AFFIN Group announced a partnership with ACI Worldwide to modernise the Bank?s real-time payment capabilities. In attendance at the contract signing to represent YBhg. Datuk Wan Razly Abdullah was Encik Risham Akashah Bin Kamaruzaman, Group Chief Operating Officer of Affin Bank Berhad, and ACI Worldwide was represented by Mr. Leslie Choo, Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Asia Pacific, ACI Worldwide.

Under this partnership, the new enterprise payments platform is designed to streamline and enhance the efficiency of payment processes for enterprises, offering a centralised system that consolidates all payment instructions from various channels, converges high-value and low-value payments, including Affin Delivery System (ADS), AffinAlways Retail Internet Banking and Mobile Internet Banking, AFFINMAX (Corporate Internet Banking platform), and ATMs. This partnership also targets a 75% efficiency boost through process automation and eliminating manual actions, reducing errors. AFFIN will handle over 20% more transactions, supporting growth and scalability. It will enable interoperability among PayNet, RENTAS, and SWIFT using ISO 20022 standards.

As the industry adopts ISO 20022 globally, this modernisation solution meets regulatory mandates, improves system resilience, and integrates future payment services. ACI Worldwide has unmatched expertise in powering on-premises and cloud-native payment solutions for major banks across Asia Pacific. Malaysia's Real-time Retail Payments Platform (RPP) was introduced by the national payments network and central infrastructure provider PayNet in collaboration with ACI to establish ISO 20022 real-time payments across financial institutions and communities.

ACI also provides the central infrastructure for Indonesia's BI-FAST, one of the world's largest real-time payment initiatives that incorporates 135 banks, multi-tenant aggregators, and non-bank participants. According to ACI Worldwide'sPrime-Time for Real-Time 2024 report, Malaysia emerges as a frontrunner in the ASEAN region, recording one of the highest volumes of real-time payment transactions in 2023. The trajectory is set for exponential growth, with real-time payment transactions forecasted to grow from 1.9 billion in 2023 to 4.1 billion by 2028, representing an impressive compound annual growth rate of 16.9%.

Malaysia is also among the top 10 countries globally for mobile wallet adoption. Malaysia's success in harmonising the country's real-time payments ecosystem on ISO 20022 has ensured that technology serves as an enabler and not a barrier to real-time payment adoption, empowering merchants, billers, fintechs, and financial intermediaries to tap into and maximise the value from real-time rails.