ACI Worldwide Promotes Fraud Protection Ahead of FedNow Launch

Payments company ACI Worldwide has added its fraud protection service to its Real-Time Payments Cloud.

The integration, announced Tuesday (April 18), is aimed at U.S. customers who are preparing for the launch of the Federal Reserve’s real-time FedNow payment system in July.

“Every U.S. bank is now focused on real-time, instant payments as the runway to implement real-time payment rails prior to the launch of FedNow grows shorter,” Craig Ramsey, ACI Worldwide’s head of real-time payments, said in a news release.

“Immediate integration of the world’s leading real-time payments systems, combined with best-in-class, artificial intelligence (AI) powered fraud protection, will be defining characteristics for banks leading in next-generation payments ecosystems.”

As PYMNTS wrote last week, the U.S. payments ecosystem will be forever transformed when FedNow debuts this summer. When the service launches, its “real-time rail will speed up money movement between accounts, transform bill payments and bring instant payments to a variety of use cases yet to be imagined.”

At a high level, the service will encompass end-to-end instant payment clearing and settlement, along with features that will help participants manage liquidity, risk and fraud, said Federal Reserve SVP, Head of Payments Industry Relations Connie Theien.

“It’s a full-featured service that can deliver value on day one,” Theien told PYMNTS, “but we’ve also designed the infrastructure so that we can enhance the services in an agile and iterative way … it’s our vision of a ‘Cadillac’ of infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke recently with Dave Scola, U.S. CEO for Form3, about the way the cloud offers greater speed and security for real-time payments.

Asked by PYMNTS whether there’s been the need to educate banks and CIOs on the benefits of a cloud-based approach to payments rail-connectivity, Scola noted that “if I had gone to a bank seven years ago and pitched moving their payments to the cloud, I might have been laughed out of the room.”

“But now,” he added, “we’ve seen banks and CIOs become increasingly more comfortable with the use of what is effectively just an outsourced technical infrastructure … it’s an easier conversation to have today.”