ACI Worldwide Inc

NASDAQ:ACIW

Earnings Call Analysis

ACI Worldwide Drives Strong Revenue Growth with Positive 2024 Outlook

In the third quarter of 2024, ACI Worldwide achieved a remarkable 24% yearly revenue growth, reaching $452 million, largely driven by a 72% increase in real-time payments. The bank segment saw a 43% revenue rise, while the merchant segment grew by 38%. ACI's strong pipeline allows it to confidently raise its 2024 revenue guidance to between $1.567 billion and $1.601 billion, with adjusted EBITDA expected between $433 million and $448 million. With over 99% of projected 2024 revenue already secured, the company anticipates continued robust growth into 2025, facilitated by a well-positioned sales strategy and ongoing investments in its payments hub technology.

Strong Revenue Growth Outperformance

ACI Worldwide delivered a robust performance in its third quarter of 2024, with total revenue reaching $452 million. This figure represents a 24% year-over-year growth, significantly surpassing the expectations set by the company at the beginning of the year. The main driving force behind this growth was the bank segment, which saw an impressive revenue increase of 43% compared to the prior year, supported by a phenomenal 72% rise in real-time payments revenue.

High Customer Renewal Rate Reduces Seasonality

The company's strategy to accelerate the signing of both renewal and new contracts has proven successful, with over 99% of the 2024 revenue forecast already signed or in the final approval stages. This proactive approach has also mitigated the seasonality effects traditionally associated with the business, allowing for a more stable revenue stream and greater focus on securing new customer contracts.

Strong Guidance for 2024 and Beyond

ACI has raised its guidance for full-year 2024, now projecting revenue between $1.567 billion and $1.601 billion, alongside adjusted EBITDA expected to range from $433 million to $448 million. The company anticipates it will track towards the higher end of both ranges. This positive outlook is bolstered by a strong sales pipeline, setting the stage for continued revenue and EBITDA growth into 2025 and beyond.

Segment Performance Highlights

In more detail on segment performance: 1. **Bank Segment**: Revenue in this segment reached $222 million, reflecting a 43% rise, with adjusted EBITDA up 69% to $154 million. The real-time payment sector is a standout performer, growing 72% over last year. 2. **Merchant Segment**: Generated revenues of $50 million, up 38%, with an extraordinary 159% increase in adjusted EBITDA, reaching $27 million. The trends indicate the positive impact of license renewals while showing improvement in transaction-based recurring revenues. 3. **Biller Segment**: Revenue came in at $180 million, which is a modest 5% increase from the previous year, with an adjusted EBITDA of $31 million, reflecting a decline due to one-off benefits witnessed in the prior year's figures.

Financial Health and Share Repurchase Initiatives

ACI's financial position remains strong, ending the quarter with $178 million in cash and a $1 billion debt balance, resulting in a net debt leverage ratio of 1.6x. The liquidity situation is sound, with approximately $650 million available. The company has been active in share repurchases, buying back about 200,000 shares for $8 million during the quarter, continuing a trend of returning capital to shareholders while maintaining a robust balance sheet.

Long-Term Strategic Focus and Innovation

Looking ahead, ACI is committed to developing its next-generation payments hub platform, expected to be showcased to customers by year-end. Initial pilot implementations are anticipated to start in the second quarter of next year. The leadership expressed confidence that this innovation will further enhance the company's offerings and drive additional revenue streams as it continues to partner closely with its banking and merchant clients.

Potential Market Opportunities and Competitive Landscape

The executives emphasize a strong outlook for continued business growth, particularly within the banking sector, driven by investments in technology upgrades and modernization efforts from banks. The competitive landscape in the real-time payments arena remains favorable for ACI, as new, high-value contracts are being signed with central banks globally, and ongoing relationships with existing clients are being strengthened.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jose, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ACI Worldwide Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results.

[Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to John Kraft. Please go ahead.

[John Kraft, executive]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, we will discuss the company's third quarter 2024 results and financial outlook for the rest of the year. We will take your questions at the end. The slides accompanying this call and webcast can be found at aciworldwide.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call.

