Mastercard and ACI sign payments infrastructure partnership

Written by Alex Hamilton
1st October 2020

Payments software firm ACI Worldwide has signed a partnership agreement with Mastercard to offer new services to central banks.

The pair are targeting central banks, schemes, and service providers

The two firms say they will collaborate to offer “best-in-class” central infrastructure, payments localisation and access solutions.

ACI and Mastercard are targeting central banks, scheme operators, financial institutions, payment service providers.

The pair say a combination of Mastercard’s central infrastructure and ACI’s technology delivers an “unmatched” offering.

Key features of the tie-up are flexible deployment options, support for local requirements, and an ISO 20022-first approach.

“With more countries and regions embarking on the modernisation of their payments systems […] the market opportunity is significant,” says Paul Stoddart, president of new payment platforms at Mastercard.

“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.”

Craig Saks, chief strategy and transformation officer at ACI Worldwide, says the firms share a “complementary track record”.

He adds: “This partnership creates the most robust and complete set of real-time capabilities in the market today.

“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.”

ACI claims to support 18 real-time domestic schemes around the world, including Zelle and TCH in the US.

It claims that 50% of the volume on the UK’s Faster Payments is processed through its UP Immediate Payments platform.

The vendor has won recent deals with State Bank of India and Sri Lanka-based National Savings Bank.

Mastercard unveiled a virtual testing environment in September for the operation of central bank-backed digital currencies (CBDCs).