ACI Worldwide, Microsoft to accelerate the move to real-time payments

As outlined in the official press release, the collaboration seeks to enable financial institutions and technical services to offer instant payment transactions faster through the RTPC platform – which is reportedly hosted in the Microsoft Azure environment.

The RTPC is a multi-tenant SaaS platform that acts as a payment interface between financial institutions and instant payments infrastructures such as the Clearing House's Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or the Federal Reserve's FedNow Service (in the US).

When commenting on this latest development, a representative from ACI emphasised that by having ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud hosted in Microsoft Azure, financial institutions now get access to an end-to-end solution to enable the processing of 24/7 payments. He further added that, in the US, the RTPC allows financial institutions and technical service providers to onboard to RTP and FedNow.

Another facet of the collaboration entails Microsoft supporting ACI’s AI-powered anti-fraud processing model. The model reportedly uses proprietary incremental learning technology that enables users to run payment operations whilst protecting the transactions and the privacy of financial institutions and aggregators. 

The emphasis on security and privacy is expected to help financial institutions prevent, detect, and recover from cyber incidents, regardless of the complexity of their clients' systems and their existing legacy infrastructure.

ACI’s strategy and past developments

ACI is a real-time payment software provider that extends solutions addressed to corporations, fintech companies, and financial disruptors. Its offerings enable the processing and management of digital payments, the powering of omni-commerce payments, as well as the presenting and processing of bill payments, and the management of fraud and risk.

The RTPC platform was developed as a result of ACI’s experience with processing real-time transactions for financial institutions. To this point, the software provider currently supports 25 schemes across the globe. 

Earlier in 2023, ACI Worldwide released a report that showcased that bill payment anxiety brings interest to real-time payments. Moreover, the company launched a digital central infrastructure – a single ISO 20022 native solution that combines digital overlay services with ACI Central Infrastructure.