Today's call is subject to both safe harbor and forward-looking statements like all of our events. You can find the full text of both statements in our presentation deck and earnings release both of which are available on our website and with the SEC. On this morning's call is Tom Warsop, our President and CEO; and Scott Behrens, our CFO. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining our third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm going to start this morning with some comments on the quarter, and then I'm going to hand it over to Scott to discuss detailed financial results and our increased expectations for the remainder of 2024, then we'll open the line for questions.

Q3 results were ahead of expectations and of the guidance we provided, with total revenue up 24% year-over-year. As we've discussed on recent calls, we are making a conscious effort to accelerate the signing of contracts, both renewal and new and bring those in earlier in the year. As you know, revenue from a renewal contract cannot be recognized earlier than the renewal date. But getting those renewals out of the way allows us to focus on new customer wins and net new contracts are recognized as they're signed. I had very high expectations with the team with respect to this initiative and they have significantly exceeded those expectations. And that continues to allow us to outperform our guidance. Further, signing these new contracts earlier in the year helped reduce the heavy seasonality we've historically seen and is simply derisks obtaining our full year financial guidance.

I'm pleased to let you know we have more than 99% of our full year 2024 revenue forecast either already signed and contracted or covered by a fourth quarter renewal that is well into the final approval process on the customer side. Our pipeline momentum is notably higher than we typically recorded by November, and that allows us to raise our outlook for 2024 again. And probably most important to me, that allows us to turn our attention to 2025 and beyond.

Speaking of 2025, the large sales pipeline and momentum we have as we exit the year sets us up well for continued strength in revenue and EBITDA growth as we go into 2025, even consider the significant outperformance this year. We'll provide further guidance details regarding 2025 when we host our fourth quarter 2024 call in February, but I did want to make sure you heard our preliminary view. Let me give you a little more color on each segment. In the bank segment, revenue was up 43% and EBITDA was up 69% compared to Q3 last year. We saw strength in real-time payments with revenue growth of 72%. While our real-time product revenues can be lumpy, we're clearly seeing good momentum in the space, including another central infrastructure win in Mexico and some industry-leading offerings in South Africa.

Our real car solutions are a great business for ACI, and they're also a win for the world. Hopefully, you saw our recent press release highlighting how real-time payment adoption is expected to boost global economic growth by speeding the movement of money and increasing financial inclusion, helping millions emerge from poverty via access to lower-cost financial services.

I really encourage you to take a look at that press release and the report that we refer to in it. There's some powerful data in that report. It certainly generated lots of attention laws in Beijing a few weeks ago attending Sibos. And that's -- for those of you who haven't been, Sibos is, I believe, the world's largest payments conference, financial services this year, as I said, in China. In other areas of our banking segment, our issuing and acquiring solution revenues were also up nicely, growing 40% from last year's level. These proven solutions are powering some of the largest, most innovative financial services companies in the world. During Q3, we renewed and expanded relationships with leaders such as Worldpay, and a very large payment facilitator in South America.

Speaking of next-generation solutions, our payment hub technology investments are continuing. Development is on track, and we remain extremely focused. As discussed throughout the year, we expect to have tangible solution for customers to review by year-end. Our offering will be cloud native, increasing flexibility in terms of how customers utilize the tools and in terms of the breadth of customer segments we can target. It's not just our traditional very large bank segment. Conversations with customers continue to be encouraging. I met with a very large South American financial institution CEO recently and explained the advantages of our approach as is often the case when I do this, he asked if he could be an early adopter.

Unfortunately, I had to tell them our beta client list is already full. No earnings call in technology would be complete without a mention of artificial intelligence. So let me reiterate, we're using AI in multiple ways driving productivity in software development, testing, customer service and fraud detection. As I mentioned before, we're taking a co-work approach with AI essentially pairing our team members with an AI called [indiscernible] doing air quotes there to give the benefits of AI tool and the human expertise we are well known for.

I'll move on to the Biller segment, where revenue was up 5%. Recall that we discussed last quarter's record revenue growth would not continue at the double-digit rates due mainly to higher-than-expected volumes with the IRS. Last year's third quarter, it was a very tough compare that included high margin revenue from certain customers that won't recur as were one-off items. In Q3, we signed many important renewal and expansion contracts, including with 1 of the largest utilities in the United States. Overall, the biller segment is performing well.

Moving to the Merchant segment. Revenue grew 38% and EBITDA grew 159% compared to Q3 last year. This growth was partially driven by licensed software renewals and encouragingly, our transaction-based recurring revenue continued to decline, growing 5% in the quarter. It's not quite at our target yet, but we're going in the right direction with improvements each quarter this year as we projected.

I also want to highlight a couple of items that occurred subsequent to quarter end. First, I hope you saw our press release announcing the hire of Eric Litch as our new Head of Merchant Solutions. I've known Eric for years, dating back to our days at Fiserv and I'm convinced he is the right leader for this very important business.

Second, a few days ago, ACI signed a very significant contract with Quick Trip, Quick Trip is one of the largest convenience store and fuel store retailers in the United States. Quick Trip chose ACI's hosted omnichannel solutions because of our class-leading scalability, reliability and our reputation for exceeding service level commitments. I'm excited about our opportunity in the merchant space into 2025 and beyond.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with our progress, and I remain excited about our opportunity. We're focused on sales execution and the development of our next-generation payments hub platform, both of which position the company for long-term profitable growth and significant incremental shareholder value. I'll turn it over to Scott to discuss financials and our guidance. Scott?

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I first plan to review our financial results for Q3 and then provide our outlook for the rest of 2024. We'll then open the line for questions. Revenue in the quarter was $452 million, up 24% compared to Q3 2023 and adjusted EBITDA was $167 million, up 61% from Q3 2023. As Tom mentioned, we had particular strength in the bank segment and more specifically with real-time payments, which was up 72% from last year.

In the bank segment, revenue of $222 million was up 43% compared to Q3 last year. Bank segment adjusted EBITDA of $154 million was up 69% compared to Q3 last year and bank SaaS, while a smaller portion of the total, grew 15% in the quarter. Our merchant segment revenue was $50 million, up 38% compared to Q3 last year, and adjusted EBITDA was $27 million, up 159% compared to Q3 last year. While we did benefit from license-based customer renewals in the quarter, our recurring revenue in the segment has continued to steadily improve throughout this year.

Lastly, our Biller segment revenue was $180 million, up 5% compared to Q3 last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $31 million, down compared to Q3 last year due to a particularly strong quarter last year, which included certain onetime nonrecurring margin benefits that did not recur here in Q3 2024 and we continue to see strong cash flow generation with cash flow from operations of $54 million, more than double Q3 last year.

We ended the quarter with $178 million in cash on hand, a debt balance of $1 billion and a net debt leverage ratio of 1.6x and approximately $650 million in liquidity. With our strong cash flow growth and our lowest leverage in well over a decade, combined with our improved outlook for 2024 and our expectations of continued strength in 2025 enable us to reduce our long-term stated leverage target from 2.5x down to 2x. We'll continue to maintain a disciplined long-term focused capital allocation strategy that balances reinvestment in the business, accretive M&A and share repurchases while maintaining a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity and financial flexibility.

During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 200,000 shares for $8 million of capital, which brings our year-to-date total to approximately 4 million shares for $128 million in capital. And at the end of the quarter, we had approximately $372 million remaining available on the share repurchase authorization.

So turning next to our outlook. Having made significant progress in advancing our full year bookings pipeline with more than 99% of our full year 2024 revenue outlook already signed and contracted or representing license contracts renewing here before the end of the year, we are raising our guidance range for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We now expect revenue to be in the range of $1.567 billion to $1.601 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $433 million to $448 million. And notably, we are currently tracking to the high end of both the revenue and EBITDA ranges.

Our improved outlook for 2024, combined with a strong sales pipeline, we are seeing exiting the year gives us confidence of continued strength in revenue and EBITDA growth in 2025. We'll provide further guidance details regarding 2025 when we host our Q4 2024 call later in February. So in summary, a really strong quarter of revenue, EBITDA and cash flow growth, allowing us to raise our outlook for this year, and we really have a lot of momentum as we exit 2024 that gives us confidence of continued strength as we look into 2025. So with that, I'll pass it back to Tom for some closing remarks. Tom?

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Thanks, Scott. In summary, we are pleased to continue delivering results that are in line with or above expectations. Looking forward, our pipeline is strong, and we're focused and optimistic regarding both our growth and our ability to deliver significant shareholder value. We look forward to catching up with you in the coming weeks. Thank you for joining our call. Operator, we can now take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from the line of Trevor Williams with Jefferries.

