We covered the LAC market in-depth in this Mercator report, and one of the findings was that Peru is a small but innovative market, with the central bank focused on improving financial inclusion. We projected that by 2023, only 27% of Peru will have credit cards and that debit card usage will almost triple from 14% to 50%.
One of the most exciting market developments in Peru is Billetera Movil (Bim), a domestic payment scheme run by the Central Bank of Peru. We suggested that Mexico would be well-served if they copied the important features constructed in Bim when they built Cobra Digital (CoDi), the Mexican domestic scheme. Mexico took a different route with CoDi and tried to reinvent the wheel. To date, Mexico’s domestic payment scheme flounders and the effort is barely off the ground., while Peru’s Bim blossoms.
Today, ACI Worldwide announced a breakthrough with Mastercard, which will further amp up Peru’s payment game. According to the release:
- Mastercard and ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, today announced that Cámara de Compensación Electrónica (CCE) would utilize the ACI Enterprise Payments Platform to accelerate financial institutions’ access to Mastercard’s Instant Payment Service, the new real-time payments managed service that will enter Industry Testing in Peru later this year.
- CCE is the first customer Mastercard and ACI will collaborate on following the announcement of their alliance in September 2020. Mastercard and ACI are working together to offer best-in-class central infrastructure, payments localization and access solutions to central banks, scheme operators, financial institutions, payment service providers, and other organizations launching real-time payments initiatives.
- CCE is a private institution that manages the clearing of financial institutions’ transfers, direct debits, credit installments, checks and bills of exchange. It initially launched its real-time payments scheme—Immediate Interbank Transfers (IIT)—in 2016 and is working with Mastercard to fully modernize Peru’s digital payments infrastructure.
- Today’s announcement means that ACI will combine its payments access and real-time message transformation technology with Mastercard’s Immediate Payments Service, the central infrastructure being deployed as a managed service using the ISO 20022 message standard to deliver an unmatched end-to-end offering for CCE. CCE’s IIT service operates 24/7; its transfers can be performed using internet or mobile banking and are processed in real time.
Similar to Mastercard, ACI has been a payments leader, almost from day-1. The two firms have a long history of working together. Jeremy Wilmont, the chief product officer at ACI puts it well, when he says: “The combination of ACI and Mastercard technologies working together will accelerate the adoption of real-time payments in Peru by supporting an easy onboarding path for the participants of the scheme.”
As the press release mentions, “ACI currently supports 18 real-time domestic schemes around the world, including Zelle and The Clearing House in the US. Approximately 50 percent of the UK’s Faster Payments and 75 percent of Hungary’s GIRO transactions are processed through the ACI Low-Value Real-Time Payments solution.”
Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group