The Client
Bank South Pacific in Papua New Guinea has provided banking products and services in a friendly, efficient and professional manner since 1957. The bank started as a branch of the National Bank of Australasia Limited. Operations were later expanded to the major centers and in 1974, it was incorporated as Bank of South Pacific Limited (trading as Bank South Pacific), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Australian parent. Bank South Pacific (BSP) is now a privately owned bank with the majority owned Papua New Guinea-based shareholders.

Their mission is to achieve a pre-eminent position in the Papua New Guinea financial services marketplace, as well as provide electronic delivery systems and internal processing enhancements to its customers.

The Challenge
In 2000, BSP sought a solution that would simplify the management and operations of their ATM, POS and merchant, debit card, telephone banking and bill payment programs. Additionally, the bank wanted to establish a domestic interchange interface with Westpac Bank and ANZ Bank.

The Solution
BSP established a strong partnership with Euronet Worldwide to consolidate all of their ATM, POS and EFT processing on Euronet Integrated Transaction Management (ITM) middleware. Next, these industry leaders worked to develop the requested interchange interface. The establishment of the interchange interface enabled the immediate sharing of cards and devices, prompting all local banks to implement a domestic interchange system.

The Results
Because of the successful implementation of these products, BSP, who recently acquired a large state-owned bank called Papua New Guinea Banking Corporation (PNGBC), asked Euronet to help migrate all cards, devices and customers from PNGBC to BSP's existing ITM system. Based on this merger, BSP now maintains 750,000 customers, equaling 60% of the Papua New Guinea banking sector and making it the largest bank in Papua New Guinea with more than 90 points of representation.

"We could not be successful in rolling out this conversion project without the significant support from Euronet," said Tony Westaway, Bank South Pacific General Manager. "From our existing offerings, we can substantially upgrade and expand our product offerings at a low cost to us while providing the majority of the Papua New Guinea customers with excellent electronic transaction solutions."

BSP is able to offer all of its customers, existing and new, an integrated and diverse set of product offerings -- with no impact on the newly acquired customers.