[Trevor Williams, analyst]

Yes, I wanted to ask a bigger picture question on the medium-term outlook for growth in banks. Tom, maybe if you could maybe help us distill down the main drivers behind this segment staying as -- think of an upper single-digit grower over the medium term? What's structurally changed here over the last few years, whether that's product set, changes to go to market, end market health, any more detail there on kind of what underpins your confidence in the medium-term outlook for banks would be great.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes, sure, Trevor. So lots of things, as you can imagine. But I think you mentioned market strength. We're definitely having different types of conversations with our customers. And I'm going to come at that from 2 angles. One is our customers are thinking about their business is healthy. They're investing quite heavily in new products and they're looking for help. They're looking for a partner that can help them figure out how do they apply technology to make the entire business more efficient and faster to market.

And ACI, given our history and the long relationships we have with most of these financial institutions, we're a natural choice. I think historically, we have probably spent most of the time with our customers on renewals, talking about, hey, 5 years from now, we need to talk about a renewal. Well, now we're talking to them consistently throughout the year, throughout the 5-year period of the license, and we're talking about the future. And as we've begun to ramp up discussions around the payments hub, that's even building on this. And so now, I mean I heard from a very, very large Asia Pacific customer.

I was in Asia, as I mentioned on the earlier I was in Asia recently. And I was talking to this customer and they said, ACI is showing up differently. We're having these conversations about how you can help us achieve our objectives. Your products are critical to what we do. There's -- that's always been the case. It continues to be the case. But they feel like we are much more of a partner. So that's a lot of words, Trevor, but I think we have a really important role with these customers. We are continuing to exercise some pricing power that we have, we've always had. But I think most importantly, we are being perceived as a partner, and we're talking about how we help them achieve their objectives, and they're much more I'm not going to say they're happy about paying more and about continuing to do more business with us, but they are comfortable with that because they see us as part of the solution to their future.

[Trevor Williams, analyst]

Okay. No, I appreciate all that. And then the -- just when you guys are talking about having the almost all of this year's renewals, either contracted or signed and then you're shifting focus to 2025 aside from just giving us better visibility into kind of what revenue looks like over the next year or two. Is there anything else strategically that, that enables when you get more of the renewal activity done earlier in the year, whether that's freeing up more sales focus for cross-sell and upsell. Just how we should think about that kind of strategic impact and how that can have an impact on the growth algo.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. So I'll make the comment and then Scott may have a thought on this, too. But I think there are 2 main benefits. One is -- and you just said it, we have almost no -- in fact, I don't expect Scott and myself to have a single conversation about a renewal for the remainder of this year. We're talking about how do we help our sales and account management team structure new business in 2025 and beyond. That's all we're talking about now.

So whereas normally, we spend quite a bit of time thinking about how do we answer customer questions, how do we get these renewals signed up. We don't have to do that at all. So we're focused on the pipeline and setting up Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 of next year. So that's probably the biggest thing.

The second thing though is, I mentioned the payments hub, and we've made great progress on that. We're very close to having solution that we can start to actually demonstrate to our customers. And now what I'm spending most of my time on right now is sitting down with customers and potential customers and giving them much more insight into what that payment hub looks like, what the benefits they're going to get will be. And I think I was -- I tried to be a little bit funny. Our beta client -- we have so many customers asking to be early adopters, you obviously can't have them all. You have to narrow the list. So it's -- so on the one hand, it's allowed us really to focus on next year, which we are. And on the other hand, it's allowed me in particular, but our sales team as a whole, to focus on helping customers understand where we're going and how they can leverage the investments that we're making.

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes. Trevor, the only thing I'd add to that, I've been around a long time and ACI has a history of -- well, first of all, the bank -- especially on the bank side, it's a long sales line. And we have a history of that sales cycle coming to fruition in the fourth quarter and late in the fourth quarter. And I think what you see here is 2 things. One is we have substantially completed this year's new business really in end of September. I mean it's not now in November. It was really earlier in the year. And that allows us to turn the focus to accelerate that pipeline. Again, a pipeline that otherwise may have came to fruition in the fourth quarter of next year is now maybe pushed to the third quarter of next year and potentially earlier.

