The J. Safra Group consists of privately-owned banks under the Safra name and investment holdings in asset-based business sectors such as real estate and agribusiness. The J. Safra Group’s banking interests, which have a presence in more than 20 countries, include Bank J. Safra Sarasin, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland; Banco Safra, headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil; and Safra National Bank of New York, headquartered in New York City. Following its success with ACI in Brazil, the J. Safra Group sought to replicate the same success in the U.S. by launching SafraPay. By deploying ACI’s solutions in the public cloud, SafraPay will not only benefit from speed-to-market, but also the ability to scale the solution as the business grows. With ACI’s UP Retail Payments, SafraPay will be able to handle the volume of transactions and market complexities in North America.

“Our plans to expand into the U.S. market will depend heavily on our speed-to-market and ability to scale as our business grows,” said Helio Sarfaty, CEO, SafraPay. “ACI’s cloud-optimized solutions will help us meet these technical needs and lower our capital expenditure and their deep expertise will also help us navigate the U.S. market and its complexities.”

The industry has begun to reap the benefits of public cloud platforms, including lower total cost of ownership (TCO), scalability, speed to market and continuous delivery pipeline, enhanced development tools, and the integration of platform services such as data analytics and artificial intelligence. Through the Microsoft Azure relationship, ACI on-premise customers benefit from enhanced security as well as a reduction in long-term capital expenditure, adopting a scalable model for cloud-based infrastructure. With ACI’s public cloud capabilities, banks, intermediaries and other organizations committed to innovating and moving to the cloud will become more agile, deploying new payment services and ultimately achieving digital transformations more quickly.

“In the highly fragmented U.S. acquiring market, innovative and emerging fintechs like SafraPay require a simple, reliable solution that they can trust,” said Mandy Killam, executive vice president and growth markets leader, ACI Worldwide. “With ACI’s solutions and public cloud capabilities from Microsoft, SafraPay will have the flexibility to adapt to an evolving digital payments landscape and thrive amid the market disruption.”