ACI Worldwide Highlights Urgent Need for Payment Modernization Amid Innovation Gap
Written by Emily J. Thompson, Senior Investment Analyst
Updated: Dec 02 2025
0mins
Source: Businesswire
- Confidence vs. Readiness Gap: While 69% of executives view their organizations as payment leaders, only 44% prioritize payment innovation at the C-suite level, indicating a potential loss of industry leadership by 2026 due to this disconnect.
- Underutilization of Technology: Over 55% of executives admit they are not fully leveraging existing technology, with 44% citing legacy platforms as the biggest barrier to innovation, which could lead to delays and increased costs in modernization efforts.
- Cultural Resistance Impacting Transformation: 53% of executives point to cultural hurdles as a key factor slowing transformation, suggesting that internal resistance may exacerbate the modernization gap and affect competitive positioning.
- Customer Demand Driving Change: 79% of respondents identify customer demand as the top catalyst for change, necessitating the payment industry to achieve secure, instant, and seamless transactions by 2026 to meet rising customer expectations.
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Analyst Views on ACIW
Wall Street analysts forecast ACIW stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for ACIW is 66.00 USD with a low forecast of 66.00 USD and a high forecast of 66.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
3 Analyst Rating
2 Buy
1 Hold
0 Sell
Moderate Buy
Current: 43.200
Low
66.00
Averages
66.00
High
66.00
Current: 43.200
Low
66.00
Averages
66.00
High
66.00
About ACIW
ACI Worldwide, Inc. is a global payments technology company, delivers software solutions that power intelligent payments orchestration in real time to banks, billers, and merchants. The Company's segments include Payment Software and Biller. Its Payment Software segment drives payments orchestration for banks and merchants. It provides payment solutions to large and mid-size banks globally for retail banking, digital, and other payment services. Its support of merchants globally includes Tier 1 and Tier 2 merchants (in-store and online), payment service providers, independent selling organizations, value-added resellers, and acquirers who service them. The Company's Biller segment provides electronic bill presentment and payment services to companies operating in the consumer finance, insurance, healthcare, higher education, utility, government, mortgage, subscription provider, and telecommunications categories. The Company also provides fraud abuse protection to its Biller customers.
About the author
Emily J. Thompson
Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.
ACI Worldwide Integrates Paze Digital Wallet, Supporting 16 Million Transactions
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- Streamlined Merchant Operations: By adding Paze to Pay.On, merchants can enable the wallet through a single connection rather than building and maintaining standalone integrations, thereby reducing the complexity of integration projects and support burdens, enhancing operational efficiency.
- Enhanced Security: The checkout experience provided by Paze enhances security through tokenization and seamless digital authentication, allowing consumers to complete purchases without sharing full card numbers with merchants, thus lowering potential security risks.
- Market Expansion: This integration not only expands Pay.On's digital wallet coverage but also supports over 150 million credit and debit cards, further strengthening ACI's competitive position in the rapidly growing digital payment market.
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