The partnership will see ACI Worldwide accelerate Security Bank’s digital transformation journey, helping the bank stay ahead of evolving customer and regulatory demands by providing full payment hub capabilities for low- and high-value payments, including payment processing, domestic scheme gateways and SWIFT on ISO 20022 standards on a single platform.

ACI Worldwide’s cloud-native real-time payment platform and flexible, modern architecture ensure that Security Bank can provide secure services across consumers, merchants and corporate payments with emerging and new payment types. By providing a best-in-class payments solution and global domain expertise, Security Bank will be a market leader in payments innovation in the Philippines and deliver its promise of Better Banking with customer centricity at the forefront.

According to ACI Worldwide’s 2022 Prime-Time for Real-Time report, the volume of real-time payments in the Philippines continues to grow, with banks encouraging new domestic use cases and domestic fintechs emerging in the market.

The Philippines’ payment system is on the verge of modernization, and the integration of its financial structure is essential to ensure significant economic benefits. The partnership between ACI Worldwide and Security Bank is a milestone for the bank’s payments modernization efforts and enables the bank to play a key role in helping the nation reap the benefits of real-time payments domestically and across the region.

“With the Philippine payments system primed for rapid growth, we require a technology platform that is scalable and can be modified as our customers’ needs and demands evolve. The ACI partnership will enable us to provide our customers with a seamless real-time payments experience, aligned with Security Bank’s brand promise of Better Banking,” said Stephen John Bell, SVP and Channels Network Group Head at Security Bank Corporation.

“ACI Worldwide is the APAC leader in real-time payments transformation. Our robust solutions go from powering country-wide real-time payment ecosystems to interconnecting cross-border real-time payments networks and enabling the integration of different types of payments into a single, unified, intelligent, cloud-native, payment hub. By utilizing ACI Worldwide’s technology, Security Bank will be able to bring new products and services to customers faster, add new payment alternatives seamlessly and cost-effectively to its existing core infrastructure, and tap into ACI Worldwide’s payment ecosystem in the APAC region,” said Leslie Choo, Senior Vice President, Managing Director - APAC, ACI Worldwide. “We look forward to Security Bank providing personalized digital experiences that can cater to ongoing change, complexity and uncertainty.”

ACI Worldwide has a successful track record of implementing critical real-time ISO 20022 payments ecosystems and central infrastructures across APAC countries. It provides the central infrastructure for Indonesia’s BI-FAST, one of the world’s largest real-time payment initiatives, which will incorporate 135 banks as well as merchants and payment service providers when fully implemented.

The company also powers the real-time central infrastructure and the entire bank ecosystem of Malaysia’s Real-time Retail Payments Platform. Additionally, ACI Worldwide supports Thailand’s National ITMX with real-time ISO 20022 bulk payments alongside many real-time payment schemes across the region, including Philippines, Singapore and Australia.