An organizational unit within payment operations.
Most business objects and business rules used in payment processing are separated at clearing-area level. Clearing areas act as a substructure under the client level.
In Payment Engine, you can define clearing areas based on the following criteria:
Business requirements (clearing and settlement setup)
Each clearing area has its own set of business rules and business objects. End-of-day processing is performed separately for each clearing area. For more information, see End-of-Day Processing (FS-PE-EOD).
Level of central control and separation of data
At clearing-area level, you must define a separate set of control data so that the processes in each clearing area can be controlled separately.
For each clearing area, you can control which Payment Engine objects users are allowed to display or edit and which actions users are allowed to perform.
You can model more than one clearing area in one client depending on your business requirements. Thus, you can handle special clearing scenarios faster and more efficiently or you can deploy Payment Engine in a data center to control the processes in each clearing area separately.
The clearing area plays an important role in most Payment Engine components. The following data is separated at clearing-area level:
Master data
Particularly, routes, clearing agreements, and their rule sets, as well as exception control rule sets with their response types
Transaction data
Payment orders and payment items
Customizing data
Particularly, account management areas, transaction types for payment items, payment order types, and checks for enrichment and validation
You define clearing areas and their attributes in Customizing for Payment Engine under
.The following main attributes specify a clearing area:
General calendar
This calendar determines the processing days at clearing-area level.
Note
In the context of SEPA payment transactions, you can use the TARGET days calendar. TARGET is the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System. The TARGET days calendar is used to identify inter-bank business days.
Release currency
This currency is the currency used for clearing.
Indicator for determining whether plausibility checks are executed for the bank key during transfer posting
Indicator for determining whether plausibility checks are executed for the account number during transfer posting
Indicator for rerouting
This indicator determines whether an alternative route is calculated if an error occurs.
TARGET days calendar
Indicator to determine whether the previous or the next business date is used to update the processing date if the processing date is not a valid bank workday.
Indicator for ordering party item collection
Value date calendar
This calendar is used to calculate the value date.
Payment advice for multi-collection
Bank keys must be assigned to clearing areas:
An internal bank key is assigned to one clearing area. Multiple internal bank keys can be assigned to one clearing area. The bank key determines whether a payment order is internal or external. If the bank key of a payment order matches a bank key assigned to the clearing area, then the order is internal and can be further processed in the corresponding clearing area. You assign bank keys to clearing areas in Customizing for Payment Engine under
.Usually, one clearing area in Payment Engine corresponds to one bank posting area in a connected account management system in order to handle accrual and reconciliation processes consistently. You define bank posting areas in Customizing for Payment Engine under . For more information about the accrual and reconciliation processes, see Accrual and Reconciliation.
A bank models its Payment Engine system as follows:
In clearing area A, all payment orders regarding savings accounts are processed.
In clearing area B, all payment orders regarding current accounts are processed.
In clearing area C, all payment orders regarding savings accounts and current accounts are processed.
Example 1: Modeling of clearing areas
Another bank models its Payment Engine system as follows:
In clearing area D, all payment orders of the London branch are processed.
In clearing area E, all payment orders of the Hamburg branch are processed.
In clearing area F, all payment orders of the Paris branch are processed.
Example 2: Modeling of clearing areas