ACI Worldwide Debuts Digital Central Infrastructure for Real-Time Payments

ACI Worldwide, a provider of real-time payments software, has launched an end-to-end digital central infrastructure solution designed for central banks and financial institutions.

The new digital central infrastructure is a single ISO 20022 native solution that combines digital overlay services with ACI Central Infrastructure, the company said in a Tuesday (Sept. 12) press release. It aims to provide a comprehensive solution for the entire payments ecosystem, enabling domestic and global interoperability while increasing speed to market.

Global real-time payment volumes reached a record high in 2022 with 195 billion transactions, representing a year-over-year growth of 63.2%, according to the release. Different countries are at various stages of maturity in their real-time payments strategy, with some looking to expand their domestic networks and others seeking opportunities for cross-border payments.

“ACI empowers central banks with a secure central payments infrastructure to accelerate real-time payments growth and enables banks and financial institutions to capitalize on that growth with solutions integrated with digital overlays,” said ACI Worldwide Chief Product Officer Debbie Guerra in the release.

The digital central infrastructure solution includes a range of features and services tailored to meet the needs of central banks and financial institutions, according to the release. It encompasses real-time central infrastructure integrated with digital overlays such as Request to Pay, QR code payments, back-office management platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fraud technology.

Additionally, the digital central infrastructure offers value-added services like merchant onboarding and management, dispute management, and multiple-aliases management, the release said.

“With digital central infrastructure integrated with ACI Enterprise Payments Platform, ACI offers the complete end-to-end solution for enabling rapid adoption of real-time payments within a country and accelerating growth and digital enablement,” ACI Worldwide Head of Real-Time Payments Craig Ramsey said in the release.

ACI Worldwide powers 25 domestic and pan-regional real-time schemes across six continents, including nine central infrastructures, according to the release.

ACI Worldwide President and CEO Thomas Warsop said during a quarterly earnings call Aug. 3 that the company expects to see instant payments use rapidly grow in the United States.

“Starting from a small base, we believe the U.S. will see a fourfold increase in real-time payments over the next four years, and it will include additional use cases such as credit line access; request for pay; buy now, pay later; and many others,” Warsop said at the time.