ACI launches Connetic to unite eight US payment networks

ACI Worldwide has launched ACI Connetic for eight major US payment networks on a single cloud-native platform, as more banks manage FedNow and RTP in parallel.

The platform connects banks to Fedwire, CHIPS, Swift, The Clearing House RTP, Zelle and FedNow. Nacha ACH connectivity for FedACH and EPN is in development and is expected next year. The system also supports stablecoin and tokenised-deposit transactions.

The launch targets a growing operational challenge for banks as payment volumes rise across multiple rails. According to the U.S. Faster Payments Council's 2025 Faster Payments Barometer, 58% of banks offering instant payment services now operate both FedNow and RTP, often with separate compliance controls, fraud tools and exception-handling processes for each.

That complexity has increased with the adoption of newer payment systems. Nearly 1,700 institutions now participate in FedNow, while The Clearing House RTP processed USD $1.3 trillion in payments in 2025. More than 340,000 businesses and seven million consumers send payments each month through RTP, and the ACH Network handled 35.2 billion payments worth USD $93 trillion.

Operational strain

ACI is pitching the platform as a way to unify those payment types in a single operating environment, rather than requiring banks to maintain multiple clearing connections across separate systems. The approach is intended to reduce the burden of managing traditional, instant and digital-asset payment rails independently.

Craig Ramsey, Senior Vice President and Head of Account-to-Account Payments at ACI Worldwide, said banks have accumulated operational risk as new payment options have been added. "Banks didn't set out to run eight payment systems in parallel, but that's the reality today, and it's driving real operational risk," he said.

"Every new rail adds controls, compliance and technical debt," Ramsey added.

The addition of FedNow and RTP alongside long-established high-value and cross-border systems reflects growing demand for platforms that can support instant payments at scale. ACI described multi-rail orchestration as an immediate operational requirement for many institutions, not a longer-term project.

Nacha ACH remains a significant part of that strategy. Batch payments are being added using the same cloud-native design to create a common foundation across US clearing types for banks upgrading older infrastructure.

Thomas Warsop, President and Chief Executive Officer of ACI Worldwide, said banks are now pursuing broad payment-modernisation programmes rather than replacing one system at a time.

"Banks are no longer modernizing one rail at a time; they're being asked to modernize everything at once," Warsop said. "That's why we built ACI Connetic. It brings instant, high-value and batch payments together on one cloud-native platform, giving institutions a simpler, more resilient foundation to move faster today while confidently preparing for what's next."

Broader push

The US network expansion is part of ACI's broader push to apply the same platform model across payment types and geographies. In March, it introduced ACI Connetic for Cards, extending the platform to card issuing, acquiring and ATM processing alongside account-to-account payments and fraud management.

Customers in the European Union and the UK are already using Connetic to combine domestic and international payment schemes in a single environment. ACI also cited Solaris SE, the embedded finance group, as a customer using the platform to modernise its instant payments infrastructure in regulated markets.

Fraud controls are another part of the design. ACI's Fraud and Financial Crime system is built into transaction workflows rather than added through separate software, a structure intended to support compliance with Nacha fraud-monitoring rules that took effect in March 2026.

The platform is designed for deployment across major cloud infrastructures as well as on-premises, hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud environments. That gives banks several options for integrating newer payment rails with existing systems as transaction volumes and regulatory demands grow.

For US banks, the central issue is less about adding another payment option than about managing the cumulative impact of several at once. ACI's figures show that instant, batch, cross-border and high-value systems are all expanding at the same time, leaving institutions with a more complex operating model than many had planned for.

With ACH connectivity still in development, ACI is betting that banks will favour a single-platform approach to reduce duplication across payment operations. The current launch brings together eight major US networks at a time when parallel use of FedNow and RTP has already become standard across much of the market.