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In today’s fast-paced digital economy, payments reliability has evolved from a back-office concern into a strategic imperative. Whether you’re a financial institution, insurer, university, or government agency, your customers expect a seamless, secure, and uninterrupted payments experience regardless of the time, channel, or urgency.
A resiliency framework for uninterrupted payments
To meet these expectations, billers must implement a multilayered resiliency framework that ensures payments are processed without fail, even during system outages, third-party disruptions, or scheduled maintenance. This model is designed to safeguard revenue, preserve customer trust, and maintain compliance in an increasingly complex payments landscape.
The urgency for such a framework is underscored by shifting consumer behavior.
2025 ACI SPEEDPAY PULSE REPORT DATA
Nearly 30% of consumers made urgent or same-day bill payments in the past year. This trend highlights the growing demand for infrastructure that can support high-stakes, time-sensitive transactions with zero tolerance for downtime.
A modern resiliency model addresses this challenge through three integrated layers: core infrastructure redundancy, external service failover, and advanced stand-in processing. Together, these layers form a comprehensive solution that empowers bill pay organizations to deliver uninterrupted service—no matter the circumstance.
Let’s explore the three layers:
Layer 1: Core infrastructure redundancy
Layer 1 is the foundation of payments resiliency. It focuses on ensuring that the internal systems responsible for processing payments are always available, secure, and scalable. For large bill pay organizations, this layer is essential not only for operational continuity but also for maintaining trust with consumers who expect seamless, uninterrupted payment experiences.
| Key capability | Function |
| Redundant data centers | Multiple geographically distributed data centers provide failover capabilities. If one center experiences a disruption, due to natural disasters, cyberattacks, or hardware failures, another can instantly take over. This ensures that payment processing continues without delay or data loss. |
| High-availability networking | Load balancing, redundant routing paths, and automated failover mechanisms ensure that network traffic flows smoothly. These systems prevent bottlenecks and outages, especially during peak demand periods like tuition deadlines, insurance renewals, or tax filing seasons. |
| Cloud-native infrastructure | Organizations can scale elastically, respond to traffic surges, and recover quickly from disruptions. It also supports microservices and containerization, improving agility, and reducing downtime during updates or maintenance. |
| Security and compliance readiness | Infrastructure redundancy also supports robust security protocols, such as encryption, intrusion detection, and real-time monitoring, ensuring compliance with industry standards such as PCI DSS, GLBA, and HIPAA. This is especially critical for government agencies and financial institutions handling sensitive data. |
| 24/7 monitoring and incident response | Continuous monitoring and automated alerts allow teams to detect and respond to issues before they impact consumers. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and ensures that service-level agreements (SLAs) are consistently met. |
Why it matters
Layer 1 is the minimum requirement for being in the payments business. Without it, bill pay organizations risk outages that can disrupt revenue collection, damage customer trust, and expose them to regulatory penalties.
2025 ACI SPEEDPAY PULSE REPORT DATA
Nearly 30% of consumers made urgent or same-day bill payments in the past year, meaning any delay or failure in processing can have immediate financial and reputational consequences.
This urgency is echoed in PYMNTS.com’s July 2025 article, “Payment Providers Expand Infrastructure to Boost Reliability,” which highlights how leading payment providers are investing heavily in infrastructure to ensure uptime and operational discipline. The report notes that resiliency is no longer a back-office concern; it’s a front-line differentiator in a competitive digital payments landscape.
For large bill pay organizations, investing in Layer 1 redundancy isn’t just about risk mitigation: it’s about future-proofing their payment operations and meeting the rising expectations of digitally empowered consumers.
Layer 2: External redundancy with multi-acquiring and banking
While internal infrastructure is critical, true payments resiliency demands protection against external disruptions, especially those involving third-party services like acquiring banks, payment processors, and financial institutions. Layer 2 addresses this vulnerability by building redundancy into the external ecosystem that billers rely on to complete transactions.
| Key capability | Function |
| Multi-acquiring architecture | Instead of relying on a single acquiring bank, billers can route transactions through multiple acquirers. This ensures that if one acquirer experiences downtime, latency, or technical issues, payments can be automatically rerouted to another. This capability is especially vital during high-volume periods, such as tuition deadlines, insurance renewals, or tax season. |
| Banking redundancy | Layer 2 also supports multiple banking relationships. This means that if one bank is unable to settle or reconcile transactions due to outages or operational constraints, another can step in to maintain continuity. This flexibility reduces risk and ensures that funds flow reliably across all channels. |
| Third-party service expansion | Beyond acquiring and banking, Layer 2 is designed to incorporate additional third-party services that support the payments lifecycle. These may include: Fraud prevention and risk scoring tools Identity verification platforms Alternative payment methods like PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle Real-time payment networks and digital wallets |
By diversifying these integrations, bill pay organizations can insulate themselves from single points of failure and offer consumers more choice and reliability.
