ACI Worldwide Powers Real-Time Payments for Microsoft Azure Clients

ACI Worldwide is working with Microsoft to help financial institutions provide faster instant payments.

The payments software firm announced the collaboration Tuesday (Sept. 19), saying it would speed instant transactions via ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud (RTPC) platform, which is hosted in the Microsoft Azure environment.

According to a news release, RTPC is a “multi-tenant” software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that acts as an interface between financial institutions (FIs) and instant payments infrastructure, including The Clearing House’s RTP® network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow® Service.

“By hosting ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud in Microsoft Azure, financial institutions will now have access to an award-winning, end-to-end solution to enable their processing of 24/7 payments,” said Craig Ramsey, head of real-time payments at ACI Worldwide.

“In the U.S., the platform allows financial institutions and technical service providers to onboard to RTP and FedNow, offering simplicity of operation and interoperability with both services.”

The release adds that RTPC helps FIS gain access to both domestic instant payment networks, and allows providers to have direct, real-time access to RTP and the FedNow Service and benefit from the platform’s elasticity to increase transaction volumes as their business grows.

The debut follows last week’s launch of ACI’s end-to-end digital central infrastructure solution designed for central banks and financial institutions.

As PYMNTS reported, the new digital central infrastructure is a single ISO 20022 native solution that combines digital overlay services with ACI Central Infrastructure. It is designed to provide a solution for the entire payments ecosystem, allowing for domestic and global interoperability while increasing speed to market.

The company says that global real-time payment volumes hit a record high in 2022 with 195 billion transactions, marking a year-over-year growth of 63.2%. However, different countries are at different stages of maturity in their real-time payments efforts, with some seeking ways to expand their domestic networks and others looking for opportunities for cross-border payments.

Addressing investors on a recent earnings call, ACI Worldwide President and CEO Thomas Warsop said the company expects to see rapid instant payments growth in the U.S.

“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.