ACI Worldwide Expands Role In Driving Real-Time Payments Standards

ACI Worldwide announced today (Sept. 28) it has expanded its global role in driving faster payments initiatives across Europe and the U.S.

This includes expanding its involvement in several boards and councils focused on pushing for real-time and immediate payment standards across the industry. ACI has expanded its roles in the European faster payment initiatives through its involvement in the Scheme Management Board (SMB) of the European Payments Council (EPC). ACI’s Barry Kislingbury, lead solution consultant, was recently invited to participate in the EPC Scheme Technical Forum.

ACI is also participating in the Euro Banking Association (EBA) Instant Payment Forum and ISO 20022 Real Time Payments Group, which has a goal to create a compatible, interoperable environment for real-time payments using a global standard.

In the U.S., ACI has joined the Federal Reserve’s payments improvement initiative. Ian Rubin, practice lead of Retail Banking & Consumer Payments for ACI, serves as a member of the Faster Payments Task Force, and Seth Ruden, senior fraud consultant, is a member of the Security Task Force. As for the European Union, the group aims to enable a cross-border, real-time capability that will span the Eurozone from the start of instant payments

“The industry is in a state of unprecedented collaboration, including suppliers with proven experience in such working groups. ISO 20022 is recognized as a robust message format that can increase interoperability, improve reconcilement and increase overall transaction processing efficiency,” Kislingbury said.“The community is coming together to harness this flexibility in a consistent manner and I am pleased to contribute to that effort.”

As part of it mission, ACI empowers these organizations with end-to-end enterprise payments capabilities — accelerating time to market, reducing risk, growing revenues and controlling costs.

ACI has also expanded its presence in its Asia Pacific initiatives.

“We have a decade of experience implementing Faster Payments in the UK and Singapore on both system-infrastructure and bank-connectivity levels, and we will continue to share our unique points of reference to the Task Force as it’s US efforts move forward,” said Rubin. “We’re also currently deploying Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) scheme rules, so we have that experience to contribute as well. While the landscape and complexity of the U.S. banking industry is very different from that in other countries, there are common considerations and best practices to be realized.”