ACI Is Considering a $1.5 Billion Reset

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Payments companies have spent the past few years expanding their platforms. Now some are starting to narrow their focus again.

ACI Worldwide is reportedly exploring the sale of its billing business in a deal that could value the unit at around $1.5 billion. If it goes ahead, ACI would emerge as a more focused payments software company while handing its recurring billing business to a new owner.

It's another sign that the market continues to place a premium on software businesses with predictable recurring revenue, while payments companies rethink which parts of their portfolios create the most long-term value.

There's plenty more below.

You'll also find a great conversation with Aleex Sjarki, founder of Ecommpay, on acceptance rates, AI, global growth, financial inclusion, and what merchants should expect from the next generation of payments.

See what else is shaping Payments. 👇 See you tomorrow!

Cheers,

Marcel

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

🎤 Ecommpay launched Making Payments Make Sense, a new podcast series exploring the future of payments. In the first episode, founder Aleex Sjarki joins Julia Streets to discuss acceptance rates, AI, global expansion, and financial inclusion, highlighting how payments can become simpler and more valuable for merchants.

NEWS

🇺🇸 Payments company ACI Worldwide explores sale of billing unit. The company is working with investment bankers on the divestment and has begun preliminary conversations with potential buyers, including private equity firms. Continue reading 

🇺🇸 PayPal board rejects $53B Stripe-Advent offer, arguing the bid undervalues the company while raising financing and regulatory concerns. The decision is widely seen as the start of negotiations, with analysts expecting PayPal to seek a higher valuation as competition intensifies around stablecoin-based payment infrastructure.

🇰🇪 Safaricom Chief Financial Services Officer Esther Waititu quits. Esther Waititu will leave the company on July 31 after nearly three years in the role to pursue other opportunities. During her tenure, she led Safaricom's financial services business. 

🌍 India and Spain agree to advance talks on UPI-Bizum digital payments. India and Spain have agreed to advance technical discussions on interoperability between India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Spain's Bizum digital payments platform, according to a statement issued by the Commerce Ministry.

🇫🇷 Ledger launches Ledger Agent Stack for AI payment approvals. The toolkit lets AI agents read information and propose payment operations without controlling private keys. Any sensitive action must still be approved by a human through a Ledger signer before execution.

🌏 HSBC joins Asia AI payments group on liability rules. The initiative brings together banks, payment networks and FinTechs to address authentication, fraud prevention and accountability as agentic commerce moves into commercial deployment.

🇬🇧 Teya expands business account with bill payments and employee cards with cashback. The enhanced platform also introduces redesigned user permissions and a unified app that gives business owners a single view of payments, expenses and cash flow.

🇧🇷 Brazilian payment platform Pay4Fun integrates with BetConstruct AI. The collaboration gives BetConstruct AI clients in Brazil access to Pix payments, account verification, fraud prevention, and compliance tools designed for the country's regulated betting market.

🇮🇱 Isracard walks away from planned acquisition of Nir Zuk's Esh Bank. After months of talks, Isracard announced that the memorandum of understanding between the two sides had expired without being extended. As a result, no binding agreement was signed, and the deal will not proceed.

🇮🇳 Scapia has launched an employee stock buyback programme, allowing eligible staff to sell up to 10% of their vested stock options. The liquidity event follows the company's $63 million Series C funding round as Scapia expands beyond credit cards into a broader travel and financial services platform.

🇬🇷 Snappi Pay Later is now available on Public. With Snappi Pay Later, consumers can split their purchases into 4 interest-free installments right at checkout, and it’s fully integrated into the Snappi app. No additional accounts, other apps, or unnecessary steps required.

🇺🇸 Nuvion and Turnkey partner to build secure embedded wallet infrastructure for global businesses. The partnership combines Turnkey's secure wallet infrastructure with Nuvion's regulated financial rails, enabling businesses to seamlessly launch and manage stablecoin-powered financial products without building or maintaining wallet infrastructure themselves.

🇬🇧 Euroclear Appoints Usman Ahmad as Head of Digital Assets. In this newly created role, Ahmad will steer the group’s digital assets strategy as the post-trade services provider explores opportunities in tokenisation and digital settlement. Continue reading

🌍 Al Ansari Financial Services scales GCC presence via Western Union expansion in Bahrain and Kuwait. The integration focuses on omnichannel financial services, allowing customers to choose between physical branch interactions and enhanced digital capabilities.

🇺🇸 OnePay and Upgrade team on personal loan program. With this partnership, OnePay customers can apply for loans of $1,000 to $50,000 and receive/accept offers within the OnePay app, with approval and amount subject to eligibility. Keep reading

🌍 USDGO surpasses US$1 billion, ranking among the top six regulated stablecoins globally. The milestone strengthens USDGO's position as institutional payment infrastructure for cross-border payments, treasury management and trade finance across emerging markets.

🇺🇸 Exodus to cut 25% of global workforce in payments shift. The Omaha, Nebraska-based company said in a filing the layoffs are part of a broader effort to lower costs while supporting its strategy of building a full-stack payments platform. Read more

🇮🇹 Salt Edge and Domopay introduce Pay by Bank for rent collections in Italy. With Salt Edge Pay by Bank added to Domopay, landlords and property owners using the app will be able to receive instant account-to-account rent transfers, lowering the likelihood of payment disruptions.

🇳🇬 Busha Business partners with Tether. The collaboration enables businesses to access globally connected stablecoin liquidity for faster cross-border payments, more efficient treasury management, and quicker settlement of international transactions, reducing many of the delays and costs associated with traditional banking channels.

GOLDEN NUGGET

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐚 🆚 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐝 : 𝐅𝐘𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧.👇 Created by Arthur Bedel 💳 ♻️

Visa 👇

→ GDV +7%. Net revenue +12%. VAS revenue +25%.

→ 50%+ of transactions now tokenized.

→ Credit card growth +13%. Average spend per credit card declining, growth is card-count driven.

Mastercard 👇

 → GDV +9%. Net revenue +16%.

 → Debit card growth +11%.

 → Nearly 40% of transactions tokenized.

Three signals worth tracking.

Cross-border growth decelerating for both, third consecutive year. 

Visa 15%→12%. 

Mastercard 18%→15%. 

The post-pandemic tailwind is fading.

Tokenization is no longer a security feature. It is infrastructure, credentials embedded into wallets, apps and soon AI agents. VisaNet rebuilt on microservices. Banks minting stablecoins on Visa's Tokenised Asset Platform. Both networks are becoming payments clouds.

Both are investing heavily in value-added services to stay ahead of local schemes and account-to-account rails. Client incentives keep rising across both networks.

The next growth layer is agentic commerce. A tokenized credential inside an agent runtime can authorize, tokenize and settle in milliseconds. That is a completely different business than processing human card swipes.

Source: Flagship Advisory Partners, Rom Mascetti

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