Case Study
Modernizing payments for a global fuel retailer
A major global fuel brand, with owned and franchised fuel and convenience stations, faced significant challenges in modernizing its payments infrastructure. After initially selecting a direct-to-acquirer approach, technical limitations and inflexibility threatened their rollout. By partnering with ACI, they gained a scalable, resilient payments orchestration solution that supports tens of thousands of persistent connections, multi-endpoint routing, and future-proof capabilities—all while reducing costs for encryption and tokenization.
The challenge
Architectural rigidity limiting scale
The global fuel retailer initially planned to connect each station directly to its acquirer but quickly ran into significant obstacles. The acquirer faced technical limitations that made it difficult to manage thousands of persistent connections over the open internet, creating reliability concerns for a deployment of this scale. Supporting the retailer’s proprietary private‑label card portfolio added further complexity, as the existing systems were not designed to accommodate their specialized requirements. Additionally, the rigid architecture limited the ability to evolve their payments strategy over time, making it challenging to incorporate new capabilities, such as loyalty‑linked mobile transactions, without major infrastructure changes. Finally, the modernization of their payment processing had to be done with minimal site disruption.
The solution
Payments orchestration for scalable, future ready growth
ACI delivered a robust payments orchestration platform built on its multi‑tenant architecture and RESTful APIs, providing the fuel retailer with a centralized and scalable transaction foundation. Serving as the system of record, the platform consolidated all site‑level transactions—including fuel pumps, convenience stores, and mobile channels— into a single transaction hub to support comprehensive reporting. The solution enabled seamless multi‑endpoint routing, processing the majority of transactions through their acquirer while directing private-label card volumes to their card issuer. To meet the fuel retailer’s operational and loyalty requirements, ACI also delivered flexible, customized reporting with tailored batch closures and accounting exports. Designed for long‑term value, the platform included a future‑ready roadmap with point‑to‑point encryption (P2PE), tokenization, and direct connectivity to additional networks.
Key components of the solution included:
- Centralized transaction hub: in-store, forecourt, and mobile
- Sophisticated multi‑endpoint routing: acquirer, issuer, network
- Resilient, scalable multi‑tenant architecture
- Future‑ready enablement: tokenization, vP2PE, additional acquirers, networks, and payment types
- Implementation without disruption
The results
Streamlined operations
The major global fuel brand gained a centralized, scalable, highly resilient, and flexible payments foundation that simplified transaction management, improved reporting visibility, and enabled flexible routing across its acquiring ecosystem. The solution minimized disruption at the site level while still enabling sophisticated multi‑endpoint routing, allowing the fuel retailer to evolve its acquiring strategy without widespread operational change. By consolidating fuel, convenience store, and mobile transactions into a single system of record, the fuel retailer established a consistent source of truth for operational, accounting, and loyalty reporting. The solution also ensured uninterrupted processing through intelligent multi‑endpoint routing, seamlessly directing transactions to their acquirer for general card volume and to their card issuer for its private-label programs. Just as importantly, the platform preserved long‑term strategic optionality, enabling the fuel retailer to connect directly to card networks when financially advantageous. To support evolving business needs, the fuel retailer benefited from customized reporting outputs and a future‑ready roadmap that reduces cost and complexity.
Industry:
Fuel and convenience
Company Size:
More than 93,000 employees
Location:
Global
Solution:
