ACI Worldwide, a major global company that provides real-time electronic payment and banking solutions for financial institutions, merchants, and billers, announced a big new partnership with BitPay.
The main aim here is to make it easier for merchants and payment service providers to get in on the Bitcoin, digital assets, and stablecoin action.
As part of this deal, ACI is going to start integrating BitPay’s digital currency processing into its Payments Orchestration Platform.
This means merchants will be able to accept bitcoin, other digital assets, and stablecoins, as well as the good old-fashioned payment methods, all from one place.
And this is a big deal for merchants and customers, making bitcoin and stablecoin payments a lot more normalized in global commerce.
Getting digital assets into the mainstream for businesses means they can now accept, store, and spend digital currencies, including bitcoin and stablecoins, all from one neat and tidy place on the platform.
According to the announcement, merchants get to decide whether they settle transactions in cash or in stablecoins, with no mention of settlements in bitcoin or other digital assets, which gives them a new degree of flexibility in today’s markets.
ACI reckons this partnership is a big deal because there’s a lot of interest from merchants and PSPs in giving digital assets a go as part of their payment strategy.
A survey by ACI Worldwide found that 55% of global retailers are weighing up whether to accept digital assets or not.
“As regulated stablecoins evolve from niche to mainstream, they’re creating new opportunities for cross-border transactions and settlement optimization,” says Adriana Iordan, ACI’s Global Head of Merchant.
“Based on growing demand from our PSPs and merchant clients, we’re ensuring they have multiple pathways to leverage these emerging rails where they add value – whether for payment acceptance or specific use cases like cross-border B2B settlements and treasury operations.”
For BitPay, this partnership is a big deal because it gets them exposure to ACI’s global customer base and helps to make bitcoin more practical for real-world use.
“Together with ACI Worldwide, we’re making digital currencies more accessible and practical for real-world commerce,” says BitPay’s Co-Founder and CEO, Stephen Pair.
“This partnership brings our proven crypto payment capabilities to ACI’s global customer base, enabling everything from simple payment acceptance to cross-border settlement scenarios as market demand develops”.
BitPay’s tech is built to handle all sorts of use cases, including peer-to-peer payments and mobile point of sale transactions, which means it’s easy for merchants to get on board with accepting bitcoin and stablecoins without having to change their whole setup.
ACI’s Payments Orchestration Platform simplifies managing multiple payment providers, acquirers, and gateways in one place. This reduces complexity and can even drive sales growth — ACI says businesses that add new payment options, including bitcoin, see a 1–3% increase in sales.
