At a glance
Established in 1865 to finance the growing trade between Europe, India and China, HSBC caters to approximately 100 million customers worldwide. In the UK, HSBC provides credit and debit services to customers of other foreign banks as well. The exchange of the transaction details of these third-party customers between HSBC and the foreign banks is carried out securely and automatically using Avco’s FTA utility, giving both HSBC and the foreign banks peace of mind that their information is transmitted without delay.
The Problem
HSBC customers have a regular requirement to transfer files to and from the Bank. Historically, a dial-up Secure FTP Mailbox Client was used, which also allowed for scheduled transfers. However, since the introduction of Web-based file transfer (ICE), these automated transfers are no longer possible.
Even though Web-based file transfer technology has introduced a certain amount of flexibility, this has also meant that file transfers have become a manual process. Transferring files on a regular basis has thus become more labour intensive and prone to errors. Consequently, some HSBC customers have expressed the need for automated file transfer. HSBC wanted a system that could:
- Allow scheduled file transfers for file transfer systems such as WebConnect
- Automate the process to eliminate the possibility of errors
The Approach
Avco created a utility for them that could be incorporated into a simple batch file holding the essential parameters, such as the login name and password used to access the secure servers and the file paths for sending and receiving. The utility needed only an inbox and outbox folder defined on the local drive and the setting up of the batch file to run as a scheduled task.
