In December 2020, South Africans spoke with their wallets, and retailers received a reprieve from the tough journey they experienced through 2020.

According to the South Africa Data Portal, sales rose considerably compared to November 2020, and significantly more so next to April 2020. Even though the December retail sales didn’t signal a full recovery for the market, it moved substantially in the right direction, fuelled by a newfound appreciation for e-commerce and contactless payments.

This activity translated into more card transactions. There was a significant surge in transaction volumes, supported by the country’s leading payments network provider, XLink. The timing couldn’t be better as XLink had recently launched its new-generation payment network and successfully migrated its major banking partners to the new platform.

“We completed our new network last year and migrated our clients, but the holiday period was a big test for the new systems,” says Craig Lefkowitz, executive head of innovation and technology at XLink Communications. “The network is fully PCI-compliant and adds many new features that we are rolling out to our customers as well as their customers, such as new point-of-sale portals and Internet-of-things capabilities. This transitions our network infrastructure into a single platform that can scale out and do many different things in the payment space and beyond. It took a lot of work to make this network a reality, and we’re thrilled that it performed beautifully during the busy holiday period.”

Modernised

XLink established its original network 16 years ago and grew it to be the preferred choice of South Africa’s major banks and financial institutions. Backed by an innovative R&D department, hands-on support, and a deep understanding of financial governance and compliance, XLink has carried sensitive transactions such as card payments and ATM integration reliably for well over a decade.

Yet technology doesn’t stand still, and the original network needed to make way for something more suitably modern and agnostic of any specific connectivity provider. The decision to modernise came in early 2019, and by early 2020 XLink started to migrate its customers to the new platform. The network is highly resilient, as the increased transaction volumes of the holiday period demonstrated.

This leap in innovation was no small feat: Each banking customer has bespoke requirements, including regulatory demands, deep changes to their systems, and individual routing requirements — it was not plug and play. None could afford any substantial downtime. XLink could migrate all these customers, including institutions that form the South African financial market’s backbone, with full support and precise change management.

“We have a very strong brand out there and that definitely helped the migration process,” says Lefkowitz.

“The experience with XLink’s new network has been exceptional,” says Ina van Rensburg, head of product: merchant services at Capitec. “Our retail customers could reliably connect to the network, and we processed a record number of transactions over the holiday period without experiencing problems or unavailability. The migration process was seamless, which demonstrates XLink’s experience and competency. This is definitely the partner and network Capitec wants as we build South Africa’s economy.”

XLink’s new network is fully redundant, leveraging its relationships with South African telecommunications companies to ensure the best availability, uptime and stability. The multi-network system was built parallel to the original network, and XLink took great care to ensure seamless migrations for its customers, engaging with them well beforehand to introduce the strategy and solicit their collaboration. XLink engaged in consultations around customer requirements and desired features.

Dubbed Manticore, the new XLink network is a modern hybrid. It’s an MPLS network based on three data centres hosted at Vodacom, MTN and Teraco, forming the core of the system. To help drive innovation and development, XLink bolted on a virtual data centre hosted at Amazon Web Services “to augment our current infrastructure and allow XLink to start developing and building payment systems using AWS’s cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platform,” says Lefkowitz.

At the high level, the network represents where XLink is heading, says its MD, Hymie Marnewick. “The modern world is built on software platforms. They offer more possibilities for new services, innovation and lower costs. Last year, we launched FoodGuru, a digital platform for restaurants, coffee shops and other eateries. Now we have the new XLink platform and network, which carry the many opportunities that can come through a platform. This holiday season has been a smashing success and we can’t wait to show our customers what we have next in store with our platform-enabled business model.”

Building a new network and platform is no small feat, particularly in the highly regulated and demanding financial services space. By leveraging its extensive experience, innovation skills, PCI-compliance and trust built over 16 years with the banking world’s big players and rising stars, XLink has established a payment platform like no other in South Africa, setting the course for the next 16 years and beyond.

About XLink
XLink has been enabling “Africa to Transact” since 2004 by providing companies with the high level of reliable, secure connectivity required to process payments. Facilitating over a billion connections a year, XLink plays an important part in growing the country’s businesses. By leveraging its extensive capabilities in connectivity, managed services and platforms, XLink enables businesses in retail and financial services to solve complex challenges, simply. To find out more about XLink, visit www.xlink.co.za, or follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook for regular updates.