Note from Casey Scheer, Director of Marketing

Welcome to this latest issue of PaymentsNOW.

The payments industry is evolving at record speed—and the back office can’t afford to lag behind. In this issue, we explore how organizations can modernize their back-office operations to turn challenges into opportunities.

You’ll find expert insights on transforming the payments back office into a profit driver, strategies for integration and compliance, and a closer look at how BHMI’s Concourse Financial Software Suite is helping companies stay ahead. We’re also sharing new resources, thought leadership, and updates to help you navigate the future of payments with confidence.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you find this information helpful!

Article: From Bottleneck to Business Driver - Transforming the Payments Back Office into a Profit Center

This recent article in PaymentsNEXT by Kate Knudsen, Senior Program Director at BHMI, breaks down why legacy batch systems and manual processes are dragging profitability—and how modernization can flip the script. Kate shares key insights on:

Real-time payments growth and its impact on the back office
The hidden costs of outdated infrastructures
Strategies for automation, API integration, and future-proofing
Turning back-office operations into a competitive advantage

Article: From Silos to Synergy Through Back Office Integration

Real-time payments and digital wallets may grab headlines, but the real transformation lies behind the scenes in the payments back office.

The Green Sheet recently published an article by BHMI's CTO, Michael Meeks, that explores how fragmented, siloed back-office systems are creating hidden bottlenecks in payment operations—and why integration is essential.

Key challenges many organizations face:

Disconnected back-office systems
Data silos providing limited and segregated visibility to payments data
Manual processes prone to errors and delays

The solution? A unified back-office ecosystem that delivers:

Real-time data accuracy
Faster reconciliation and settlement cycles
Automated workflows that reduce errors
Enhanced dispute management with full transaction context
Actionable business intelligence across the payment lifecycle

Michael emphasizes that as payment methods evolve, modernization can’t stop at the front end. A future-ready payments back office is not only more efficient—it’s a strategic asset.

Article: 8 Ways to Audit-Proof Your Payments Back Office

In today’s high-speed payments environment, “audit-ready” isn’t optional and can be a competitive advantage.

From reconciliation and settlement to dispute management, every part of the payments back office is under increasing scrutiny. Fragmented data, manual processes, and unclear audit trails can lead to costly penalties, revenue loss, and reputational damage.

In her recent article in BAI Banking Strategies, Cheryl Fitzgarrald of BHMI outlines 8 best practices to audit-proof your payments back office—from creating a single source of truth for transaction data to automating dispute evidence collection, and involving compliance teams early in process design. Her insights highlight that compliance isn’t just about avoiding fines—it’s about building trust, accelerating resolution times, and reducing operational risk.

Solution Document: Concourse Financial Software Suite

Does your company need a proven solution specifically designed to reduce the cost and complexity of back office processing for electronic payment transactions?

Look no further – the Concourse Financial Software Suite® is a modular software suite that is enabling companies around the world to perform a wide range of back office functions that are required to successfully process electronic payment transactions. This includes real-time access to transaction data, transaction research, automated reconciliation, settlement processing, reporting, fee assessment, chargebacks and disputes workflow management. Its continuous processing architecture and powerful rules engine make Concourse an ideal solution for organizations looking to modernize and optimize back-office payment operations.

The modules within the Concourse Financial Software Suite can be licensed separately or together to meet a company’s specific back office processing needs for electronic payments.

The Concourse modules include the following:

This document provides a comprehensive overview of the Concourse Financial Software Suite and how it makes payments back-office processing flexible, reliable, and cost effective.

Webinar On-Demand: Transform Your Payments Back Office with Concourse

No longer on the horizon, real-time payments are here. As a result, we are experiencing a rapid and global shift towards payments modernization. As an industry, we have made great strides in creating robust, real-time front-end interfaces. However, we often overlook the importance of the back-office, which does the heavy lifting for an organization’s payments processing.

Many companies are relying on legacy back-office systems that are decades old and unequipped to support the requirements for real-time payments. The primary challenge companies must face is how to get the back office processing of payments to keep up with a real-time front end. The basic problem is that back-office systems cannot match the real-time capabilities of fast payments front ends. Why? Because the back office is where real-time meets batch.

In this webinar, BHMI will discuss some of the consequences of a batch focused back office and how the Concourse Financial Software Suite addresses this real-time back-office challenge including the following:

Successfully meet the continuous processing requirements for real-time payments
Easily adapt to new requirements without the expense of software changes
Seamlessly support new payment types and message formats such as ISO 20022
Continuously provide real-time, enterprise view of all transactions and financial positions

During this webinar, you will learn how Concourse not only transforms the payments back office but also futureproofs it. Our clients have seen a strong Return On Investment because Concourse is allowing them to be proactive and efficient with their back-office processing. They are also able to support ongoing changes within the payments industry without the time and cost of software changes.

Concourse Spotlight: Life Cycle Linkage

The Concourse Financial Software Suite includes features that make it one of the industry’s most powerful and flexible payments back-office solutions.

Concourse's Life Cycle Linkage is one of these features because it seamlessly connects related activities for a transaction, providing a comprehensive view of each cardholder event. From authorizations to chargebacks and representments, this interconnected approach ensures that every transaction is tracked through its entire life cycle.

Below are just a few of the benefits of Life Cycle Linkage:

Complete transaction visibility in one place
Improved accuracy of transaction data
Enhanced fraud detection with full transaction history
Streamlined dispute management
Enhanced auditability and compliance support
Real-time tracking and monitoring
Improved customer service

With Life Cycle Linkage, every transaction tells its full story—empowering businesses to make smarter decisions, strengthen security, and deliver better service. We invite you to learn more about the power of Life Cycle Linkage.

Videos: Pioneers in Payments

Have you watched BHMI's Pioneers in Payments video podcast series where payments experts share valuable industry insights?

Below are links to interviews conducted during the last three months:

We also invite you to watch previous episodes and register to be a guest on an upcoming episode.

About BHMI

BHMI is a leading provider of software solutions to modernize back-office payments operations. When we say back office, we are referring to the processing that occurs after a payment has been authorized. The authorization of a transaction is only a very small part of the payment lifecycle. There is so much that occurs after authorization. This includes functions such as reconciliation and settlement. It also includes the assessment of transaction-based fees and the handling of any transactions that are disputed. The back office is also where companies view transaction data and financial positions, perform transaction research, create reports, and so much more.

BHMI is best known as the creator of the Concourse Financial Software Suite – an innovative collection of modular software solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of back-office payments processing. Concourse is ideal for organizations with complex, high-volume, multi-rail payments operations. Concourse is a modern, resilient, payment solution that can be integrated within most payment ecosystems to perform back-office processing on any type of electronic payment, anywhere in the world, 24x7x365.

Contact BHMI to learn how your organization can benefit from Concourse.

11602 West Center Road
Omaha, NE 68144
+1 (402) 333-3300
ewww.bhmi.com