Fifteen major South African financial institutions have successfully migrated all their sensitive business data and hosted systems to Teraco, Africa’s leader in data centre infrastructure. The migration was coordinated in a single move described as a major technical feat and a step forward for the SA financial ecosystem.

A major data migration for the financial sector

The move involved ten of South Africa’s small- to medium-sized banks and five other major financial institutions. Six of these institutions are within the top 15 banking institutions in the country. All 15 institutions are customers of Direct Transact, South Africa’s largest outsourced banking and payments service provider.

A total of 100 terabytes of sensitive data was migrated seamlessly and securely. “The new Direct Transact hybrid infrastructure at the state-of-the-art Teraco facility allows for the best of both cloud and hosted servers to ensure minimal latency between hosts, full redundancy, maximum scalability and security. The move to Teraco was a delicate but important operation - even a few seconds of downtime could have been very disruptive for the South African banking and payments ecosystem, but we pulled it off without a single hitch, in a move that is ultimately to the benefit of the entire financial ecosystem of the country,” says Dirk Labuschagne, Executive Head of Business Support Services at Direct Transact.

Direct Transact’s systems enable R40-billion worth of transaction flows through the local banking and payments system every month. Its systems ensure that payment flows between different sectors of the banking and payments ecosystem work in harmony.

Labuschagne, who had a broken arm at the time, says he is extremely proud of his dedicated team for ensuring the migration took place with precision. “Our team members overcame all kinds of adversity to make this happen. We really have exceptionally skilled and dedicated people making sure that our clients and the broader financial system always remain safe and stable.”

It was, however, a matter of meticulous preparation. The move was the final phase of a project that had been in development for three years, protecting Direct Transact’s track record of 99,99% uptime for its clients over the past 20 years.

The 15 institutions, together making up 70% of SA’s banks that participate directly in the national payment system, previously had their core banking, processing, switching, card transaction and account verification data hosted by Direct Transact in a hybrid environment in line with its clients’ specific needs.

Teraco welcomes Direct Transact’s customers 

“We welcome Direct Transact to Teraco, the central point of interconnection between carriers, clouds, content and application service providers on the continent,” says Ryan Proksch, Head of Enterprise at Teraco.

“By deploying critical infrastructure in Teraco, Direct Transact and its partners now have direct access to a financial ecosystem comprising more than 250 network and connectivity providers, all the local and global cloud onramps, and over 80 financial services providers. As the recognised African leader in data centre infrastructure, Teraco provides world class infrastructure facilities as well as access to a business enablement platform assisting enterprises in their digital migration strategies," says Proksch.

Labuschagne says the move to Teraco’s hyper-connected, highly resilient and secure colocation facilities is beneficial for the local banking ecosystem. “Teraco provides the ultimate protection against loadshedding, connectivity challenges, natural disasters, and it allows for vastly increased stability, availability and scalability of the system. Teraco houses the critical infrastructure of eight out of the world’s ten biggest internet companies, as well as Africa’s largest internet peering exchange, NAPAfrica. It means our banking platforms will be able to handle accelerated growth by being scalable on all levels. This is good for the financial system’s growth and expansion potential, ultimately making our financial system more globally competitive and robust,” says Labuschagne.

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Issued by karen@atmosphere.co.za on behalf of Direct Transact. Please WhatsApp Karen on 0762809411 for interview opportunities.

About Direct Transact 

Direct Transact enables banking. Direct Transact’s multi-faceted technology enables banking-as-a-service for banks and has lowered the barriers to entry for small, medium and niche banks, enabling them to compete, democratising banking.

The company provides world-class cloud-based transaction infrastructure to banks, retailers and other businesses that want to launch innovative banking and payment solutions in the market. Since its launch in 2002, when Direct Transact became the first independent Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to the financial services industries in South Africa, it has built an unrivalled track record as a trusted banking solutions provider to the top brands in the financial services space.

The same core team that founded Direct Transact still manages it today, and the majority of customers have been with the company for more than 10 years. Today, 70% of all clearing and settlement banks in South Africa are Direct Transact customers, 21 currencies are supported through the Direct Transact platform and Direct Transact is the second largest VISA processor in the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region, with up to 40 billion ZAR processed every month. Direct Transact is a level 4 BBBEE company.

Direct Transact is regulated by the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) and is certified by BankServ to enable banks to participate in all payment streams. It is also a certified international third-party provider for both issuing and acquiring services for Visa and MasterCard, and fully PCI DSS compliant.

Direct Transact is investing in an open finance and borderless future to bolster accelerated innovation and inclusivity in the global payments ecosystem.

For more information visit www.directtransact.co.za and https://www.linkedin.com/company/direct-transact.

About Teraco 

Teraco, Africa's leading carrier-neutral colocation provider, is the first provider of highly resilient, vendor-neutral data environments in sub-Saharan Africa. With its world-class data centre infrastructure and network-dense ecosystems, Teraco forms a vital part of the African Internet’s backbone and is essential to the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy.

Teraco is part-owned by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) – offering customers a global data centre platform designed to enable digital business to scale within a highly connected data community across >285 data centres in 50 metros and 26 countries on six continent – and a consortium of private equity investors, including Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira. Teraco is a Level 2 BBBEE contributor (DTI Codes).

Visit teraco.co.za or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more information.