New ACI Platform Aims to Help In Adapting to Change in Payments

As the payments ecosystem is being shaped by changes in customer behavior, regulations and new technologies, ACI Worldwide introduced a new payments platform yesterday at NACHA Payments in San Diego that the company says will help banks cope with all of these changing forces. The new Universal Payments Platform solution, according to the company, is designed to build upon banks’ existing systems by allowing them to make changes to those systems in an easier manner. Rather than making code changes to affected systems when adjusting for a new regulation, for instance, the bank or payments processor only has to reconfigure elements of the platform.

“It costs a lot of money for that type of [coding] staff to make changes to the existing systems,” says Scott Fitzgerald, ACI’s vice president of marketing. “Now the Universal Payments Platform becomes that layer that you build new payments applications and types on. It makes introducing new payments ability much faster in terms of speed-to-market.”

Many banks have developed their payments environments over time with many interconnecting touch points. This can make something as simple as presenting all the payments options in a unified interface for online banking customers very difficult, Fitzgerald explains. But the configuration tools of the new platform makes interfacing with new devices and networks much simpler.

“Just aggregating alerts as a single set for the customer to choose from is costly and difficult because of organizational silos. This [platform] gives transparency with aggregated data to deliver that unified set of alerts sustainably, even when introducing new alerts,” he adds.

Breaking down those silos also helps banks get a single view of all of their payment data, Fitzgerald says. This helps banks to fight fraud by looking at typical payments patterns and spotting anomalies that could be fraudulent transactions, or could help banks cross-sell products to their customers based on their payments history, Fitzgerald relates.

With the ability to easily integrate new networks and touch points banks and payments processors can introduce emerging payments options like social media payments, Fitzgerald remarks. “With the platform you can leverage or insulate existing payments types, and you can present a single interface to the customer online that includes an option for social media payments,” Fitzgerald explains.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio