Mastercard & ACI Worldwide partner to bolster global payment solutions

By Pavithra R

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, has announced that the company has partnered with Mastercard, the global multi-rail payments technology company, to provide a wide range of real-time payment solutions globally. 

The collaboration will initially focus on offering best-in-class central infrastructure, payments localization and access solutions to central banks, financial institutions, payment service providers, scheme operators, and other organizations launching real-time payments initiatives. 

The real-time account-to-account payments market continues to expand rapidly. While existing schemes are adding new participants and value-added services, additional country and regional schemes are launching each year, including over 20 schemes in varying planning stages.

“With more countries and regions embarking on the modernization of their payments systems to capitalize on real-time technologies and customer demand, the market opportunity is significant. Working together with ACI, we will explore a wide range of opportunities to accelerate the development and usage of real-time and multi-channel payment platforms, driving choice and innovation to market participants and end customers,” said Paul Stoddart, President of New Payment Platforms, Mastercard. 

With a complementary real-time payments vision, the combination of Mastercard’s central infrastructure & ACI’s payments access and real-time message transformation technology is expected to deliver an unmatched end-to-end offering. The new joint solution delivers the following key benefits:

• Deployment options that range from a fully managed service in the cloud to supporting on-premise software for government, central bank and system operator-owned platforms,
• ISO20022-first approach,
• The joint solution reduces onboarding time for participants and provides flexibility to accelerate real-time adoption,
• Capabilities to support new digital services such as request to pay, proxy services and biller services, and
• Global reach, international experience and the local market knowledge

“Mastercard and ACI share an extensive and complementary track record of real-time payments success — driving global central infrastructure clearing and settlement schemes, and this partnership creates the most robust and complete set of real-time capabilities in the market today. Our companies are the leaders in real-time payments and aligning on an end-to-end solution will provide great benefit not only to banks and central infrastructures, but to merchants, billers, fintechs and intermediaries — and their customers — as well,” said Craig Saks, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, ACI Worldwide. 

Recently, Mastercard partnered with Selcom to drive digital payments in Tanzania.

Established since 1975, ACI Worldwide powers electronic payments for more than 6,000 organizations around the world. It currently supports 18 real-time domestic schemes around the world, including Zelle and TCH in the U.S., and will support FedNow as it moves toward production.