Why it matters
According to PYMNTS.com, payments orchestration and redundancy are becoming essential strategies for businesses seeking to improve customer experience and reduce transaction failure rates. Their research shows that:
- 63% of consumers abandon payment after one failure
- 80% won’t retry after two failures
For large bill pay organizations, these statistics translate directly into lost revenue and diminished trust. Layer 2 ensures that external disruptions don’t become customer-facing problems.
Moreover, as payment ecosystems grow more complex—with embedded finance, open banking, and real-time settlement gaining traction—bill pay organizations must be equipped to adapt quickly. Layer 2 enables pivoting between providers, maintaining uptime, and delivering uninterrupted service regardless of what’s happening in the broader financial landscape.
Layer 3: Stand-in processing for seamless continuity
Layer 3 is the most advanced tier of payments resiliency, designed not just to react to disruptions, but to proactively maintain service continuity when core systems are offline. Whether due to scheduled maintenance, infrastructure upgrades, or unexpected outages, this layer ensures that billers can continue accepting payments without interruption.
| Key capability | Function |
| Consumer-direct licensed platform | This platform serves as a parallel payments environment where bill pay organizations can deploy across multiple channels, such as websites, mobile apps, call centers, and even kiosks. It’s fully licensed and compliant, allowing consumers to make payments directly without relying on the bill pay organization’s primary infrastructure. |
| Automatic redirects during downtime | If a bill pay organization’s system experiences a disruption, planned or unplanned, customers are automatically redirected to the stand-in environment. This seamless transition preserves the user experience and prevents failed transactions, which are a leading cause of customer churn. “26% of companies say failed payments are the most important contributor to customer churn, and subscription businesses lose an average of 9% of revenue due to payment failures.”2 |
| Omnichannel resiliency | Stand-in processing isn’t limited to one channel. Whether a student is paying tuition via a mobile wallet, a policyholder is renewing insurance online, or a citizen is settling a government fee through a call center, this layer ensures that payments are processed smoothly across all touchpoints. |
| Real-time synchronization and reconciliationreadiness | Once the primary systems are restored, the stand-in platform synchronizes all transactions, ensuring accurate reporting and reconciliation. This is crucial for compliance, audit readiness, and maintaining financial integrity. |
| Scalability for high-demand periodsident response | During peak seasons, like tuition deadlines, tax filing windows, or open enrollment periods, stand-in processing can absorb overflow traffic, acting as a load-balancing mechanism to prevent bottlenecks and latency. |
Why it matters
In an era where digital payments are expected to be instant and error-free, Layer 3 provides the ultimate safety net. It transforms resiliency from a reactive measure into a proactive strategy, allowing billers to maintain trust, reduce friction, and protect revenue.
2025 ACI SPEEDPAY PULSE REPORT DATA
Mobile wallet usage has surged 22% year over year, and nearly half of consumers now prefer mobile-first payment options. Stand-in processing ensures these preferences are met—even when systems are under strain.
Resiliency is no longer optional—it’s strategic
In an era defined by digital urgency, payments resiliency has become a cornerstone of operational excellence for large bill pay organizations across consumer finance, insurance, higher education, and government. With nearly one-third of consumers making urgent or same-day payments, the cost of downtime, whether caused by internal failures, third-party disruptions, or planned maintenance, is too high.
The three-layer resiliency framework outlined here offers a comprehensive blueprint for uninterrupted payment processing:
- Layer 1: Ensures core infrastructure is fortified with redundant data centers, high-availability networking, and cloud-native architecture
- Layer 2: Protects against external disruptions through multi-acquiring, banking redundancy, and expanded third-party integrations
- Layer 3: Empowers billers to maintain continuity with advanced stand-in processing across all consumer-facing channels
Together, these layers form a resilient, scalable, and future-ready payments environment.
Sources:
1 https://www.aciworldwide.com/aci-speedpay-pulse-report
2 Tracking Failed Payments. PYMNTS.com
ACI Speedpay 
Ben Mitchell leads the Payment Services team, bringing more than 30 years of expertise in payments and payment processing solutions. He is primarily responsible for ensuring operational compliance, overseeing customer, partner, and industry audits. Ben also manages payment transaction costs within the biller mission and directs daily operations for customer settlement, exception handling, and proof of cash. Additionally, he oversees ACI’s biller endpoint network and manages check and document printing solutions.
