Payments and banking systems solution provider ACI Worldwide and Microsoft have begun a new global strategic collaboration via the Microsoft Partner Network set to utilise its lead cloud product – Azure.
ACI is one of Microsoft’s top 10 global ISV partners in the financial services industry and the firm will continue utilising Microsoft Azure for its ‘Universal Payments’ portfolio.
“We have witnessed increased global interest in and rapid adoption of ACI’s payments technology in the cloud from both new and established organisations,” noted Craig Saks, chief operating officer, ACI Worldwide.
“In fact, we have secured two significant acquirer clients running our UP Retail Payments solution on Microsoft Azure.”
It is expected that the partnership will help support the industry’s transition of technology now being deployed in the public cloud as well as promote the benefits.
Saks continues: “As global trends, changing business models and innovation create a new set of challenges for the world of payments, this collaboration will allow banks and other organisations committed to innovating and moving to the cloud to become more agile, deploying new payment services more quickly.
“In addition, they can develop proof of concepts, and launch and test them in the marketplace at a low cost – this is already gaining traction among our customers.”
Operating on the cloud is said to have a host of benefits including lower total cost of ownership (TCO), increased scalability, speed to market, enhanced development tools, and the integration of platform services such as data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Furthermore, establishing ACI’s universal payments solutions through the cloud is expected to enable its clients to ‘thrive amid the unprecedented digital disruption.’
Bill Borden, corporate vice president of financial services at Microsoft Corp. added: “More leading banks worldwide are embracing the cloud, and partnering with ACI on this key growth initiative reinforces that trajectory.
“With the high level of stability, resiliency, and performance of Microsoft Azure integrated with ACI’s payments solutions, ACI can offer organisations the ability to provide a wider range of services to their end customers.”
