ACI Worldwide adds Swift ledger routing to its ACI Connetic payments hub

ACI Worldwide extended its cloud-native ACI Connetic hub to support payments routed over Swift's blockchain-based ledger, so banks can process tokenised deposit payments through the same rules engine and operations as conventional payment types. The hub applies bank-defined rules to pick clearing and settlement paths. Craig Ramsey, who runs account-to-account payments at ACI, said digital assets should extend a bank's payment capability rather than force it to build a second payment operation.

Swift's ledger is in early pilot with 17 banks across six continents. No volumes or deployment timelines were given.

Banks are being asked to support tokenised settlement without doubling their payment operations, and the hub vendors are where that question gets answered. For ACI this is a defensive move as much as a product: Connetic competes with Finastra, Volante and Form3 for the same European bank modernisation budgets, and ledger support is becoming a tender requirement before it is a live rail. The practical reach is still small, since the Swift ledger has 17 pilot banks and no production traffic.

Whether a named European bank runs tokenised deposits through Connetic in production, whether Swift's ledger moves beyond pilot in 2027, and whether competing hub vendors announce the same support.

• electronicpaymentsinternational.com