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JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest originator of automated clearing house transactions in the United States, is making a bid to play a much larger role in the rapidly evolving international payments market, CardLine Global sister publication American Banker reports. Chase says it has begun processing payments in Europe on a new unified payments system, the first in a series of upgrades to adapt its Global ACH service to coming changes in ACH rules in the United States and Europe. The financial institution is using a payments system from Dovetail Systems Ltd., a British developer of financial technology, says Chris Winter, the head of product management at J.P. Morgan Treasury Services in London. That Chase is using vendor software is notable considering it is famous for its do-it-yourself approach to technology. Chase originated 3.4 billion U.S. transactions on its homegrown ACH system in 2007, nearly as many as the next three originators combined. As soon as midyear, Chase plans to begin originating same-day ACH transactions in the United Kingdom under that nation's Faster Payments initiative, Winter says. More change will come in September when rules from NACHA, which oversees the ACH system in the U.S., take effect to allow international ACH transactions under the new standard entry class code. In November, direct debit systems are scheduled to be in place to serve the Single Euro Payments Area, designed to produce a common, cross-border market for payments in Europe. The changes could undercut Chase's Global ACH service, through which the bank offers clients a single gateway for payments and collection services across regions, Winter acknowledges. "Is there a threat to our existing business? Absolutely," he says. "But as a credible, global player who's here for the long term, we have to accept this, to go with it, and make it successful."
