6 Eurogiro News
Osman Tural, CEO of Turkish Post, talked about the impres-
sive development of the Turkish Post over its 164 years.
Since 2005, PTT had changed fundamentally from a govern-
mental organisation into an organisation dedicated to “what
customers need is our aim”. Two focus areas emerged in the
transition, one where PTT renewed its branches and customer
channels after thorough customer consultation so that the
portfolio now includes various ATM & card solutions as well
as banking via internet and mobile phones. Another focus
point was to leverage the high quality and high capacity
technical solutions of PTT and re-sell these for other usage.
For example, PTT was building an automatic toll collection
system for highways. Considering the heavy traffic of Istan-
bul, there should be an excellent business case for such a
solution.
PTT is currently working to realise its Postbank project.
Uwe Holmsgaard, CIO of Eurogiro, spoke on the
forthcoming versions of the Eurogiro system.
Legislative changes would continue to drive much
development, with AML/ATF precautions as a main
factor. Eurogiro and the Settlement Service Provid-
ers were scrutinising the unique Eurogiro single
point of settlement solution in the light of likely
new regulation. Uwe Holmsgaard also encouraged
members to stay alert to security management as
well as tax regulation. The latter, by way of FATCA,
the US tax regulation, would affect all as its imple-
mentation shaped choice of business partners.
Massimiliano Anastasi from the Eurogiro Compli-
ance Audit Group gave an update on the European
situation, and encouraged Eurogiro members to
stay abreast of national legislation and invited
members to seek advice from the group.
Boston Consulting Group, represented by Jürgen Eckel,
gave this year’s overview of the payments market. He
outlined four key trends: strong underlying growth, new
regulations which will impact on issuers, merchants’
payments needs are evolving rapidly, and mergers and
acquisitions are reshaping the industry. The workers’
remittance niche was growing well, if mainly within
certain corridors. Jürgen Eckel stirred the audience and
solicited many comments by stating that banks were not
interested nor competitive in workers’ remittances and
that a collaborative approach could be effective provided
it included new entrants. Several Eurogiro banking
members in the audience could demonstrate active inter-
est and profitability from serving this market. By way of
example, in the Philippine market, being amongst the top
ten remittance receiving markets, new entrants typically
provided the front-end services and mainly used banks
as distribution channels.
