ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of electronic payment and banking solutions, announced it has bolstered its Universal Payments (UP) strategy, delivering an unrivaled merchant retail solution to combat fraud. With its acquisition of Retail Decisions (ReD), announced earlier today, ACI strengthens its leadership position in the fast-growing payments risk management space.
“With ReD, ACI better equips multiple segments globally – issuers, merchant acquirers, retailers, and commercial banks – as they address disruption in the ecommerce market,” said Philip Heasley, President and CEO, ACI Worldwide. “This marks a major milestone in our Universal Payments strategy to enable true real-time, any-to-any transactions.”
Extending Fraud Management Capabilities
Securing payments and protecting both customers and their brand reputations”across all channels”is a daunting and complex task. The sense of urgency in addressing security issues is exacerbated in the U.S. where the rollout of EMV is expected to drive more fraud into the online channel as it has in other markets and regions. CNP (card not present) transactions, which are seen often in ecommerce, are not protected by EMV, and will likely experience an increase in fraud.
In addition to its global SaaS ecommerce fraud solution, ReD brings immediate value to ACI’s current fraud portfolio with its consortium models, business intelligence offerings, extensive modeling/analytics capabilities, risk analyst expertise and data center footprint. Conversely, ACI brings to ReD customers a strong set of complementary products, greater reach, and, most importantly, UP technology, which no other payments risk management vendor can offer.
Challenges and UPward possibilities
More than ever, retailers, processors and acquirers must engage and serve customers across multiple channels, but to do this smoothly and efficiently, they require scalable payment solutions that not only seamlessly connect all customer touch points, but also provide customers with a consistent branded experience.
Driven by ACI’s UP technology, ACI and ReD will deliver a game-changing omni-channel solution with integrated fraud management, available on-premise or in a hosted SaaS environment. UP gives financial institutions and merchant retailers maximum control, choice and flexibility in quickly and efficiently implementing custom transaction products and services globally. UP removes the pressures of being locked into a single vendor by offering independence, not only from any hardware/POS/PED provider, but also from any payment network or acquirer. Moreover, these businesses can exclusively offer real-time, any-to-any commerce payment services directly to their own customers, resulting in a fast, low cost, secure and highly efficient payment transaction process anywhere in the world.
“We’re excited to become part of ACI; the breadth and depth of its portfolio and UP value proposition are unmatched in the industry,” said Paul Stanley, CEO, ReD. “Together with ACI, retailers, processors and acquirers around the world are now better able to address the enormous ecommerce disruption opportunity.”
“Ecommerce has become highly disruptive due to changing consumer preferences, channel proliferation, cost implications and, of course, increased fraud threats. Its explosive growth presents both opportunity and significant challenge to businesses; ACI’s UP solutions provide the technology and peace of mind for our customers to achieve success,” concluded Heasley.
About ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, the Universal Payments company, powers electronic payments and banking for more than 5,000 financial institutions, retailers, billers and processors around the world. ACI software processes $13 trillion each day in payments and securities transactions for more than 250 of the leading global retailers, and 21 of the world’s 25 largest banks. Through our comprehensive suite of software products and hosted services, we deliver a broad range of solutions for payment processing; card and merchant management; online banking; mobile, branch and voice banking; fraud detection; trade finance; and electronic bill presentment and payment. To learn more about ACI, please visit www.aciworldwide.com. You can also find us on Twitter @ACI_Worldwide.
