ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW) enables banks, merchants and billers with real-time, mission critical, software payments solutions worldwide. ACI boasts the top 10 global banks as clients, a positive indication of the industrial strength of their flagship offering. Broadly speaking, the company powers over six-thousand customers throughout the payment’s ecosystem in ninety-five countries, and processes 25 billion transactions in the cloud annually. The legacy bank software business generates a 55%-58% yearly segment adjusted EBITDA, which is plowed back into the faster growing cloud services. We consider ACIW an “O.G.” in the payments sector for developing and implementing the original ATM network driving software for many financial institutions domestically and abroad in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the last 10+ years the company has spent over $1.5 billion on updates to their IT platform, spun out non-core services like online banking, and is primed to reap the rewards of facilitating real-time- payments (RTPs) in all its forms around the globe. Industry participants regularly benchmark off this company. For those who want an education in all things payments, ACI is a great place to start.
