EXCLUSIVE – Canada is on a five-year plan to revamp its payment infrastructure, as of 2016. Bank of Montreal has tapped real-time solutions provider ACI Worldwide to prepare it for these changes, Bank Innovation has learned.

For the U.S., BMO is working with the Naples, Fla.-based ACI to integrate with Zelle, the bank-backed P2P payments platform, which seems to be gaining momentum among U.S. mobile banking customers (more on that here).

It is important to note, Sandra Horn, senior principal product manager at ACI told Bank Innovation, that neither the Zelle feature in the U.S. nor the realtime feature in Canada are available in the market yet, and that right now they are “only projects that ACI is helping BMO prepare for.”

“BMO recognizes the digital revolution and they are looking to modernize by providing a more holistic experience to their customers,” Horn told Bank Innovation.

To accomplish this, BMO, which has been working with ACI since last month, has opted for a payments hub capability, “a pretty common” request according to Horn for those that want to install a payments infrastructure that allows the client the flexibility to tailor the system to their specific needs.

“The UP-Payments solution” Horn said (which ACI is using for BMO), “lets BMO make their own packaging, and not be dependent on the vendors to make them. It also lets them easily switch between different networks and capabilities like Real-time Gross Settlement, SWIFT messaging and ACH.”

Currently, ACI provides electronic payment capabilities to over 5,100 organizations including 18 of the world’s 20 largest banks. They process $14 trillion in transactions per day.

To learn more about cross-border payments, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to request an invitation.