Instant and Digital: The Next Frontier of Bill Payment

We’d all like an inexpensive, simple and consolidated way to pay our bills, and we’re seeing a growing list of upstarts entering the market to meet this need. Customer interaction during the billing process is a critical touchpoint to maintain relationships and potentially enhance the customer experience, but third-party solutions that offer enhanced ease of use could get in the way. Companies need to respond with an engaging bill pay offering, which includes real-time payments.

Working Up An Appetite for APIs in Australia

This week ACI hosted the latest installment of our #paymentsforbreakfast forums in Australia, with the early birds catching the open banking worm in both Sydney and Melbourne.

Given the similarities between the Australian and UK open banking movements, we enticed ACI’s UK-based Lu Zurawski (Solutions Practice Lead - Retail Banking) to Australia to share his learnings from being heavily involved in the UK Open Banking working group.

ACI Watford runs first Coding for Girls Camp in Europe

The ACI Watford Office recently teamed up with local West Herts College to run its first Coding for Girls Camp in the UK. The free, one-day event was designed to introduce girls from year (grade) 7-9 to the world of technology, offering a crash course in computer programming; including HTML, CSS and Java. I spoke to Melissa McKendry, VP of retail banking implementation services and Watford Site Leader at ACI, to find out more.

Online Retailers Are Fighting Account Takeover Fraud Fires

Online merchants and retailers are facing an ever-growing threat from account takeover fraud, which is accelerating within the card-not-present space. Account takeover occurs when user credentials for a retailer’s website are compromised, leading to exploitation of a consumer and potentially offering a large return on investment for the fraudster. Per research from ACI Worldwide and Javelin Strategy, this type of sophisticated attack accounted for a staggering USD $5 Billion in fraud losses in 2017 alone. The card-not-present environment, due to anonymity, allows a fraudster to hide themselves in the act.

Modernizing Cross-Border Transfers with SWIFT gpi

The customer experience for domestic payments – retail and corporate – has recently undergone a complete transformation. There’s still plenty more that could be achieved, but the advent of real-time payments in combination with open APIs has seen the launch of Request for Payment services and direct eCommerce instant payments in the UK and Europe. And it’s not just the PSD2 push in Europe that’s driving change – in the U.S., Zelle is moving beyond standalone P2P payments to become an integrated part of the retail banking app experience, as well as being included in new kinds of corporate disbursements.

Payments in Gaming: The Female Gamer Powers-Up

The global games market is booming, with revenues set to reach USD $137.9 billion by 2021. But along with the growth, gaming is also transforming and diversifying; in genre, gaming devices, platforms, economics and demographics. Notably, female gamers are ‘powering up’ – representing 40% of paying gamers across all platforms – and there are implications for how gaming companies deliver their products and the role of payments in the overall customer experience.

Mid-Year Payments Reflections… And What 2018 Has Left Up Its Sleeve

It has been a while since I had a chance to collect my thoughts, nee, reflections. My all-time favorite movie reminds us all that “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” And with this advice in mind, I want to share my thoughts on the ‘Big 3’ of 2018 so far… and prep us all on what to look for as the calendar churns through its last six pages.

Could Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Revolutionize Payments in the Gaming Sector? [Q&A]

ACI recently partnered with Nextpayway, a company offering a specialist payment solution for the gaming industry. The Israeli start-up is implementing ACI’s UP eCommerce Payments solution to deliver next-generation payments and fraud prevention. We spoke with Nextpayway’s CEO Angela Behar just after the GES World Gaming Summit in Barcelona.

Hat in Hand with 17 Heads: Payments Innovation and the Fraud Pitfalls to Avoid

Imagine that you live in a world that is revenue-agnostic, where payments revenue is so far decoupled from the payments channels that they ride on, and that startup culture and venture capital allow for the creation of all sorts of innovations that have some creative monetization that keep the train on the tracks. If you got halfway through that horrific sentence and realized we’ve been there for quite a while already, I’m impressed. It is essentially the cornerstone of banking, in many capacities.

Time is Money: A Millennial View of UK Faster Payments’ 10th Anniversary

As a millennial, I’ve often been the butt of jokes of those a little bit older than I am (whether colleagues or my own family). One of the clichés perpetuated is that we are constantly glued to our smartphones: In a way that’s correct, but misses an important point. As a young millennial professional, the most important thing to me is TIME. And that’s the reason my phone plays a crucial role in my life – much to the annoyance of my girlfriend and family. It means I can do things on the move, which in turn makes my life a whole lot easier.