Compass Plus has announced it celebrated its 25^th birthday on 12 September as a provider of innovative retail banking and electronic payments software to financial institutions and payment services providers worldwide.

Established in 1989 as the successor to a large R&D institute, Compass Plus released and implemented its first product version in the early 90s to enable one of the world’s largest steel mills to successfully run a local retail consumer credit operation for its employees. Over the last 25 years, the company has continued to grow its product, service and solution portfolios organically in-house, in line with changing industry, regulatory and consumer demands, to ensure that its customers are always at the forefront of innovation. As such, the Compass Plus software suite is now end-to-end, spanning the entire retail banking and electronic payments spectrum going beyond the remit of traditional software vendors.

In 2011, the company launched the world’s first open development payments platform, TranzAxis, which was showcased at FinovateFall 2012 in New York, further establishing itself as a software house that both drives and encourages the use of new technologies to enable a more efficient, exciting and seamless consumer experience across all payment channels.

Over the years Compass Plus has helped its customers achieve exemplary results, such as to achieve and maintain 100% service availability, to grow a customers’ card base 15 fold over 10 years, to launch full-service processing centres in under three months and a banking product from concept to go live in just two weeks. The company has also received commendations from AmEx and MasterCard for the fastest ever certification in Bangladesh and the MENA region respectively.

The software provider was also amongst the first vendors across the globe to support 3D Secure and amongst the first 11 per cent in the industry to the achieve PA-DSS compliance worldwide. Over the last 25 years, it has also pioneered P2P payments, SMS banking and MasterCard PayPass technology in Russia, 3D Secure and Visa payWave in the CEMEA region, introduced JCB cards to Vietnam, and, more recently, UnionPay cards in Georgia.

In the most recent PayX Card Acquiring and Switching Products Report, Compass Plus averaged an overall score of more than four out of five (with five being the highest score), ranking in the top three of the 19 most acclaimed acquiring and switching product suites in the world.

“Over the past 25 years the industry has seen more change than ever before. Payments have grown from very a standard and mundane action to a personalised cross-channel consumer experience. Compass Plus is committed to ensuring that our customers are at the forefront of innovation and have future-proof systems able to cope with the uncertainties that may lie ahead,” said Maria Nottingham, Executive Vice President at Compass Plus. “As we see more non-traditional players enter the market, a focus on customer-centricity and the emergence of alternative payments, we are looking forward to the opportunities and challenges these will bring, adapting to market requirements as well as continuing to support and drive our customers and partners business.”