Bacs Technology

Bacs Payments Technology

Smart Cards enable Bacstel-IP users to authenticate their connection to Bacs before sending their payments data. A Smart Card is issued to a named individual who is responsible for its use and security.
A Hardware Security Module (HSM) stores the same security data as a Smart Card but is accessible only to the software and does not require a person to manually authenticate it. When processing frequent or large volumes of Bacs files, the automation of authorisation saves a considerable amount of time.
For Bacstel-IP and Secure-IP submissions, you can connect to Bacs via dial-up internet, broadband internet or broadband Bacs extranet (a dedicated line and router for which Bacs will provide a service level agreement).
With Bacstel-IP and Secure-IP, data sent to Bacs is submitted in a format called Standard-18, and this is wrapped up in XML. Reports from Bacs are provided in two formats; XML, for analysing and processing, and HTML, for viewing on screen and printing.

There are now very few Building Societies which allow Building Society accounts with just Roll numbers (older accounts) to receive Bacs Direct Credits.
The usual procedure for these accounts is to send the Bacs Direct Credits to a "Head Office Collection Account" maintained by the Building Society with one of the Bacs Member Banks and include the roll number in a reference field for Direct Credits.
The Crediting and Debiting Building Society Accounts guide and similar user guides are available to businesses who have access to the Subscriber Library section on the Bacs website.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is a US federal law aimed at ensuring that businesses are totally transparent in their financial reporting - effectively making it more difficult to commit fraud at corporate level.
There is no such thing as a SOX-compliant piece of software - the business itself must be compliant.
However, Albany's software aims to meet the SOX regulations for reporting, audit trails and fraud.
This regulation effectively adds an extra layer of security to guard against unusual transactions.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enables the secure exchange of information amongst individuals and computer systems.
PKI is the security infrastructure or process utilised to securely transmit data. It is the system used for the creation, storage and distribution of digital certificates.
A digital certificate is an electronic document that is transmitted together with the data and verifies the identity of the sender and recipient via an associated digital signature.
The digital signature is the key to lock and unlock the digital certificate and to access the confidential data being sent or received. It contains a set of mathematically-related, unique cryptographic keys for the encryption and decryption of data and authenticates the source and validity of the message.
Digital signatures are now acceptable in a court of law.