ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, today announced it is extending its partnership with Boots UK, part of Walgreens Boots Alliance, to drive payments modernization for the UK’s pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. Boots UK will utilize ACI Omni-Commerce, a secure validated P2PE omni-channel payments platform, which will deliver a safe, consistent and seamless payments experience to its customers across all channels, whether in-store, online or mobile.

Against the backdrop of growing eCommerce sales accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, many retailers, especially in the grocery and drugstore sector, have focused on accelerating the digital transformation of their business to satisfy demand for new customer journeys and new digital payment methods. The partnership with ACI will give Boots a flexible payments service so that it can offer its customers new payments methods and respond quickly to future business demands across in-store and digital channels.

Boots will also benefit from ACI Secure eCommerce, a cloud-based, PCI-compliant, highly scalable and acquirer-agnostic payments platform. The solution offers merchants a multi-layered fraud strategy that uses a combination of consortium payments intelligence, profiling, machine learning and rules—a powerful approach that enables merchants to maximize payment acceptance while minimizing fraud and chargeback costs.

“Over the last year, we have seen some fundamental changes in consumer behavior when it comes to shopping and payments,” said Andrew Quartermaine, vice president, ACI Worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly shopping across multiple channels and demand a variety of payment options, whether they are shopping online or in-store. Retailers need to keep up with these developments, serving customers in cross-channel journeys like click-and-collect and offering a greater choice of payment methods.”

The ACI solution will also help Boots to meet the requirements of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), the new European security standard for online payments that came into force on January 1, 2021, with the UK following suit on September 14, 2021. SCA aims to protect consumers and businesses from fraud by authenticating the customer before allowing a payment to be completed. ACI’s solution is designed to support merchants in their SCA checks and to minimize disruption during the payment process, ensuring completed transactions remain high.