Moves to a more modern, direct and real-time payment clearing and supports faster EU integration of country’s banking system

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Klirinskiinterbankarskisistemi AD Skopje (KIBS), a payment system operator based in Skopje, has chosen to transform into a “digital factory” by deploying IBM public and private cloud solutions.

KIBS  is owned by 12 banks, some of which are multinationals. In the wake of the new strengthened EU perspective for the region of Western Balkans, KIBS saw an opportunity to not only secure the 24/7 availability and accessibility of the country’s payment clearing, but to digitize, improve and scale-up its service. IBM Cloud Private, a new container-based platform that can transform existing IT systems into a flexible, private cloud, was adopted to help meet regulatory, security and availability standards while accelerating the development of digital services.

“With digitalization signaling a deep transformation of the financial services industry across Europe, we understand that the financial institutions also need to transform in order to reduce costs, reduce risk, and enhance client experience,” said Goran Anastasovski, General Manager of KIBS. “By selecting IBM Cloud Private over competitive offerings, we believe we are better positioned to enable a collaboration within an ecosystem of organizations in our country and to seamless and secure interactions across different online channels. It will also help us better respond to new regulatory requirements stemming from our integration with the EU.”

As part of the agreement signed last year, KIBS, with the help of IBM Business Partner Intec System, will consolidate and transform their existing resources into a “digital factory” capable of creating and running modern cloud-native applications. This transformation is hoped to reduce time to market for new digital products from 18 months to 3-4 months, while optimizing operating costs.

“Financial institutions across South East Europe are increasingly turning to IBM services and IBM Cloud platforms to innovate,” said Michael Paier, General Manager, IBM South East Europe. “By deploying IBM Cloud Private, KIBS will be able to better leverage mobility, security, resiliency and all that at an optimum cost ensuring sustainable business growth.”