ACI Worldwide Advances Product Strategy for Retail Payments
(NEW YORK – 25 March 2008) – ACI Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACIW), a leading international provider of software for electronic payment systems, today announced that its BASE24-eps solution is live in more than 30 customer sites, managing electronic payment devices, acquiring transactions, and performing high-volume switching, routing and authorization services. ACI has launched a global effort to help users of its earlier products migrate to BASE24-eps, outlining release and support strategies to help customers plan their migration to ACI’s next-generation solution.
Mark Vipond, president of global products at ACI, said, “Our live implementations have successfully proven that BASE24-eps can be deployed to meet a wide range of business and technical needs. The software is driving networks with thousands of payment devices today and was recently used by a customer to process more than 26 million transactions in a single day. BASE24-eps offers the same world-class reliability, availability and scalability that customers have come to expect of ACI solutions.”
BASE24-eps provides all the key functions of ACI’s previous retail payment engines, deployed in a modern object-oriented style using service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles. The software features a scripting engine that allows for easy customization of business processing logic to enhance service levels or improve risk management.
Vipond said, “BASE24-eps enables our customers to realize the benefits of faster time to market, reduced testing costs, and greater leverage of internal skills and platforms. We want to help all our customers take advantage of BASE24-eps and the investment ACI has made in developing the software over the past decade.”
BASE24-eps is available on a variety of platforms, including IBM System z. System z represents ACI’s reference platform, where BASE24-eps is being fully integrated with fraud detection, settlement and other back office solutions to offer an end-to-end payments hub for retail banking. ACI’s end-to-end solutions are optimized for System z to take full advantage of the platform’s database, middleware and security capabilities.
ACI’s earlier retail payment engines include BASE24, OpeN/2, ON/2, TRANS24 and ASx. These products were developed or acquired by ACI over several years and are being matured (i.e., limited enhancements, end of standard maintenance) over the next two to four years, with BASE24 maturing in November 2011 as BASE24-eps becomes ACI’s mainstream retail payments offering.
ACI’s migration support includes business consulting and a full range of technical and implementation services, from project management and software customization to education and go-live support. “Many of our customers are looking to update their payment systems to enable enterprise-wide services using a hub approach,” said Vipond. “For those customers, the upgrade to BASE24-eps represents an ideal opportunity to deploy more integrated, end-to-end solutions on IBM System z. In support of that trend, we and IBM are jointly investing in tools, processes and expert teams to leverage the deep capabilities of both companies in helping customers transform their payment systems and leverage our latest solutions to enhance their payments productivity.”
About ACI Worldwide, Inc.
Every second of every day, ACI Worldwide solutions are at work processing electronic payments, managing risk, automating back office systems and providing application infrastructure services. ACI is a leading international provider of solutions for banking, retail and cross-industry systems. ACI serves more than 800 customers in 86 countries including many of the world's largest financial institutions, retailers and payment processors. Visit ACI Worldwide at www.aciworldwide.com.
Any statements in this press release regarding projected results are preliminary and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In addition, this press release may contain other forward-looking statements including statements regarding ACI Worldwide Incorporated, its subsidiaries or third parties’ expectations, predictions, views, opportunities, plans, strategies, beliefs, and statements of similar effect. The forward-looking statements in this press release are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially.
For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, parties that are relying on the forward-looking statements should review the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K filed on January 30, 2008, the Company’s Form 10-Q filed on February 19, 2008, both as amended by the Form 10-K/A and Form 10-Q/A, respectively, filed on March 4, 2008.
