ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading international provider of payment systems, announced today it is working with Credit Agricole Cards and Payments to update the company's payments infrastructure and deliver world-class scalability, reliability and agility to one of the biggest banks in Europe, that manages one of the world's largest ATM networks.
Credit Agricole Cards and Payments has built its payment infrastructure using BASE24-eps, ACI's flagship payment engine.
Credit Agricole Cards and Payments is the processor for the payments business of Credit Agricole, and has been a customer of ACI Worldwide since 2009. As the foundation for its ongoing project to upgrade and improve its payment processing infrastructure and enable innovation, Credit Agricole Cards and Payments has implemented BASE24-eps running on IBM Power 770 systems. This project enables the bank to begin supporting customers internationally.
"We are committed to investing in the best technology to enable us to deliver the best possible service to our customers," said Bernard Noel, CEO of Credit Agricole Cards and Payments. "ACI is a global leader in payments and was the clear choice of partner for Credit Agricole Cards and Payments. When we selected BASE24-eps we knew we were getting a solution that could grow with us in the future, both in France and internationally, and give us a strong foundation on which to build our business. Our best-of-breed solution will not only help us support Credit Agricole, but also many other clients outside of the group and throughout Europe."
The first step of this overhaul program was the creation of a new vendor-independent ATM acquiring solution to support Credit Agricole's network of 22,000 ATMs. The latest element of the project involved the creation of an international switch, enabling Credit Agricole Cards and Payments' to route its clients' payments directly to MasterCard, without going through the national switch in France.
Credit Agricole is MasterCard's largest customer in France, and this enhancement will deliver significant cost savings. Credit Agricole Cards and Payments has also started working with ACI to use BASE24-eps for transaction authorisation for the 30 million cards issued by the various Credit Agricole institutions.
"ACI's solutions enable finanancial institutions to perform efficiently and effectively so they can maximise the benefit to their customers," said Ralph Dangelmaier, president of global markets and services at ACI Worldwide. "By helping them to deliver cutting edge technologies which result in greater efficiencies we are helping them assume a stronger position in today's global economy. We look forward to developing our relationship with Credit Agricole and contributing to their future success."
As part of the ongoing project, Credit Agricole Cards and Payments has selected ACI Payment Service Management™ powered by Prognosis® to work alongside BASE24-eps. The Prognosis solution from Integrated Research provides deep insight and complete visibility across BASE24-eps implementations, and provides financial key performance indicators and analysis - allowing stakeholders to make timely, informed business decisions in rapidly changing financial conditions.
"Credit Agricole Cards and Payments is a great example of an organisation planning to grow internationally and putting the strongest possible footprint in place to support that growth," said James Wallis, Vice President, Global Payments Industry, Finance Sector at IBM. "The team is forward thinking and innovative, and Credit Agricole Cards and Payments joins many other ACI customers in choosing IBM Power systems to run BASE24-eps. The ongoing alliance between ACI and IBM is continuing to show real benefits for our joint customers."