So what it really frees us up to do like Tom said is, listen, we can accelerate and spend time accelerating next year's pipeline. And what that allows us to do, not just for '25 and '26, that allows us to continue on the path towards our long-term stated growth goals.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Heckmann with D.A. Davidson.

[Peter Heckmann, analyst]

I apologize, I missed the beginning of the call, I had some trouble getting online. But can you repeat your comments on 2025? I mean that was going to be kind of my leading question after a year where it looks like software license fees could be up 20% on the year. It just does seem to prevent -- present a pretty tough comparison to continue strong overall growth rates, at least in certain quarters next year. And -- so just wanted to see if you could repeat that real quick.

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes. No, I mean I think Pete, just [ follows up ] on the last question is what we're able to do now is really focus on pulling that pipeline forward. So what we're looking at is it's probably as strong of a pipeline for '25 exiting this year is probably we've had at this point in time going into anything here. So Tom's comments on the introductory port were that even though we are outperforming this year. our pipeline for next year as it even sits today is healthy enough to keep us on our growth.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. And I mean, specifically, we didn't give any specific numbers, Pete. But what I said was that we are well positioned to continue to see strength in 2025 and beyond even with the outperformance.

[Peter Heckmann, analyst]

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. And then -- and again, I apologize if I missed it. I had some just connection problems. But I heard you say that the Payments hub is on track, and you hope to have a product you've been showing customers by year-end. But when do you think you might start the pilots and then have the hub go into general availability.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. I would expect to see the initial pilot implementations probably the beginning of second quarter next year. And then we -- I don't know exactly when the full-scale general availability will be. We want to be very, very thoughtful about making sure that it's working exactly as we want. And get those initial pilots really solid. So I won't make a -- put a stick in the ground on that, but we feel really good about it, and it's not something that's -- we don't require very much of that for our next year expectations.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Cantwell with Seaport Research.

[Jeffrey Cantwell, analyst]

I wanted to ask post election, can you talk about the coming administration change here in the U.S.? Give us some of your early thoughts in terms of how you think that might impact your business as far as next year is following here. When you provided the medium-term guidance back in March, it was under different leadership here to U.S. Maybe tell us what some of your initial reactions are here. It seems like perhaps regulation, taxation and other things, it could potentially be shifting a little more positively and many of us saw the banking sector was up a lot in the market yesterday, particularly many of the larger GSIBs. And clearly, that's an important customer segment for you guys.

So could you help frame this perhaps it might increase the pipeline or could see more transaction growth, things like that. Would you -- we'd love to get your initial thoughts and areas where there could potentially be some impact down the road.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Jeff, you mentioned an election. Was there an election? No, sorry, to trying to be funny. But yes, I mean, look, I don't have a solid view on it, but I think there's definitely potential good news as the market thinks given what happened yesterday with the banking segment. We certainly hope that there's maybe a little bit less regulation in the U.S. Hopefully, we see a little more transaction growth, as you said, that's all -- that would all be upside for us. And we -- but we haven't obviously built any of that into our forecast because it's so new, and we just don't have a handle on it yet.

But I do want to just make sure that I say we're obviously a global company. And so the U.S. is a big part of our business. It's not the majority of our business. So even though we probably see a little bit easier, if that's even the right word, regulatory environment in the U.S., I don't really see much change in the rest of the world. I think it will continue the way we were expecting. Europe is usually at the vanguard of regulation on many things, and we're there are things that have to be done there, and that's not changing given the U.S. election. But I'm cautiously optimistic, but I don't have a lot to tell you quantitatively.

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes, Jeff, and I think the only thing I'd add to that is that, I mean, obviously, if you look at the results the last few years, banks have really opened up the wall and have been spenders in buyers of technology, buyers of -- they're going through modernization efforts. I think if you look at recent developments, I think it's really that banks have a lot of tailwinds right now, whether it's regulatory, economic, the overall marketplace. So we would just expect that to contribute to more spending on the [indiscernible] Banks. So pretty encouraged by what opportunities we have with that customer base.

