Halcom is celebrating 30 years of operation these days. We are a pioneer in the development of innovative products and services for financial institutions in Central and South-Eastern Europe. Our experts are trusted by more than 50 banks, 2 central banks and clearing houses, and more than 250,000 companies in 7 markets.
Halcom’s success story began in 1992, when Matjaž Čadež, the founder and long-time owner, founded Halcom. A few years after its establishment, together with its Danish partner Belle Systems, it set up the first Internet system for Telekom Slovenije – Siol, which was a strong reference for the newly established IT company and the beginning of growth and expansion. Only a year later, they started developing payment systems in Slovenia and developed the first electronic bank on the Slovenian market for the largest Slovenian bank, NLB, as well as the first electronic bank in the world to operate securely by using PKI technology on smart cards. Halcom co-created the payment system reform between 1997 and 2001 and also in 2007, when the payment system switched to the EURO and SEPA payments area.
The company successfully set its vision and in the following years continued to break through the market by implementing giro clearing for all Slovenian banks at the Bank of Slovenia and setting up giro clearing for the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the main milestones was the establishment of certificate authority for issuing digital certificates, security features for entering a banking solution or other portals, which is today an indispensable part of secure e-business. Since its establishment, Halcom’s certification agency has issued more than 570,000 qualified digital certificates in three countries.
However, the company expanded not only in the product area, but also in foreign markets. It has established associate subsidiaries in Sarajevo and Belgrade. Halcom was one of the first in Slovenia to set up an electronic invoice exchange infrastructure, which enabled all Slovenian companies to exchange invoices via a secure e-banking channel. With the e-invoice system developed by Halcom, Slovenia is one of the first in Europe to have a nationwide e-invoice exchange.
Halcom, however, continued to follow the users and high growth of smartphones and in 2011 successfully launched the first mobile bank in Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo. In the years that followed, it introduced a new generation of e-banking solution Hal E-Bank, an advanced transaction, sales, service and communication platform that supports a variety of distribution channels.
In 2016, its founder Matjaž Čadež handed over the ownership of the company to the American company Emphasys Software, part of the Canadian group Constellation Software, which covers a wide range of software solutions and related services to entities in the public and private sectors. By that, the company gained a solid financial background, knowledge and organizational support and stayed focused on the development of products and services and further growth in the number of customers, as well as regional expansion.
Today, Halcom has 146 employees (Ljubljana: 96, Belgrade: 45, Sarajevo: 5) and operates in seven markets in Central and South-Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Morocco, Serbia and Slovenia). It cooperates with 2 central banks and clearing houses and more than 50 commercial banks. Halcom’s e-banking solutions are used by more than 250,000 companies, making 13 million payments per month in amount of € 40 billion per month. In addition to investing in knowledge and new staff, Halcom constantly ensures high standards of product quality and operates in accordance with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standards.
Trend setter
With its e-banking solutions, Halcom is still the only provider of a multi-bank e-banking concept, by which business users can access all their bank accounts in one solution. Users of banking services have increasing demands on the user experience, most of the activities, including non-standard ones, they want to perform through digital channels. They want simple and connectable services that give them personal or business added value. Halcom addresses these users with the Halcom One solution, which enables easy access to all channels of digital banking, and is also useful for other everyday tasks, as it enables qualified digital signing and identity sharing. In the future, it will be a single point from which different companies will be able to connect and offer their users everything they needs in the digital world. A big step of the Halcom One solution will be integration into the national SI-PASS system. This means that users of the solution will be able to access all national portals. In 2020, Halcom also launched a new Halcom MultiPay solution, which enables existing Hal E-Bank users to use the solution more flexibly on modern channels such as the web and smartphone, while for smaller users it can be a completely independent solution.
We are also focusing on technological renovation of our solutions. Halcom has been building various solutions for more than 25 years, and now we are in the consolidation phase, where we intend to create a modern platform with a variety of user interfaces from the entire set of sollutions. In cooperation with strategic partners, we are intensively developing a new product that will enable banks to develop and implement unique and personalized business processes and solutions significantly faster. At Halcom, we always develop our solutions with end users in mind. We have put banks at the forefront when designing a new solution, as we also want to make their work as easy as possible, simplify their procedures, and stand by their side in the digitalisation process.
“Halcom has laid a good foundation in the past. The goal is definitely to continue this successful story of electronic banking and payment systems. In areas where we have made history and where we have experience and references, we want to connect with other domestic and foreign companies and enable existing customers to grow with us further. We will only be able to achieve this with the support of the driving force, our employees, through whom we want to find new and innovative solutions for our customers. ”Tomi Šefman, CEO of Halcom