Al Baraka Bank, the pioneer of Islamic banking in South Africa and a subsidiary of the international Al Baraka Banking Group B.S.C, has deployed IMX Software’s new generation foreign currency point-of-sale and trading compliance solution in all its branches across South Africa. A key requirement for Al Baraka was to efficiently manage foreign banknote availability across its national network in order to service its customer needs whilst optimising cash holdings.

Al Baraka has experienced strong growth in foreign banknote sales and needed to replace its existing system to enable faster transaction times and significantly improved inventory management and back-office reporting. Furthermore, the Bank plans to launch a remittance product in the future – a strategy GTS supports through out-of-the-box integration with the major remittance operators: Western Union, MoneyGram and Xpress Money.

Says Mohammed Kaka, Chief Operating Officer of Al Baraka Bank: “We are pleased to have been granted SARB approval to commence trading on GTS in time for our busy December/January trading period. The SARB mandates the maintenance of a single customer database in our core banking system and straight-through integration with our financial systems. The IMX team collaborated with our developers to successfully achieve this.”

GTS-Retail is a modern, easy-to-use, multi-language point of sale system enabling forex providers to serve customers quickly, while efficiently managing their compliance obligations and inventory. Centralized administration and reporting provide a clear view of business performance and ensure that trading, AML, KYC and other business-specific rules are enforced.

GTS-Retail is highly tailored to the specialist needs of the South African market, with compliance modules for South African Reserve Bank FinSurv reporting as well as integration with the Financial Intelligence Centre’s goAML software for reporting of larger cash transactions, suspicious transactions and international fund transfers.

Says Rob Stansell, Managing Director of IMX Software SA: “We are delighted to have Al Baraka as the first South African bank to use the GTS trading platform. We look forward to assisting Al Baraka to launch new products on the GTS platform in the future”.