ACI Worldwide strengthens multi-year strategic alliance with Microsoft

By Pavithra R

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, has announced expanding its multi-year strategic alliance with Microsoft to deliver payments solutions in the cloud.

The partnership will accelerate and expand ACI’s cloud payments offerings in Microsoft Azure as more financial institutions (FIs) embrace digital transformation.

With the increasing global demand for SaaS-based payment offerings, ACI and Microsoft will closely collaborate on innovations that empower FIs to launch new solutions, add new services to their existing platforms and deliver those new capabilities more quickly and with greater agility. The companies will also provide FIs greater efficiency of operations, scalability, data protection, data sovereignty and better user experiences, creating new revenue streams.

“More of our customers are turning to the cloud to modernize their mission-critical payment systems, driven by the need to operate more efficiently as well as a growing need for speed, agility and innovation in bringing new payment offerings to market. Cloud modernization is a top strategic priority at ACI, and we are excited about this expanded alliance with Microsoft—together delivering and operating an unmatched payments platform and ultimately helping our customers grow their business by focusing on differentiation,” said Jeremy Wilmot, chief product officer, ACI Worldwide.

ACI and Microsoft have a successful track record of jointly helping customers quickly grow and expand into new markets, including a top 20 global bank, a leading US-based digital bank with more than 30 mn customers and the leading card issuing and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) software platform in LATAM. These organizations required cloud-enabled solutions capable of meeting time-to-market and growth goals, and chose ACI’s cloud payments offerings deployed in Azure—enabling them to deliver innovative, market-leading and future-ready payment services to their current and future customers.

“Throughout the pandemic, ACI Worldwide has been a leader in keeping the world’s banking industry performing optimally and has accelerated the growth curve to the cloud to drive innovation, cost savings, resiliency and new customer experiences. The powerful combination of ACI’s SaaS-based payments offerings and Microsoft Azure enables financial institutions to serve their customers more effectively, and we look forward to expanding our joint efforts in the months to come,” said Bill Borden, corporate vice president, Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft.