions that happened on a transaction. For example, bulked, debulked, authorized, etc

  • Can pause or resume a pending outgoing transaction from the Pending → Outgoing menu

Maker:

The Maker role has access to the:

  • View SEPA messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • View MT messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • Search messages

  • Recall outgoing payments (requires authorization)

  • Return incoming payments (requires authorization)

  • View File logs

  • View alerts

  • View all the pending transactions waiting for authorization. Note that the user who authorizes it should be different from the user that initiates the action

  • Create payment

  • Use Audit Trail to watch for actions that happened on a transaction. For example, bulked, debulked, authorized, etc

Viewer:

The viewer role has access to the:

  • Outgoing/incoming menus

  • Pending

  • Security

From the Incoming and Outgoing menus, the following actions are available:

  • View SEPA messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • View MT messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • Search messages

  • View File logs

  • View at the outgoing messages all pending transactions that will be picked up by the next outgoing scheduled run

  • Use Audit Trail to watch for actions that happened on a transaction. For example, bulked, debulked, authorized, etc

Start/Stop Scheduler:

The Start/Stop scheduler role has access to:

  • Outgoing/incoming menus

  • Pending

  • Configuration

  • Security

From the Incoming and Outgoing menus, the following actions are available:

  • View SEPA messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • View MT messages and their details, view files, and change the AML status

  • Search messages

  • View File logs

  • View alerts

  • View at the outgoing messages all pending transactions that will be picked up by the next outgoing scheduled run

  • Can configure the scheduler executions

  • Use Audit Trail to watch for actions that happened on a transaction. For example, bulked, debulked, authorized, etc

Direct Debits Config:

The Direct Debits Config role has access only to the "SEPA DD Config" menu.

From this menu, the user can:

  • Perform all the operations of the Creditors List, whose content is necessary for setting up SEPA Direct Debits.

  • Can whitelist Creditors for SEPA Direct Debits configuration.

  • Can blacklist Creditors for SEPA Direct Debits configuration.

Sample screens

Incoming/Outgoing menus.

SEPA tab:

The user in this tab has access to the list of incoming SEPA messages, the file log, and alerts.

Using criteria such as date, tags, and other searching messages is made simple.

Files are expandable to display the messages they contain and their details (the same applies to outgoing too).

At SEPA, by selecting a file, the user can view detailed information

Details like:

  • Bulk SN

  • Message Name ID (i.e camt.027)

  • Settlement Date

  • Message ID

  • Total amount

For each message, available details can also be viewed. Details like:

  • Transaction SN

  • Transaction Id

  • Transaction Status

  • Amount

  • The creditor's account

The user has the option to export the files, bulks, and transactions in PDF or excel reports.

Example of SEPA tab usage:

SEPA payments list and details

This is a list of outgoing payment files (similar to incoming). A payment file (outgoing or incoming) can contain more than one message, and any message can contain more than one transaction.

In each of the transactions, the user can view detailed information.

 

Outgoing payment is returned

An outgoing pacs.004 has been returned with a reason code.

By opening the details of the transaction, we can also view the incoming message related to the original transaction.

Return of incoming payment

An incoming pacs.008 can be returned with a reason code.

We can select a reason code from the dropdown menu.

Click on the "Return payment"

Select a return code in order to send it back to the sender. The payment is marked as “To Be returned” until the action is approved and executed.

These actions that require authorization by another user appear in Pending > Authorizations

After the return action has been authorized by another user, a task scheduler will take action and create an outgoing file (in this case, a pacs.004) related to the original message (pacs.008).

MT tab:

Expanded SWIFT MT messages with user-friendly tag names. An audit trail of all actions performed by users on the message is always available.

If the message has a reply message, then this will be displayed side by side.

Search tab:

At the search messages tab, the user can search messages using the following criteria:

  • Date

  • Transaction status (received, settled, etc.)

  • Debtor IBAN

  • Creditor IBAN

Alerts tab:

Alerted messages are displayed in a separate view for better handling. The user can export the alerts in PDF or excel format.

Pending tab:

The Pending menu organizes the payments into two categories. In the Outgoing screen are payments that are ready to be sent, and Authorisation contains payments that a user must manually check and approve before they are sent.

The outgoing tab allows the user to export the file in pdf or Excel format. 

An authorizer can also PAUSE a ready-to-go transaction for later. The user will see the paused transactions by selecting the Paused option in the dropdown above the list. Those transactions will be ignored by all schedulers until an authorizer chooses to RESUME this transaction (see the bellow screenshot)

Create Payment

If necessary, a user can manually create a payment (with a role that allows him this action) from the Create payment menu.

The user will have to enter the necessary information.

  • For payment information:

  • Transaction ID

  • End to End ID

  • Settlement Account

  • Settlement Date

For Debtor information:

  • Name

  • Address

  • Country code

  • IBAN

For Creditor Information:

  • Name

  • Address

  • Country code

  • IBAN

  • BIC

  • Remittance Information (Unstr)

Configuration Tab

The configuration menu provides options for the setup of system settings (basic and custom that increase the user experience), AML statuses, scheduled tasks, notifications, and rules regarding actions depending on custom conditions and holidays that are configurable by the administrator.

Security Tab:

Audit Trail Tab:

User roles with access to the audit trail screen have the ability to search using criteria. The actor, the time, and the context are recorded for every action.

Users Tab:

Users with access at the users' tab can enable/disable a user and search for a user using criteria such as:

  • E-mail

  • First Name

  • Last Name

  • Role

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