Three Ethiopian Banks, United, Nib and Awash bank officially launched Premier Switch Solutions, a company set up to administer there shared electronic banking system.
The company officially launched operations ready to offer services through a network of 60 ATM machines and 160 point of sale terminals for all clients issued PSS cards by the three owner banks.
The presidents of the three partner banks handed out awards in recognition of the support received to set up the company to the National Bank of Ethiopia, Ethio-Telecom and the Document Authentication & Registration Office.
PSS was an initiative to share infrastructure to encourage competition on the basis of quality of services as opposed to infrastructure said Berhanu Getaneh, President of United Bank and the board chairman of PSS.Initial negotiations included the Chief Executives of four banks including Zemen bank according to sources. In a surprising move Zemen was not part of the group that signed the Memorandum of Understanding in February of 2009.
Zemen went on to be part of a similar agreement with Dashen Bank.
The three banks went on to form PSS with a 30 million birr capital contribution from each bank after rejecting the initial agreement with IT supplier eVentive for lack of technical competence in implementing CORE banking solutions.
PSS currently has 15 shareholders including the presidents of each bank and four shareholders from the IT departments of the banks. Moges Geleta was hired as the founding Chief Executive of PSS in July of 2010.
The company selected Moroccan S2M as its IT vendor after a bid that saw interest from several international and domestic suppliers, reaching an agreement worth 97 million birr for the turnkey project that included the supply of the hardware and the software for the system.
The happy presidents of the three banks handed out awards last week in recognition of the support given to them by The Ethiopian Revenues & Customs Authority (ERCA) was notably in absence, however.
Source: Addis Fortune
