ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet), the national financial market infrastructure provider, will build Malaysia’s Real-time Retail Payments Platform (RPP) using ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution.

RPP is PayNet’s strategic initiative to modernize Malaysia’s retail payments infrastructure, drive innovation in electronics payments and bring the benefits of immediate payments to all participants in the payments ecosystem, including banks, payment institutions, businesses, consumers and the government. Tasked with developing Malaysia’s payments ecosystem, PayNet resulted from the merger of Bank Negara Malaysia’s (Central Bank of Malaysia) wholly-owned subsidiary, Malaysian Electronic Clearing Corporation (MyClear), with Malaysian Electronic Payment System (MEPS), in August 2017.

PayNet selected ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution for its central infrastructure because of its flexibility as a platform to build transformative payment capabilities, as well as its potential to serve as an enabler for innovative new payment products. In 2017, PayNet will build the Core RPP infrastructure, while 2018 will see the launch of Instant Credits, Request-to-Pay for e-commerce and person-to-person (P2P) Payments with Proxy Address Resolution. This will allow payments to be addressed seamlessly by mobile numbers, National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) numbers, or business registration numbers.

“ACI’s UP Immediate Payments provides the flexibility and agility that PayNet needs to continue innovating and improving the value proposition of electronic payments. Our ability to rapidly bring to market the payment products of the future is essential to keep abreast with the fast pace of change in the e-Payments market,” said Mr. Peter Schiesser, Group CEO, PayNet. “Among the innovative new products in our pipeline is instant cross-border payments where sending payments regionally and globally would be as quick and easy as sending a text message. We are in discussions with our counterparts in Thailand and Singapore to bring this exciting new service to life. We look forward to tapping into ACI’s understanding of the global payments market and its wealth of experience in payments to make e-Payments fast, frictionless and convenient—meeting demands for immediacy in an online, interconnected world.”

“ACI has a long track record of developing powerful and flexible immediate payments platforms and we are excited to partner with PayNet on its RPP initiative, which will benefit Malaysian consumers, financial institutions and businesses. Moreover, it will also position the country as a leader within the larger regional and global payments marketplace,” said Leslie Choo, Vice President & GM, Asia, ACI Worldwide. “PayNet will benefit from our highly agile and responsive immediate payments solution, which can address its future needs as the Malaysian payments ecosystem evolves and matures—with cross-border connectivity to other real-time payment systems around the globe.”

ACI has an unmatched global customer base of financial institutions and payment service providers using its UP Immediate Payments solution. In the UK, the solution has been used by financial institutions to access the UK Faster Payments scheme since its launch in 2008. Currently, over 70 percent of the direct participants of the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme use ACI’s solutions. Last year, EBA Clearing selected ACI as one of the ‘frontrunner service providers’ for the pan-European EBA SEPA Instant Credit scheme. ACI has also partnered with VocaLink to offer a complete end-to-end immediate payments solution for a domestic or regional immediate payments network. Additionally, ACI has customers using UP Immediate Payments to access Singapore FAST and the Australian NPP (New Payments Platform); it is also implementing The Clearing House RTP system and Zelle for customers in the US. ACI serves on the ISO 20022 Real-Time Payments Group, the EPC Instant Payments Technology Group and chairs the IPFA rules working group.