ACI Worldwide Inc. has announced plans to acquire Euronet Essentis Ltd., a division of Euronet Worldwide. Essentis, based in Watford, England, is a provider of payment solutions for card issuing and merchant acquiring around the world. ACI will market the Essentis solutions globally to financial service providers under the ACI brand.
Essentis provides card issuing and merchant management products.
"The acquisition of Essentis…enriches and deepens our retail banking product portfolio, and adds value and choice for our existing customer base in the back office space," said Philip Heasley, ACI's chief executive. "The functionality and agility of Essentis products, which use technology and architecture similar to current ACI products, will enable us to expand our service-oriented architecture solutions."
Essentis products are multiplatform and have been benchmarked on IBM System z, showing that they can meet the demands of the largest card issuers and merchant acquirers, ACI says. This supports ACI's alliance with IBM and enables the company to continue to offer the best solutions for the market on the platform that is used extensively in banks and payment processors around the world.
"The acquisition of Essentis enables us to combine leading products across the retail banking market and positions us at the forefront of the future of payment systems," said Louis Blatt, chief product officer at ACI. "The Essentis products will be an important part of the ACI Agile Payments Solution. They are built on an SOA architecture, and will deliver a range of different services that are fundamental to helping financial organizations become truly agile, as well as driving consolidation and operational efficiencies that can give them an essential competitive advantage."
