Mastercard Partners ACI Worldwide to Provide New Payment Solutions for Customers

Mastercard and ACI Worldwide, a global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, have announced a partnership to provide a wide range of real-time payment solutions globally.

The two companies will initially collaborate to offer best-in-class central infrastructure, payments localisation and access solutions to central banks, scheme operators, financial institutions, payment service providers, and other organisations launching real-time payment initiatives.

The announcement comes alongside a recent study that analysed global real-time, account-to-account payment volumes and forecasts across 30 global markets. The research, titled Prime Time for Real Time, projected a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.4% from 2019 to 2024. While existing schemes around the world are adding new participants and value-added services, additional country and regional schemes are launching each year with more than 20 schemes in varying planning stages.

“With more countries and regions embarking on the modernisation of their payments systems to capitalise on real-time technologies and customer demand, the market opportunity is significant,” said Paul Stoddart, President of New Payment Platforms, 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, driving choice and innovation to market participants and end customers.”

With a complimentary real-time payments vision, the combination of Mastercard’s central infrastructure and ACI’s payments access and real-time message transformation technology delivers an unmatched end-to-end offering.

The new joint solution delivers benefits that include:

• Flexible deployment options — Mastercard and ACI collaboration provides 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
• Ability to support existing local market requirements — the joint solution reduces the amount of time to onboard participants and provides flexibility to accelerate real-time adoption
• ISO20022-first approach — joint real-time capabilities support organisations today and tomorrow and provide translation to and from existing standards
• Digital services — further capabilities to support new digital services such as a request to pay, proxy services and biller services – Global proposition, local expertise —Mastercard and ACI collaboration brings together global reach, international experience and the local market knowledge