Mastercard, ACI Worldwide Partner To Advance Real-Time Payments In Peru

Mastercard and ACI Worldwide are teaming up to advance real-time payments in Peru in collaboration with Cámara de Compensación Electrónica (CCE). “The volume of immediate transfers that we process each month has more than quadrupled. In January 2020, we processed 580,000, a number that increased to more than 2.8 million per month by January 2021,” Martín Santa María, CEO of CCE, said in a press release. 

Santa María added that the tie-up can help the company grow to service both consumers and businesses as the demand for real-time payments accelerates. 

CCE is a private institution that manages the clearing of financial institutions’ (FIs’) transfers, direct debits, credit installments, checks and bills of exchange. “CCE is the first customer Mastercard and ACI will collaborate on following the announcement of their alliance in September 2020,” the release stated. They are working together to offer infrastructure solutions that are localized for payments, and can also tap central banks, scheme operators, financial institutions, payment service providers and other organizations launching real-time payments initiatives.

Latin America is at the forefront of payments modernization, with Peru among several countries vying for real-time payment domination. “As these countries look to launch their own real-time payments schemes, they are turning to ACI and Mastercard, and we are excited to deliver Peru’s new real-time central infrastructure,” said Jeremy Wilmot, chief product officer of ACI Worldwide. “The combination of ACI and Mastercard technologies working together will accelerate the adoption of real-time payments in Peru by supporting an easy onboarding path for the participants of the scheme.”

ACI will combine its payments access and real-time message transformation technology with Mastercard’s Immediate Payments Service, per the release.

The move to enable real-time payments is expected to have major advancements in 2021, according to Russ Waterhouse, executive vice president of product development and strategy at The Clearing House (TCH).