Working closely with the U.S. Federal Reserve and stakeholders across the payments industry, ACI identified Corporate One Federal Credit Union as its initial partner to integrate instant payment services on FedNow via ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud to reach credit unions across the country.

To achieve FedNow certification, ACI Worldwide completed a comprehensive testing curriculum, including fulfilling a checklist of requirements to confirm ability to send, receive and process ISO 20022 messages and meet the requirements to successfully operate in a 24x7x365 instant payments environment.

“Our early certification is a testament to the years of investment we’ve made in our platform and real-time payment solutions globally. We look forward to working closely with Corporate One and future partners to process real-time payments through FedNow and the ACI Real-Time Payments Cloud solution,” said Craig Ramsey, ACI Worldwide’s global head of real-time payments. “We have engaged closely with the U.S. Federal Reserve in the development of FedNow since the service’s inception, and we are honored that ACI Worldwide has been designated by the Federal Reserve as a FedNow Instant Payment Pioneer.”

Partnering with ACI Worldwide will enable Corporate One, one of the largest corporate credit unions in the United States and a leader in real-time payments within the credit union industry, to extend its immediate payments solutions to the FedNow Service, bringing secure, protected instant payments integration to its substantial community of credit union members and partners. Corporate One serves 14 of the top 50 credit unions in asset size and has more than 700 members across 45 states, reaching more than 28.5 million people.

“Corporate One sees our partnership with ACI Worldwide as instrumental in expanding our immediate payments expertise and capabilities to include the FedNow Service,” said Corporate One President and CEO Melissa Ashley. “We have worked together on solutions for the RTP® network and as FedNow pilot participants, and we are confident that ACI will bring unmatched experience to ensuring Corporate One and our credit union members will benefit early from FedNow. And that is truly what this is about —creating opportunity for credit unions to compete, meet their members’ expectations and benefit from new ways of doing business as payments move from faster to immediate.”

In partnership with Microsoft, ACI Worldwide will operate the FedNow Service on its new, fully cloud-native service, the ACI Real-Time Payments Cloud, a multi-tenant SaaS platform in Microsoft Azure, supporting connectivity to both The Clearing House Real-Time Payments network and FedNow. Transitioning to cloud-based infrastructure requires careful consideration, as payment systems are increasingly complex. ACI Worldwide provides customers that have been running its mission-critical system for decades a proven transition path to new architectures.