ACI Worldwide Raises Guidance, Commits to Digital Assets

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Bloomberg Businessweek

Episode: ACI Worldwide Raises Guidance, Commits to Digital Assets
Airdate: November 28, 2025
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec
Guests: Bobby Leebrock (CFO, ACI Worldwide), Nina Trentman (Senior Editor, Bloomberg News)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the transformation of ACI Worldwide, a global leader in payment systems infrastructure, as it raises financial guidance and steps further into the digital assets landscape. Hosts Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec—joined by CFO Bobby Leebrock and Bloomberg’s Nina Trentman—explore payment trends, fraud challenges during the holiday peak, technological innovation, and the handling of emerging digital payment types like stablecoins.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does ACI Worldwide Do?

• Peak season for payments: The episode opens as e-commerce hits its highest volume, with ACI moving billions of transactions worldwide.
• Infrastructure for payments:
  • ACI supports payment processing across all top 10 banks, 60/100 of the biggest banks, and 3,000+ U.S. customers.
  • Services entire sectors ranging from U.S. tax payments to global e-commerce merchants (80,000 clients globally).
• Mission-critical technology:
  • "We are the infrastructure that does that across all the banks... [providing] reliability, the fraud detection that you need." (Bobby Leebrock, 02:39)
• Financials: ~$5B market cap, ~$2B revenue, ~$500M EBITDA.
• Rapid transformation underway:
  • Recent arrival of new CEO Tom Warsop.
  • Company has doubled growth: from 5% to nearly 10% YoY.
  • Launch of the cloud-native ACI Kinetic payments platform.

2. Holiday Fraud and the Rise of "Friendly Fraud"

• Spike in fraudulent activity: Friendly fraud predicted to increase 25% during Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday (01:23, 11:05).
• Nature of friendly fraud:
  • "Things like wardrobe and buying something, wearing it for a long time, returning it, or you know, stolen goods that you try to return to the provider... they’re getting more and more sophisticated." (Bobby Leebrock, 11:06)
• Average friendly fraud return value: Jumped from $150 last year to $200 in 2025.
• Combating fraud with AI:
  • "We can get up to 98% prevention within that space..." (Bobby Leebrock, 11:25)
  • Real-world ROI for merchants and banks leveraging ACI’s AI-driven fraud detection.

3. Digital Payment Trends & Economic Insights

• Global perspective:
  • ACI operates in 90+ countries; 75% of bank business is outside the U.S. (05:24)
  • Focus on serving undercredited/underbanked populations, especially in Asia and Latin America.
• Shift to digital:
  • "We think the shift more and more towards digital payments is continuing to happen. We see that through our platform... we're growing 12% [YTD]." (Bobby Leebrock, 05:52)
• Buy Now, Pay Later:
  • ACI’s payment processing is "agnostic" about methods, supporting growth in "Buy Now, Pay Later" and alternative payment types.
  • "That is a good reason why to use a digital electronic payment versus, let’s say, cash..." (Bobby Leebrock, 06:46)
  • Businesses are increasingly outsourcing bill-pay tech for more flexibility and options for end users.

4. Stablecoins & the Future of Digital Assets

• Adoption and complexity:
  • The hosts revisit a recent interview with CEO Tom Warsop, emphasizing that the "death of cash is greatly exaggerated." (07:57)
  • Stablecoins seen as emerging rails—faster, cheaper, and more transparent for cross-border but introduce technical challenges.
  • "As stablecoin sees more adoption... [it] adds a ton of complexity for our customers to add this as an additional payment type." (Bobby Leebrock, 08:13)
  • ACI’s cloud Kinetic platform is designed to handle this variety and complexity.
• Stablecoin use cases:
  • Integration with BitPay, enabling stablecoin payments across bill pay and merchant solutions (09:30).
  • For now, most "stablecoin" volume is within the crypto ecosystem (moving value between volatile and stable assets); traditional payments still dominate ACI's transaction volume.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On ACI’s Transformation

• "We're a 50-year-old company that's rapidly transforming. About two years ago we had a new CEO come in, Tom Warsop, and he's really jolted the company, increased our growth about 2x."
  — Bobby Leebrock (04:13)

On Holiday Season Fraud

• "Friendly fraud... is things like wardrobe and buying something, wearing it for a long time, returning it or, you know, stolen goods that you try to return to the provider and they're getting more and more sophisticated."
  — Bobby Leebrock (11:06)

On Payment Innovation

• "It [stablecoin] adds a ton of complexity for our customers to add this as an additional payment type. It's one of the core reasons... for our new platform ACI Kinetic... It doesn’t bias one payment type, one rail. It can lean across all these payments hubs."
  — Bobby Leebrock (08:14)

Hosts’ Reactions

• "Maybe we should all take an ethics lesson. I don't know, I hadn't heard it."
  — Host reacting to "friendly fraud" (12:09)
• "I hadn't heard friendly fraud before."
  — Carol Massar (12:16)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introducing ACI Worldwide; company mission: 02:25 – 05:01
• Peak season and global transaction volumes: 02:32 – 04:30
• Financial performance, transformation, and innovation: 04:30 – 05:01
• Global digital payments and underbanked markets: 05:24 – 06:35
• Buy Now, Pay Later, and bill pay insights: 06:35 – 07:32
• Stablecoins, digital assets, and ACI’s Kinetic platform: 07:32 – 10:43
• Understanding and combating friendly fraud: 10:43 – 12:09

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Tone & Language

The conversation is informative, pragmatic, and insightful, reflecting the careful optimism and customer-centric focus typical among fintech executives and business journalists. The guests provide real-world examples and statistics, and the hosts maintain an accessible, slightly curious tone—often pausing to clarify terms ("friendly fraud") and respond to emerging trends.