[Jeffrey Cantwell, analyst]

Got it. Okay. Great. And then just a follow-up on an earlier question. I want to make apologies I also joined a little bit a few minutes. And could you talk about -- as you think about the guidance that you provided for the medium term, has there been any change under the hood as far as the segments themselves, you might just welcome us through, it seems like banks is performing very strongly and so forth. So curious if you could help us understand in terms of the revenue outlook for each segment, where expectations might be shifting?

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes. Banks has been strong. Banks -- the expectation is going to continue to be strong. Billers, it had some seasonality in that business. If you recall from the second quarter, we had a strong tax quarter in terms of the tax transactions. We got a favorable award in terms of the go-forward business that we have with the IRS going forward that begin to contribute here next year, the exit rate for the biller business, should accelerate a bit on a sequential basis quarter-over-quarter.

And then the merchant business has been -- if you recall last year, early part of the year, we were seeing a bit of a decline in that business. Flip positive in the second half, and we've been incrementally more positive each quarter this year. So I think going back to our comments, without providing 2025 outlook by segment, I think all will nicely contribute to growth next year.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. And you were asking about if there's anything under the that's changed. I really don't think so. I think the businesses are performing generally in line with where we thought. Banks has been extremely strong, and that's been one of the primary drivers of our overperformance this year, and we expect it to continue to be strong.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Next question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig-Hallum Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

This is actually Logan on for George. First one, I wanted to kind of stay on the topic of the banks there. You guys have talked about those midsized banks being kind of an incremental opportunity for you guys. I'm just wondering if you can give us any more color on sort of how much are those now, if any, contributing to the segment? And where do you think that can go in the future?

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. I mean we have specifically not been driving far into the sales process with the payments hub, which is where that opportunity primarily comes from. And I've talked about that a lot. I don't -- I do not want us to get ahead. I do not want to be selling PowerPoint, which companies do and probably ACI has done in the past. So we're not doing that.

We're talking about here's where we're going. These are the advantages that will be there. Here's the schedule that we're on. We'll show it to you when it's ready to be shown. We've got lots of interest, but in terms of what that segment is contributing, it's small. It's very small. We have some business with mid-tier banks, but in terms of our flagship products, not very much. We tend to focus those through fintech partners historically. So not a whole lot of contribution directly from that segment at this point, but a lot of interest.

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes. And I think, Logan, this is Scott. I think we're -- yes, obviously, the bank strength we're seeing today is not a result of us going downstream into that. I mean, that's really coming from our core large bank segment. And I think even when we get into the mid-tier, it's really going to manifest itself more on the SaaS side than on the license software side. So that market will be more served be it our SaaS market. So really, what you're seeing in the strength in banks is really buying technology on-premise license software, and that's really still the big thing, but midtier should start to kick in next year and most likely from a SaaS delivery money.

[Unknown Analyst]

Got it. And then just one follow-up. Can you maybe just touch a little bit on sort of the competitive environment you see in the real-time payment space? I mean is more of that business coming from kind of upselling with current customers? Are you looking at new customers? And then maybe kind of with those new customers, are you seeing any change in the competition out there for winning those?

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. So -- that's -- most of the new business we're getting, it's not usually expansion in that particular area. If we're talking about real-time payments, so I mentioned earlier, we have another central infrastructure win. So when we say central infrastructure, what we mean is our software is actually powering the entire countries instant payments or real-time payment scheme. And we signed another one in Mexico in the third quarter. So we're up to 11 central infrastructures. And those are all net new.

I mean they're not just new to us. Those are brand-new period. So there was no -- there was no central infrastructure in many of these places. And we are helping typically the central bank, but sometimes an agent of the Central Bank. We're helping them set the program up when we do a central infrastructure deal. And again, we have 11 of those around the world. And then the other side on real-time payments is when we help the individual payment schemes. So the -- each country has 1 or sometimes more than 1 of these payment schemes. And so we'll -- our software often powers those schemes.

So we've got the central structure. We've got the real-time payments schemes in an individual country. And then we have the work that we do for banks and ultimately for merchants to connect into those real-time payment schemes. So we kind of have 3 angles on this. All of them are performing well. The vast majority of that business is new to us. it is not expansion. Sometimes, we have an existing relationship with the bank, and we'll add on real-time payments. So that way -- that cross-sell. But most of that business is net new. Now there are other things other than real-time payments, instant payments in our real-time numbers, for example, wire transfers. And sometimes we do expand those. So there's a variety of things, but when we're talking about instant payments, in the U.S., it's Fed now and the TCH rails. When we're talking about those, that's almost all net new.

