ACI Worldwide Inks Two Processing Deals With Its Base24-eps and Enterprise Banker Products

Implications: Key Implications: 75% of banks expect to implement enterprise payment systems in the next five years in order to cut processing costs, enhance service levels, conduct one-on-one marketing with its customers and improve risk management. Payments have been targeted as a logical consolidation/convergence because they account for an estimated 40% of cost, revenues and operating income. Global electronic payment transactions including retail transfers, retail payments and wholesale payments are expected to grow from 210 billion transactions in 2004 and almost double by 2010 to 384 billion transactions. ACI is well-positioned to exploit this growth by serving over 800 customers in over 84 countries and provides enterprise wide software solutions which offers FIs (Financial Institutions) the ability to consolidate/converge their antiquated in-house payments systems by integrating ACIs software suite, in an effort to move to an open systems platform and to lower their costs.  

Analysis: Comments/Perspective:
ACI has inked two deals to integrate its Enterprise Banker software with Mellon Financial's online banking platform to gain efficiencies by implementing a single product across their retail and commercial markets and offer its customers a user-friendly experience when banking online and in the second deal BNP Paribas & Natixis Paiements, two French banks have formed a joint payments platform known as Partecis and sought ACI for its transactions processing expertise and will deploy ACI's Base24-eps software to modernize their payments platform, offer a single entity for their respective corporate banking services, and to comply with SEPA (Single European Payments Area) standards.

1.  SEPA (Single European Payments Area) includes 25 participating countries who are working towards a single payments systems to support transactions processing of domestic and international payments for consumers, banks, corporates and government agencies and will launch in Europe in 2008.  ACI launched its Wholesale Payments Systems in 2006 in the Asia-Pacific and European markets and its Enterprise Banker software and plans to expand its Base24-eps software to ready for transactions growth in m-payments and m-commerce. ACI serves as a global leader in payments transactions processing and has been sought out for its software integration and hosting expertise to assist banks and corporates in preparing for the introduction of SEPA and global transactions volume growth

2. Retail payments, retail transfers and wholesale payments are expected to double over the next ten years in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East/Africa and South American regions and ACI and its subsidiaries have formed strategic partnerships and operations in these regions to take advantage of projected transactions volume growth and is competitively positioned to serve as a global leader in payments transactions processing, enterprise software integration and a payments convergence expert, as pressure increases on legacy payment systems to cope with transactions volume growth in these regions and ACI may play a critical role in executing payments convergence into single source payments systems for banks, merchants, corporates and government agencies