The deal lets merchants go live in one to two weeks rather than months, with AI-driven fraud detection and reconciliation built in as Kwik Payments targets expansion across Africa
Kwik Payments, a South African payments service provider, has gone live on ACI Worldwide’s Payments Orchestration Platform, aiming to support its expansion across the wider African market.
The platform connects point-of-sale, ATM and e-commerce channels with major card networks including Visa, Mastercard and American Express, while intelligently routing transactions across multiple acquirers, payment methods and geographies. Merchants can typically go live within one to two weeks, a significant improvement on the months-long deployment timelines associated with traditional multi-provider setups.
The platform’s fraud detection evaluates more than 1,000 data points per transaction in real time, while AI-enabled reporting and reconciliation tools are designed to cut manual reconciliation work by up to 80%. ACI also points to the broader commercial case: complex checkout processes contribute to cart abandonment rates of up to 70%, a problem unified payment flows are intended to address.
“Partnering with ACI provides us with a proven orchestration foundation that supports our growth strategy, enabling us to scale from South Africa into broader African markets while delivering world-class eCommerce experiences,” said Eddy Marais, CEO of Kwik Payments.
Matt Rubin, Head of Merchant for Middle East and Africa at ACI Worldwide, described South Africa as a critical gateway for digital commerce innovation across the continent, with payment orchestration becoming increasingly important as merchants adopt mobile wallets, account-to-account payments and digital currencies alongside traditional card rails.