The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is tendering to replace its two major payment and settlement systems that handle over NZ$30 billion of transactions daily. The current systems were originally developed in the late 1980s.The Reserve Bank completed a year-long strategic review of its payment and settlement systems in November and concluded it needed to replace both its Exchange Settlement Account System for Real Time Gross Settlement and its NZClear Security Settlement System. The central bank and banking regulator released a call for Registrations of Interest (ROI) on the Government's GETS system for electronic tenders on Monday asking for submissions from potential vendors by January 27.  It has called the project the 'Payments Systems Replacement project'. "The successful suppler will be involved in implementing and supporting the payment and settlement systems which are core to the functioning of the New Zealand economy," the bank said in the ROI.ESAS handles 10,000 transactions a day worth about NZ$26 billion from various feeder systems, including SWIFT, NZClear and the Settlement Before Interchange system, the bank said. NZClear, which used to be called Austraclear, settles from NZ$6 billion to NZ$8 billion a day and its depository holds NZ$92 billion of debt and equity securities.The bank said it did not want to outsource its operational role for the systems, but remained open on who would own the Security Settlement System currently known as NZClear.The bank said it expected to release a full Request for Proposal in March after notifying the short-listed respondents on February 23. It noted ESAS and NZClear had been developed in the late 1980s and over time had been layered and ported to different technology platforms, which meant they had become increasingly expensive to operate and maintain.The bank said it expected the contract to begin in 2015 and last from five to ten years. It expected to migrate off the existing systems by the end of 2017. It also noted any potential bidders should offer established off-the-shelf systems that had been in operation "for a number of years."