Kindle Banking Systems was a banking solutions company that originated from a bespoke banking systems project in 1979 for the Irish merchant bank

Ansbacher Bank Qatar National Bank (QNB Group) ( ar, بنك قطر الوطني) is a Qatari multinational commercial bank headquartered in Doha, Qatar. It was founded in 1964 and currently has subsidiaries and associates in 31 countries spanning three contine ...

. Its main product was a modular banking system known as Bankmaster. The system originally ran on the ICL hardware platform ― the relationship with the UK-based computer manufacturer facilitated Kindle establishing a significant customer base in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Kindle is regarded as a company of note, as it was the first high-tech Irish company which achieved the status of world leader in its field.

History

Kindle's main product Bankmaster, was a modular System25 Assembler-based banking system and started development in 1979 as a bespoke banking systems project in the Irish merchant bank

. The company was originally called MA Systems, then Triple A Systems before finally settling on Kindle Banking Systems. The driving force behind the design and development of Bankmaster was Cian Kinsella. Led by MD and founder Tony Kilduff, the company had an impressive sales record developing many lasting customer relationships in the UK, Africa,

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, Asia and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

. By 1987, according to the RBS Market Report, there were 170 sites operating Bankmaster worldwide.

Standard Chartered Bank Standard Chartered plc is a multinational bank with operations in consumer, corporate and institutional banking, and treasury services. Despite being headquartered in the United Kingdom, it does not conduct retail banking in the UK, and around ...

was the largest user of Bankmaster ― the company formed a spin-off joint venture with Kindle specifically to support its own deployments.

State Bank of India State Bank of India (SBI) is an Indian multinational public sector bank and financial services statutory body headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. SBI is the 49th largest bank in the world by total assets and ranked 221st in the ''Fortune ...

deployed the branch platform, Branchpower to 2000 branches throughout India. The system allowed branches to operate in an off-line mode ― this made it popular with retail banks in countries where the communications infrastructure was poor. The Bank of England and eight other

central banks A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central ba ...

(mainly in Africa) used the treasury modules of Bankmaster. In 1991, Kindle was acquired by a rival company; ACT, and was renamed as ACT Kindle. ACT was subsequently acquired by Misys in 1995 ― the Kindle brand was retained until 2001 at which point it was subsumed into the Misys branding. During the later part of the 1990s, sales of Bankmaster declined ― whilst the Bankmaster solution set was considered to be functionally rich, the core technology had been allowed to become obsolete. Between 1994 and 2000, the company made a significant investment in developing a new generation retail banking system, called Bankmaster-RS. It was developed in cooperation with the Colombian bank Coomeva. Bankmaster-RS struggled to deliver the planned functionality and was never as widely adopted as its predecessor.

References

{{Reflist Financial software companies Banking software companies Defunct companies of the Republic of Ireland Companies of the Republic of Ireland