Interswitch Bags Award for Innovative Payment Processing

Interswitch Transnational, a leading Pan-African integrated payments company with operations in Nigeria and a growing presence in West and East Africa, announces that its Verve and QuickTeller solutions have emerged as winners in the Retail Payments and Product & Services Innovation categories at the 2014 ACI Excellence Awards.

These are the fifth annual Excellence Awards held by ACI Worldwide, a leading international provider of electronic payment and banking systems.

The Awards celebrate leading financial institutions, processors and retailers, for their innovative and transformative uses of ACI solutions to solve real-world customer and business issues.

The winners across ten categories are selected by a judging panel composed of ACI experts and leading global payments analysts from Aite Group, CEB TowerGroup and Celent, and are based across the Americas, the Asia Pacific region, and EMEA. This year there were a total of thirty submissions across the ten categories.

Interswitch is one of only two organizations to receive more than one award. Interswitch’s Verve card, Nigeria’s leading payment card, has received the Retail Payments Excellence Award, in recognition of the way it has changed the electronic payment landscape in Nigeria.

The panel noted that, ‘prior to the emergence of electronic payments in Nigeria, transactions were carried out primarily through cash, posing significant financial challenges to businesses and individuals’, something which Verve has helped to alleviate, allowing Nigerians to pay their bills, transfer funds and pay for goods and services at any time, from any channel.

QuickTeller, Interswitch’s Value Added Service platform, which provides customers with access to vital services such as phone top-up, bill payment, cash withdrawal, funds transfer and cashback through ATMs, POS, the web, mobile phones and kiosks, has been recognized with the Product & Services Innovation Excellence Award. The panel especially praised the way in which QuickTeller has enabled streamlined bill pay for customers and bill payers.

Mitchell Elegbe, group managing director and chief executive officer, Interswitch Transnational Holdings, said: “We are delighted by this recognition from the judging panel of the ACI Excellence Awards. Verve is the leading payment card in Nigeria, beating off established international payment rivals, such as MasterCard and Visa, and is increasingly accepted across Africa and around the world. This award recognizes Verve as an industry-leading international payment product.

“We are equally proud that QuickTeller is this year’s winner of the Product & Services Innovation Excellence Award. QuickTeller provides thousands of customers with access to essential services and we are delighted that the ACI panel has chosen to acknowledge its success in this way.”  

Dan Frate, group president, Strategic Products & Global Markets, ACI Worldwide, said: “The record number of Excellence Awards submissions we received this year truly exemplifies the rapidly-evolving global payments industry, and on behalf of everyone at ACI, I want to extend congratulations to this year’s winners and finalists. They are achieving tremendous success for their organizations and countless benefits for their customers. All of these organizations epitomize innovation and great work—from advancements in online and mobile banking to fraud prevention to significant improvements in end-user experience and much more, we’re proud to call them our customers and look forward to their continued success.”