BACS, the UK Bankers Automated Clearing Services, says its Inter-Bank Data Exchange managed network service will be fully operational by Febuary 1996. BACS was awarded the contract in June last year by the Cheque & Credit Clearing Co Ltd, a consortium of 12 UK banks and building societies that formed the Association of Payment Clearing Services, which is responsible for the bulk clearing of cheques and paper credits in England and Wales. British Telecommunications Plc has been sub-contracted to provide the high speed backbone network with its 34Mbps Switched Multimegabit Data Service network. BACS’s own role is to integrate its own systems with the legacy mainframe systems used by the member banks. Conversion of mainframe Systems Network Architecture traffic to TCP/IP running on the Switched Multimegabit Data Service is handled by BACS’s own proprietary Connect:Direct software running on RS/6000s. BACS says, once up and running, the network will be comfortable handling 2,300m cheque transactions each year. BACS’s next task will be to work with the member banks and building societies to develop applications for the new network.