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Conclusion

This episode shines a light on how payment infrastructure companies like ACI Worldwide are not just keeping up with, but actively shaping, the rapidly evolving world of digital commerce. Amid a peak season fraught with fraud risks, ACI is expanding its anti-fraud technology and embracing the complex world of stablecoins and digital assets—always with an eye on scalability, security, and global inclusion.

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For more CFO insights and coverage, check out the CFO Briefing newsletter at bloomberg.com/cfo-briefing.

Transcript

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[Carol Massar]

You're listening to Bloomberg businessweek with Carol.

[Tim Stankus]

Massar and Tim Stanvak on Bloomberg Radio.

[Host]

The season is underway. The global e commerce and payments platform company ACI Worldwide says friendly fraud is expected to increase 25% between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. That's according to an analysis of billions of transactions of global e commerce businesses. That's what they do. They see a lot. Joining us with more is kind of on that story as well as their business. In our latest installment of CFO briefing is Robert Leebrock. He is CFO of the more than $4.8 billion market cap company ACI Worldwide. The stock, by the way, down about 9% year to date. And also with us here in studio is Nina Trentman. She's Bloomberg News Senior editor. She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter, which you can subscribe [e-mail] CFO Briefing at. New one comes out every Sunday. Bobby, welcome, welcome. Nice to have you here with all of us. I'm not sure everybody's familiar with what you do. Share with us a bit on what the company does, who are your customers, the type of categories so that our investing audience has a good picture of what your business is all about.

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, that'd be great and thank you for having me, Carol. I think as you described earlier, we're right at a peak season for our company. We're right in the middle of all of the payments that run through the economy, not just here in the US but around the world and as you think about what ACI does, it's the infrastructure of payments. You know, we know around computing, there's cloud, there's data centers, there's the edge around payments. We are the infrastructure that does that across all the banks, all top 10 banks, 60 of the top 100 banks. Also across 3,000 customers here in the U.S. they need bill pay technologies. If you paid your U.S. tax bill, you've probably used our platform, your insurance bill. And then a big, you know, this weekend actually is when you talk about friendly fraud and the uptick we're seeing there. We service 80,000 merchants globally with our technology around payments there. And as you step back, you know what, where ACI really comes in is a mission critical layer of software and as a service technology that allows them to scale, provide reliability. The fraud detection that you need across those. As you think about what we can do across those platforms, it is perfect to come in on the Wednesday here before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. like I said, it's a big peak season. As we look at the transactions at this time of the year, they were up more than 25% last year. We're expecting that to happen again this year. Through our platform, there's lots of fraud that can come along with that. It's one of the areas we're infusing AI into that for these merchant providers. As you think across ACI, you mentioned almost $5 billion market cap, almost 2 billion in revenue that we have globally with a very healthy performance underneath about 500 million in EBITDA. I joined just under six months ago, relatively new to the team here, thinking about what we do. It's really a big reason on why I joined. I was excited to come in the middle of a company that's mission critical to everything we do around payments and the ecosystem and the economy. But the other equally important part of why I was excited to come was we're a 50 year old company that's rapidly transforming. About two years ago we had a new CEO come in, Tom Warsop, and he's really jolted the company, increased our growth about 2x. You grew 10% last year. We're on track to 9 to 10% growth this year. And as you look at that, the other big jolt was innovation. We have a new platform that we're bringing out around cloud native. It's our ACI Kinetic platform. And those were two big things that got me excited to join this team in the transformation world.

[Nina Trentman]

Thanks Bobby for joining us. Nina here just wanted to actually follow up on the data that you have from your business. We earlier talked here on the program about the K shaped economy and the divergence between sort of affluent spenders in the US and those with lower incomes. Is that something that's reflected in your numbers and what are the trends telling you for this holiday season?

[Announcer]

Season?

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, I think good question and good to see you again, Nina. I think the underneath of that and let me provide the global scale of, of ACI. We operate in about 90 countries globally and our banking business is actually about 75% outside the US and as you think on how that's developed, a lot of it has to do with Nina, how we're servicing economies that are either undercredited or underbanked and giving them the ability to do digital payments through a debit transaction or other types of electronic payments is really important to our culture and our mission. So as we go do that, we're seeing good demand across Asia, Latin America for these different payment schemes and real time payments to provide to those folks. As you think about this season I mentioned this is a peak season. We think the shift more and more towards digital payments is continuing to happen. We see that through our platform. When we last talk I mentioned on a year to date basis we're growing 12% so really nice demand and that's across both of our businesses here in the US or internationally as well as you look across our, our payment software business.

