ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Erste Bank Hungary (EBH), is leveraging  ACI’s UP portfolio of solutions to drive its open banking strategy, support new revenue streams and at the same time fully meet PSD2 and instant payments compliance requirements.

By utilising ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution, EBH will be able to ensure real-time balance data will be available 24/7 to all customers across all banking channels. The ability to provide such balances is a crucial compliance requirement of Hungary’s domestic instant payment scheme, which will launch in 2019. 

In order to comply with PSD2 and strengthen fraud protection around instant payments, EBH will also utilise the latest version of Proactive Risk Manager (PRM) and implement real-time prevention and detection capabilities. PRM will be fully maximised, especially for transaction risk analysis and reporting requirements in regard to the new Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) for ‘Strong Customer Authentication’ (SCA).

PSD2 requires payment service providers (PSPs) to improve the authentication of payment transactions to tackle fraud, introducing ‘Strong Customer Authentication’ as the means to do this. Under the new rules, exemptions from SCA are only allowed for those who can keep their fraud levels under specified reference fraud rates, which allows payments under certain thresholds to be secured using transaction risk analysis.

Ultimately, PRM will enhance EBH’s enterprise fraud detection capabilities and empower the bank to provide a better customer experience to both consumer and corporate customers.

“EBH is one of the first banks in the region to fully future-proof its payments infrastructure while laying the foundations for growth. ACI’s solutions support our customers in protecting their existing businesses and increasing their revenues, placing them in pole position in the new open banking and real-time payments ecosystem,” said Mandy Killam, group president, ACI Worldwide. “Our solutions ensure that financial institutions can take advantage of the new opportunities PSD2 and real-time payments present, by delivering openness while also ensuring the highest levels of privacy, data protection and fraud protection for their clients.”

“We are delighted to continue our partnership with ACI Worldwide. Our bank faced the dual challenge of meeting a very tight in-country deadline for Instant Payment go-live dates, while driving its digital transformation strategy at the same time,” said Tamás Foltányi, COO, Erste Bank Hungary. “ACI’s solutions will ensure our bank fully complies with new European regulations and will also enable us to drive additional revenue by rapidly delivering innovative products that meet our customers’ demands.”

EBH, a long-standing ACI customer, is a member of Erste Group, one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, with 15.8 million clients across a network of more than 2,700 branches in 7 countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia).

Universal Payments (UP) is at the core of ACI’s strategy to provide the broadest, most integrated suite of electronic payments solutions in the market. UP is ACI’s vision of enabling real-time, any-to-any electronic payments for financial institutions, intermediaries, merchants and billers. Its unique underlying technology framework consists of flexible, open payment services that enable organisations to innovate quickly, reduce risk and gain choice, flexibility and control over their payment strategies.