Mastercard and ACI Worldwide are partnering to provide technology to help central bank infrastructure meet the demands of real-time payments during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
The partnership will deliver a wide range of real-time payment solutions globally, focusing initially on central infrastructure, payments localization and access solutions to central banks, scheme operators, financial institutions, payment service providers and other organizations launching real-time payments initiatives.
“With more countries and regions embarking on the modernization of their payments systems to capitalize on real-time technologies and customer demand, the market opportunity is significant,” Paul Stoddart, president of new payment platforms at Mastercard, said in a press release. “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.”
The companies say those obtaining the service would benefit from Mastercard's central account-to-account and card payments infrastructure and ACI's access to Zelle P2P and The Clearing House Real-Time Payments rails, as well as real-time messaging technology.
Services would range from fully managed payments deployment in the cloud to support of on-premise software for government, central bank and system operator-owned platforms.
Technology from Mastercard and ACI would also reduce the amount of time to onboard customers and provide flexible real-time payments adoption. It will expand digital capabilities and deploy the ISO 20022 global messaging standard.
“Mastercard and ACI share an extensive and complementary track record of real-time payments success — driving global central infrastructure clearing and settlement schemes," Craig Saks, chief strategy and transformation officer at ACI Worldwide, said in the release. "This partnership creates the most robust and complete set of real-time capabilities in the market today.”