[Nina Trentman]

Yeah. Just curious actually, do you see this growth in Bay now and Buy now pay later transactions that we've seen across platforms is also that showing in your business?

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, and I will say, I mean our business is largely agnostic to how you want to pay but that is a good reason why to use a digital electronic payment versus let's say cash and the ability to do that. It's one of the reasons we're taking good market share within our bill pay business. This is a business that, you know, we've, we've gotten it from lower to mid single up to market share levels at growing 12%. And to the point of your underlying of your question there that is providing more payment types is why a lot of customers in this space are choosing to no longer write their own bill pay technology in their app or their website. But come to a leader like ACI to do that for them, that can give them more options around pay later, use credit, use other forms of payments as well.

[Carol Massar]

Well on that Bobby, we actually had Tom wars up on Bloomberg crypto just about 5 weeks ago back in the middle of October he was here in the city to talk a little bit about stablecoins speaking of different types of payments and I'm wondering how big of a business at this point you see that getting use of stablecoins especially for cross border transactions, do you see it sticking?

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, I think I remember, I think he said that you and him were talking about the death of cash is greatly exaggerated. Right when he saw it. And admittedly what we were trying to lean into there was we don't see any one payment type really going away. And I think that's the reason why there's such a need. As stablecoin sees more adoption continues to ramp. As you look underneath of that, it's definitely an emerging payment type. Provides faster, cheaper, more transparent ways to transfer money, particularly cross borders like you mentioned. But it adds a ton of complexity for our customers to add this as an additional payment type. It's one of the core reasons when we went out and surveyed 200 customers about two years ago, we asked them where should we invest. It was a very customer oriented product market fit for our new platform ACI Kinetic and this is a payments hub. It doesn't bias one payment type, one rail. It can lean across all these payments hubs. It helps you orchestrate them. Because the complexity of adopting stablecoin you see a lot of banking announcements on either their own stablecoin or their ability for tokenized deposits. It's great optionality and in ACI we love the idea of giving consumers and more optionality and choice and flexibility but that provides a lot of complexity for our customers which is where they need our help and is right in our sweet spot.

[Nina Trentman]

Just wondering actually in terms of stablecoin payments, is that consumers using those on your platform, is it business to business, what is that looking like?

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, I think we. So as you think of our multiple platforms within our bill pay or merchant business, we've provided the option. We had a strategic partnership with BitPay that we announced last quarter that unlocks the ability to use those across those platforms. If you think of our critical banking business, that's really a mission critical layer that banking banks are using around the world. That that those volumes we have the capability there, you know, we have the payment infrastructure we support stablecoins, tokenized deposits of the new payment type, the interoperability. Most of the volumes I see there Nina, are within the crypto universe themselves. It's going from a highly volatile cryptocurrency and if you want to get the stability to move that you'll see a transaction of Going from you know, a bitcoin over to a stablecoin. We don't see a lot of transactions yet, you know, compared to the, you know, we do billions of transactions every single day with trillions of dollars attached to those transactions. And within those there's still more across the traditional payment types that we see within our banking data.

[Host]

Hey, you know we kicked off Bobby, our introduction to you talking about the so called friendly fraud expected this holiday shopping season in particular. We're looking the weekend and all the way through how much risk is there from this and especially when compute customers dispute transactions following a purchase.

[Bobby Leebrock]

Yeah, I think you know, friendly fraud for folks this is a new term to this is things like wardrobe and buying something, wearing it for a long time, returning it or you know, stolen goods that you try to return to the provider and there's, they're getting more and more sophisticated. Yeah. Growing upwards of 25% and if you think of the average return it was about $150. If you remember last year, it's up to about $200. The average transaction that's going through these types of friendly fraud. We have a platform, so I talked about servicing 80,000 merchants globally through our product and our software there we have payment intelligence and we can get up to 98% prevention within that space. So it's really a big value add there. And we talk about, you know, I'm a, I'm a believer in, you know that the use cases around AI and this is one of them that I love talking when I'm meeting with investors because it shows them a real life example around where our customers are seeing an ROI on reducing this friendly fraud. With the capabilities we have on our.

[Host]

Platform, maybe we should all take an ethics lesson. I don't know, I hadn't heard it.

[Carol Massar]

I hadn't heard friendly fraud before.

[Nina Trentman]

Right.

[Host]

It's just, oh my gosh, you know.

[Carol Massar]

It when you see it.

[Host]

You know apparently when you see it. Hey listen Bobby, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Happy Thanksgiving. Bobby Lee Brock. He is CFO of ACI Worldwide. Nina Tretman, thank you. Always happy holidays. Bloomberg News Senior Editor. She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter. You can find it at bloomberg.com/cfo briefing. And for more Bloomberg coverage of CFOs be sure to check out the latest episode of the Chief Future Officer series. It features the CFO of Standard Chartered Bank, Diego Day Georgie on his major role in the bank's expansion into digital assets and how AI is changing the job of CFO. You can watch Chief Future Officer right now on Bloomberg.com and of course on YouTube.

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