Since the end of 2014 more than 19.000 ATMs in Germany (more than 30% of all ATMs installed in Germany) are operated with the SBS multivendor solution. The requirements on reliability and quality of the used software components are correspondingly high.

Therefore SBS continuously has to keep its products up-to-date, especially concerning the rules and regulations. One of the regulators in Germany is called Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft and it specifies the ATM communication and security standards in the so-called GA-Vereinbarung which is obligatory for all ATM operators.

Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft is the association of the Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken, Bundesverband deutscher Banken, Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband and Verband deutscher Pfandbriefbanken and an acts on behalf of all banking groups in Germany.

In 2014 SBS adapted its ATM application KIXCustomer to the requirements of the latest version of the GA-Vereinbarung.

One of the most important issues of the “new” GA-Vereinbarung is the so called “Notfallverarbeitung”: in former specifications the transactions on the ATM had to be cancelled in case of an error on the EMV smartcard. The new GA-Vereinbarung allows to continue such a transaction for German cards under certain circumstances. Since 2015 the “Notfallverarbeitung” is a compulsory feature that has to be supported by the ATM software.

The SBS solution has been successfully certified for the four ATM vendors Wincor-Nixdorf, NCR, Keba and Diebold.

For the first time SBS was able to use the online portal ZAM („ZKA Approval Manager) to submit the documents to Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft.

Fortunately the security certificates of the existing EPPs could be reused and it was not necessary to repeat the complex and costly process of the recertification of the EPPs. Nevertheless 15 registrations were required to cover all groups of ATM models used by SBS customers.

The tests, one of the major steps in the certification process, were professionally performed by experts of a certification lab called Cetecom. Therefore SBS has to provide all relevant models of ATMs in the SBS lab in Salzburg.

Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft approves all the certificates that SBS needs on the German ATM market and gives the permission to run ATMs with the SBS software solution. As some SBS customers decided to integrate ATMs from the ATM vendor GRG banking in their portfolio, too, SBS started an additional approval process with this vendor. It is nearly finished.