Tag Archives: sub-systems

Barclays Completes Darwin

Barclays Merchant Services, the card acquiring operating arm of  Barclays Bank confirmed Tuesday that it has completed its ‘Darwin’ program, a major client/server conversion.  The code-named program took five years to complete. The system handles the daily management of core credit and debit card merchant accounting. It evolved to the new multi-tiered client/server architecture from an IBM mainframe environment, consisting of ‘TCAM/3270’-based ‘IMS’ applications and large batch systems. Handling close to three million card transactions from 130,000 merchants daily, Darwin involved re-architecting critical sub-systems including customer services, collections, recruitment, settlement, Charging, and Statements. In addition, BMS had to migrate close to 400,000 merchant records, 40 million data fields, more than one million names and addresses, and a host of other information. BMS says up to 90% of the code was assembled using frames that had already been created. At most, BMS hand-cranked only 10% original code.