On this page
Over the last decade, the payments industry has transformed at an extraordinary pace. Yet amid this change, one truth remains: cards still dominate global payments. In 2024 alone, the world saw 776 billion card transactions, a figure projected to reach 1.1 trillion by 2029 – a 43% surge that underscores just how central cards remain to everyday commerce.* As real time payments scale and digital wallets proliferate, card volumes continue to rise across contactless, ecommerce and growing B2B channels.
This rapid growth brings both opportunity and pressure. Banks, processors and fintechs are increasingly asking a critical question:
Can our existing card platforms support the future?
For many institutions, the answer is: not without modernization and simplification. Legacy environments are resilient but increasingly strained and frequently highly customized. New fraud vectors emerge every year. Innovation cycles are shortening. Customer expectations are accelerating. And across the industry, leaders are compelled to address these needs rapidly without taking on operational risk.
That’s exactly why the launch of ACI Connetic for Cards is such an important moment for our industry.
Why Now? The Modernization Imperative
With card usage rising globally and margins tightening, institutions need infrastructure that can scale, adapt and innovate—continuously. Traditional card systems were never designed for the speed, elasticity and intelligence required in today’s digital economy. Yet the cost, risk and disruption of a full migration often hold organizations back. Our vision with ACI Connetic for Cards is to solve this challenge.
By bringing decades of proven issuing, acquiring, and ATM capabilities into a unified, cloud-native architecture, we give institutions a low-risk, high-resilience path to modernization—one that aligns with their own pace and strategic priorities. This is not just an upgrade. It’s a replatforming of card payments on modern foundations that allow banks, processors, and fintechs to innovate confidently.
Why It Matters for the Industry
A Single Platform for All Payment Types
For the first time, card payments and account-to-account payments live on the same cloud native platform, integrated with advanced fraud and digital identity intelligence. This is a breakthrough for operational efficiency and resilience.
Payments are converging. Customers expect seamless experiences. And institutions want unified operations rather than supporting multiple legacy systems. ACI Connetic for Cards enables exactly that.
Enterprise-Grade Processing, Reimagined for the Cloud
ACI has supported the world’s largest issuers, acquirers and payment networks for decades. With ACI Connetic, those capabilities are now delivered via a platform built for elasticity, modularity and alwayson reliability. The result: Stronger resilience, greater agility and faster delivery of new services and payment types.
Modernization Without Compromise
Banks need to evolve, but they cannot risk downtime or service gaps. With the ACI Connetic model, institutions can modernize at their own speed—migrating capabilities incrementally while unlocking new functionality immediately. This is modernization designed for real world constraints, not theoretical roadmaps.
A Turning Point for Card Modernization
The answer to this question is multifaceted. While adoption of RTP and RFP is growing globally, when we introduced ACI Connetic in 2025, we set a new standard for unified, cloud native payments infrastructure. Today, ACI Connetic for Cards brings that vision to the heart of the global payment ecosystem. It’s a milestone—not only for ACI Worldwide, but for every institution looking to modernize safely, drive growth and deliver the next generation of customer experiences.
Card payments aren’t going anywhere. But the way we process, secure and innovate around them must change. With ACI Connetic for Cards, we’re giving the industry a modern foundation built for the next decade of global payments evolution.
**Data according to Nilson Report, January 2025
Speak with one of our solution experts today to learn more about how ACI Connetic for Cards can support your institution’s modernization strategy.
Experienced senior leader with more than 30 years of progressive experience within the payments industry, with specific expertise in merchant services, card payments, product management, mobile payments and Point-of-Sale (POS).