[Scott Behrens, executive]

Yes. And I think the only thing I'd add to that is that really from a competitive environment standpoint, nothing's really changed. And I think if you look at the results of our Real-Time segment even in Q3, up 70-plus percent over last year. Big part of that is there's just tremendous growth there. There's a lot of land grab. We've got the technology, we have the relationship. So it's definitely delivering results. And again, the competitive environment really hasn't changed.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. And sorry, I forgot to answer that part of your question. Thank you, Scott. There was an example recently, I think it was actually in the fourth quarter that it was announced. But Mastercard actually made an announcement in South Africa around real-time payments and MasterCard driving adoption of real-time payments. And they're using our software to do that, and they acknowledge the partnership that we have. So even sometimes when it looks like there's a new competitor or there's a -- maybe we didn't win something. Oftentimes, we're part of that solution anyway, and that's a great example of that. And that's a great partnership we have with MasterCard in various places around the world.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Heckmann with D.A. Davidson.

[Peter Heckmann, analyst]

Okay. I just had a follow-up on that last one. It reminded me, Tom, you were talking about kind of the current seat at the table that kind of gives you a right to bid on these payment hubs opportunities. It's as that we talk a lot about with ACI. But can you remind us, I think on like wires, I think ACI powers some high percentage, 25% to 30% of wires and and then also attachments to Swift systems. Can you talk a little bit about those systems and how you talked about many of these institutions that we target already have a relationship with you either through that, through real time or through the core debit ATM switch.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

Yes. Sure, Pete. So we -- just to give you just a couple of figures, just to set a little context. So our wires system, our wireless platform banks around the world use that to process trillions of dollars, that's trillion with a T, every day, and it's highly reliable, incredibly scalable and it is -- we often -- I often talk about ACI is powering the world's payments ecosystem. There's a big part of it.

Similarly, our issuing and acquiring platforms handle also trillions of dollars of payments every single day. And we do business with all of the 20 largest banks in the world. And the majority of -- but the significant majority of the largest 100 and you could even go down to 200 largest banks in the world. So our platforms have very important places in the payments infrastructure of the largest financial institutions in the world. And that's where my comment comes from. We -- I met with one of the largest banks in the world. I met with their CEO about a month ago. And we had this -- we had a fantastic conversation.

The conversation without the future, how does ACI help them just like I was talking about earlier. But he made a fascinating comment to me. He said, we haven't talked in like 9 months, and he said, "that's a really good thing." And I kind of looked at it and I said, "Well, wait, I hope that's a good thing." He said, "no, no, no. Trust me, that's a good thing because if we were talking more often, that means something was wrong." He said, "I really enjoyed this conversation about the future, and I want to have more of those, but I don't have to think about ACI." Your products just work and I'm not losing any sleep. My team isn't losing any sleep. So that's -- the fact that we have these long relationships that our platforms are so important to their infrastructure, and that they don't worry about us.

They know our stuff is going to work. That -- all that together is why we have the -- we are one of the usual suspects when they need help and when they're thinking about the future and how they deal with things that are changing in their environment. So that's where I'm coming from on that. You mentioned real-time payment.

That's another one that tends to be relatively new, not the wires part, but the instant payments pieces. Those are relatively new, but it's -- I think the fact that we keep winning these deals is further evidence of that. They look to us even though that's a new thing, they say, "well, I rely on ACI so much for my payments in other areas. Obviously, they're a great partner or a potential partner on real-time payments."

[Peter Heckmann, analyst]

Okay. And that's what really, I think, makes the thought -- me thinking about developing a payment hub platform a little bit easier to get to because ACI already has systems that are doing wires, cross-border real-time debit ACH and so you're really just having to add maybe a couple of other payment modalities and you really have a whole package.

[Thomas Warsop, executive]

That's exactly right, Pete. And on the payment hub, that's why these conversations are so straightforward for me because no customer or prospective customer ever has set to me or even hinted to me that it doesn't make sense to have the conversation with ACI. It's obviously, we should have that conversation, given our history and your presence in the market.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.