Oracle has released a new functionality in PeopleSoft Cash Management 9, part of its PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9. The solution enables companies to manage enterprise-wide cash positions, perform automated bank reconciliation and process payments efficiently and securely. It includes a centralized platform, a feature set called PeopleSoft Financial Gateway, for straight-through-processing (STP) of payments to simplify corporate-to-bank connectivity. PeopleSoft Financial Gateway provides connectivity to banks, streamlines the payments cycle and delivers out-of-the-box interoperability with major worldwide payment and bank statement formats.

PeopleSoft Financial Gateway, coupled with Flexcube Swiftnet Services Integrator, a new Swiftnet connectivity solution launched by i-flex solutions, enables corporations to replace multiple proprietary payment interfaces to their banks with a single, standards-based interface and enables banks to offer value-added solutions to their corporate customers.

PeopleSoft Cash Management 9 includes new capabilities to help customers maximize existing software investments. New functionality includes better bank reconciliation, including many-to-many and many-to-one reconciliation and enhanced support for International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN), vital for the Single Euro Payment Area initiative in Europe. Payment processing enhancements include support for anti-money-laundering regulations, such as the OFAC regulation in the United States.

Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Cash Management 9 also includes new capabilities enabled by innovative technologies -- including an expansion of Web services, integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware including Oracle Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Process Manager and Oracle XML Publisher -- to help customers maximize existing software investments

"Driven by tighter regulations and the need for better cash management, corporations are more focused than ever on expanding insight into their cash positions and forecasts," said David Sardilli, senior vice president, financial services for Oracle. "Oracle understands these challenges and has introduced solutions and functionality designed to help corporations gain new visibility into and control over their financial supply chain. The PeopleSoft Cash Management 9 release, which builds on our commitment to support myriad payment and statement formats, brings new levels of simplicity and control to the corporate-to-bank connectivity function."

PeopleSoft Financial Gateway offers a centralized framework for payment processing and electronic banking. The solution facilitates the preparation, formatting, validation, approval and release of clean payment instructions to the company's banks or external payment systems. The instructions can come from other PeopleSoft Enterprise modules as well as third-party systems.

PeopleSoft Financial Gateway facilitates payment processing by supporting both automatic and manual payments processing; the loading and review of payment requests; transmission of high-value payments; aggregation of payments across multiple ERP systems; real-time tracking of payment status at any time; and the transmission of data using various international and national payment formats, including SWIFT, EDIFACT, NACHA, ANSI X.12 and ISO 20022 XML.

PeopleSoft Cash Management 9, which uses Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology, supports STP by providing different ways of capturing payments originating in ERP systems, including capturing payments through Web services. Using standardized and information-rich formats in combination with STP improves reconciliation rates against accounts payable and accounts receivable items. These capabilities can help to reduce costs, risk and the number of disputes with business partners.