[Payments Unleashed] Video interview with Scotty Perkins, ACI Worldwide
PA
Paula Albu
02 Dec 2025 / 5 Min Read
Scotty Perkins, EVP of Product Management and Market Strategy at ACI Worldwide, explains how payments intelligence is reshaping fraud prevention and the future of secure real-time payments.
At the recent Payments Unleashed Summit in New York, hosted by ACI Worldwide, industry leaders explored the forces transforming the payments ecosystem. In an exclusive interview with The Paypers, Scotty Perkins, Executive Vice President of Product Management and Market Strategy at ACI Worldwide, outlined how AI and automation are redefining fraud prevention in an era dominated by instant payments.
The shift from identity to intelligence
Fraud prevention has changed dramatically over the last two decades. As Scotty noted, the industry has moved far beyond simple identity verification. With modern attack types such as APP fraud, legitimate customers can be manipulated into authorising fraudulent activity, making identity alone insufficient. Financial institutions now require deeper situational awareness and contextual insight into every payment.
Dual-sided transaction visibility: a new standard
Scotty emphasised the importance of seeing both the source and destination of a transaction. ACI’s dual-sided monitoring model gives institutions a comprehensive view across merchant acquiring operations and issuer protections. By integrating multiple payment types–including instant payments–into a single monitoring system, institutions can detect patterns and anomalies that would be impossible to identify through isolated data streams.
Automation: the strategic advantage and the emerging threat
Automation and AI now underpin real-time fraud detection, enabling systems to analyse complex contextual data at speeds no human could match. But Scotty warned of the double-edged nature of these technologies. Agentic AI can also enable fraudsters to scale and automate their attacks, creating a continuous arms race between defenders and adversaries.
The future of fraud prevention: context, AI, and real-time intelligence
Fraud prevention today requires understanding the full transaction context–not just the customer’s identity. Seeing both sides of a payment and using AI-driven real-time analysis uncovers hidden risks. Continuous innovation and unified monitoring across payment types strengthen defences. Moving forward, success depends on intelligent orchestration, adaptability, and instantly responding to every signal in a fast-paced payments landscape.
About Scotty Perkins
Scotty Perkins is ACI’s Head of Product Management and oversees the company’s banking solutions. In this role, he is responsible for guiding ACI’s banking product modernization strategy and providing leadership vision and direction across the company’s market-facing, product management, and product engineering functions.
Mr. Perkins has more than 30 years of payments, technology, and compliance leadership experience with deep expertise in payments, retail, and consumer financial services. Prior to joining ACI, He served as Senior Vice President of Product Innovation for Quisitive, where he previously led research and development efforts across for Quisitive’s cloud solutions practice and served as Chief Compliance Officer for Quisitive’s Global Payments Solutions business. Prior to joining Quisitive, Mr. Perkins served as Senior Vice President of Retail Operations and Chief Compliance Officer at PayNearMe. Earlier in his career, he held director-level program management and technology positions at Motorola, Good Technology, and FedEx. Mr. Perkins holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Cornell University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Southern Methodist University. He also serves as Medical Officer for Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue.
About ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, an original innovator in global payments technology, delivers transformative software solutions that power intelligent payments orchestration in real-time so banks, billers, and merchants can drive growth, while continuously modernising their payment infrastructures, simply and securely. With 50 years of trusted payments expertise, we combine our global footprint with a local presence to offer enhanced payment experiences to stay ahead of constantly changing payment challenges and opportunities.
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