ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of electronic payment and banking solutions, and PAY.ON, a leader in eCommerce payment gateway services, today announced that they have entered into a definitive transaction agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, ACI will acquire 100 percent of the equity of PAY.ON in a combination of cash and stock valuing the company at €180 million (approximately $200 million).

Based in Munich, Germany, PAY.ON delivers a white label global payment gateway solution to payment services providers (PSPs) and acquirers globally. PAY.ON’s solution features connectivity to more than 300 alternative payment methods and card acquirers in more than 160 countries. This global coverage helps merchants and PSPs to increase international revenues, dramatically reduce costs and risk, and accelerate market expansion.

PAY.ON’s advanced SaaS-based eCommerce gateway solution complements and strengthens ACI’s UP Retailer Payments offering, positioning ACI as a highly differentiated omni-channel payments leader. The combined ACI/PAY.ON solution provides merchants and PSPs the ability to deliver a seamless omni-channel customer payment experience in any retailer modality – in store, mobile, online – with both on premise and SaaS delivery options.

The global eCommerce market is growing rapidly, with global eCommerce volume expected to grow at a 17 percent CAGR through 2019. In addition, as the global eCommerce market continues its rapid ascent, the need for cross-border eCommerce payments is a particularly fast growing sector. With business and consumer demands continuing to globalize, cross-border eCommerce volume is expected to grow at an 18 percent CAGR over the same period.

“PAY.ON brings world-class eCommerce payment and Card Not Present (CNP) capabilities to ACI. Its SaaS-based business model, coupled with its strength in alternative payments and cross-border capabilities, allow us to expand our eCommerce platform broadly into new geographic regions,” said Phil Heasley, president and CEO, ACI Worldwide. “Our acquisition of ReD in 2014 strengthened our position as a market leader in the CNP payments risk management market, and this acquisition further solidifies our position as a leading omni-channel payments provider.”

“We’re excited to become part of the ACI team, and are pleased that our eCommerce gateway technology will play a strategic role in fulfilling ACI’s Universal Payments vision of enabling a complete set of end-to-end payment services,” said Markus Rinderer, CEO and co-founder, PAY.ON. “The combination of our eCommerce payment gateway capabilities and ACI’s UP Retailer Payments offering will give merchants around the world the most complete, flexible and consistent omni-channel payments experience.”

ACI's Universal Payments (UP) portfolio of solutions orchestrates all aspects of payment processing for any payment type, any channel, any currency and any network.

PAY.ON is expected to have minimal impact to revenues and earnings for the remainder of fiscal 2015. ACI plans to use the existing credit facility to finance the transaction. Accompanying third quarter 2015 earnings materials and conference call information can be found at http://investor.aciworldwide.com/.

About PAY.ON
PAY.ON delivers white label global payment gateway solutions to payment service providers, ISOs, acquirers, ISVs, and VARs, enabling them to fully outsource payment transaction processing or integrate a gateway-to-gateway solution. The core payment gateway provides cross-border payment processing, PCI-compliant merchant boarding, and access to more than 300 domestic and international acquirers and alternative payment methods. Modular solutions are configured to specific business cases, with additional fraud prevention tools, monitoring and reporting, and business services. PAY.ON enables payment providers to rapidly increase international revenues, reduce costs and risk, and accelerate market expansion.

Headquartered in Munich, PAY.ON also has offices in New York and Salzburg.

About ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, the Universal Payments company, powers electronic payments and banking for more than 5,600 financial institutions, retailers, billers and processors around the world. ACI software processes $13 trillion each day in payments and securities transactions for more than 300 of the leading global retailers, and 18 of the world’s 20 largest banks. Through our comprehensive suite of software products and hosted services, we deliver a broad range of solutions for payment processing; card and merchant management; online banking; mobile, branch and voice banking; fraud detection; trade finance; and electronic bill presentment and payment. To learn more about ACI, please visit www.aciworldwide.com. You can also find us on Twitter @ACI_Worldwide.

© Copyright ACI Worldwide, Inc. 2015.
ACI, ACI Payment Systems, the ACI logo and all ACI product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of ACI Worldwide, Inc., or one of its subsidiaries, in the United States, other countries or both. Other parties’ trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.

Product roadmaps are for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into a contract or agreement. The development release and timing of future product releases remains at ACI’s sole discretion. ACI is providing the following information in accordance with ACI's standard product communication policies. Any resulting features, functionality, and enhancements or timing of release of such features, functionality, and enhancements are at the sole discretion of ACI and may be modified without notice. All product roadmap or other similar information does not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making a purchasing decision.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Generally, forward-looking statements do not relate strictly to historical or current facts and may include words or phrases such as “believes,” “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” and words and phrases of similar impact. The forward-looking statements are made pursuant to safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: (i) expectations that ACI will be positioned as a highly differentiated omni-channel payments leader; (ii) expectations that PAY.ON will allow ACI to expand our eCommerce capabilities broadly; (iii) expectations that PAY.ON further solidifies our position as a leading omni-channel payment provider; and (iv) expectations that PAY.ON will have minimal impact to revenue and earnings for the remainder of fiscal 2015.

All of the foregoing forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by the risk factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such factors include, but are not limited to, increased competition, the performance of our strategic product, UP BASE24-eps, demand for our products, restrictions and other financial covenants in our credit facility, consolidations and failures in the financial services industry, customer reluctance to switch to a new vendor, the accuracy of management’s backlog estimates, the maturity of certain products, our strategy to migrate customers to our next generation products, ratable or deferred recognition of certain revenue associated with customer migrations and the maturity of certain of our products, failure to obtain renewals of customer contracts or to obtain such renewals on favorable terms, delay or cancellation of customer projects or inaccurate project completion estimates, volatility and disruption of the capital and credit markets and adverse changes in the global economy, our existing levels of debt, impairment of our goodwill or intangible assets, litigation, future acquisitions, strategic partnerships and investments, risks related to the expected benefits to be achieved in the transaction with PAY.ON, the complexity of our products and services and the risk that they may contain hidden defects or be subjected to security breaches or viruses, compliance of our products with applicable legislation, governmental regulations and industry standards, our compliance with privacy regulations, the protection of our intellectual property in intellectual property litigation, the cyclical nature of our revenue and earnings and the accuracy of forecasts due to the concentration of revenue-generating activity during the final weeks of each quarter, business interruptions or failure of our information technology and communication systems, our offshore software development activities, risks from operating internationally, including fluctuations in currency exchange rates, exposure to unknown tax liabilities, and volatility in our stock price. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, parties that are relying on the forward-looking statements should review our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.