New Zealand’s state-owned bank Kiwibank has gone live with ACI Worldwide’s Enterprise Payments Platform to process all its account-to-account real-time payments.
ACI Worldwide provides secure and scalable software solutions that enable financial institutions to process digital payments, process bill payments, and manage fraud and risk.
Its Enterprise Payments Platform is a managed cloud solution that supports enterprise payments and presents a unique set of opportunities and challenges for banks.
The current move builds on Kiwibank’s long-standing relationship with ACI, where the bank used ACI’s ATM/POS and AI-powered Fraud Management solutions.
Kiwibank said that the strategic partnership with ACI is a significant step in its digital transformation efforts and helps unlock the benefits of real-time payments.
By moving its infrastructure to the cloud, Kiwibank can access advanced technology that simplifies the operation of multiple, and growing, payments services.
Kiwibank chief customer officer Mark Stephen said: “This significantly improves our readiness for future innovation. It also means we will be able to implement change at lower cost and lower risk, not having to work around multiple systems, utilising the expertise of the ACI managed service model.
“We’re always working to improve our offer of being simple, easy, accessible and providing expertise for our customers, this move will help us deliver on that promise.
“ACI has helped us provide the tools our customers need in today’s fast-moving society. It’s a really exciting time for us as we continue to grow and gear up for future growth of the bank.”
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has urged local banks to boost the pace of the country’s journey towards real-time payments.
According to a study by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, introducing a domestic real-time payments scheme could benefit New Zealand’s economy with an additional $271m of economic growth by 2027.
Kiwibank said that it has replaced more than 50% of the tech by moving to ACI’s platform, supporting its banking solutions and adapting to the technology faster.
In the future phases of the migration, the bank will move domestic and international payment functionality out of its old systems onto the ACI platform and offer real-time payment services.
ACI Worldwide said that its technology and global expertise can help customers meet the increasing demands of their customers and their markets.
ACI Worldwide APAC managing director, and senior vice president Leslie Choo said: “The cloud-native managed service Enterprise Payments Platform solution is a transformative move for Kiwibank to leapfrog the competition.
“It enables the bank to realize the convergence of all payment rails and offers scalability and flexibility to bolt on additional technology solutions without having to build the architecture from the ground up.”
