Cobra and S2 to Develop A Shared Electronic Banking Network in Brazil

Banco do Brasils IT company Cobra Tecnologia, has established a partnership with S2 Systems to develop in Brazil one of the largest networks in the world for electronic banking operations. Known as the "Cobra Switch Project," the new network will be capable of handling initially 100 million transactions per month and will be the first in Brazil to be present in more than 3,500 cities. Cobras aim is to offer shared services starting this year to connect thousands of self-service terminals at bank branches and POS equipment in chain stores that are also able to perform as remote banking stations. In its agreement with S2 Systems, Cobra Tecnologia has adopted S2s OpeN/2 transaction management and payment system as its standard operation management platform. In turn S2 Systems will transfer to Cobra Tecnologia all the required know-how for maintenance, support, and application development in this platform. More than just bringing together the banks backbones, the "Cobra Switch" project also includes the backbone of Cobra Tecnologia itself, and also includes a large processing center, where self-service terminals capturing, certification and payment operations are performed. Other financial institutions interested in the Project, such as BNB -- Banco do Nordeste do Brasil --, BESC -- Banco do Estado de Santa Catarina -- and BASA -- Banco da Amazônia SA -- will be able to start their operations as soon as the project is implemented. As the choice of some of the largest banks in the world, S2 Systems OpeN/2 platform provides all the necessary resources for the implementation of security and management applications, as well as the required availability for this type of mission critical network. The "Cobra Switch" network will rely on redundancy and 24x7 contingency services, as well as on solid cryptography and digital certification tools. Because of its continental dimensions, Brazil currently has one of the largest numbers of self-service electronic equipment in the world, with 142 thousand terminals just in the banking system. For marketing reasons as well as for achieving visibility to their brands, most Brazilian banks opted to develop their own self-service networks.