November 28, 2025 • 11 mins
ACI Worldwide, an innovator in global payments technology, delivers software solutions that power intelligent payments orchestration in real time so banks, billers, and merchants can drive growth, while continuously modernizing their payment infrastructures, simply and securely. In addition to reporting strong third-quarter and year-to-date results, and raising its full-year 2025 outlook as it reported earnings, the company also recently entered into a strategic partnership with BitPay, the world’s leading cryptocurrency payments processor.
Robert "Bobby" Leibrock joined ACI as its CFO effective July 1. He breaks down the firm's expansive customer base and details its renewed commitment to digital assets with Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec and Bloomberg News Senior Editor on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim
Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
The season is underway. The global e commerce and payments
platform company ACI Worldwide says friendly fraud is expected to
increase twenty five percent 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 titting us with more is and kind of on
that story as well as their business. In our latest
(00:36):
installment of CFO Briefing is Robert Leebrock. He is CFO
of the more than four point eight billion dollar market
cap company ACI Worldwide, the stock by the way down
about nine percent year today, and also with us here
in studio as Nina Trentman. She's Bloomberg News Senior editor.
She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter, which you can subscribe
to at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing. A new
(00:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
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
(01:38):
the infrastructure that does that across all the banks, all
top ten banks, sixty of the top one hundred banks.
Also across three thousand customers here in the US, they
need bill pay technologies. If you paid your US tax bill,
you've probably used our platform your insurance bill. And then
a big you know this weekend actually is when you
(01:58):
talk about friendly fraud and uptick. We're seeing there. We
service eighty thousand 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 the reliability, the fraud detection that you need across
(02:20):
those As you think about what we can do across
those platforms, it is it is perfect to come in,
you know, on the Wednesday here before Thanksgiving here in
the US. Like I said, it's a big peak season.
As we look at the transactions at this time of
the year, you know, they were up more than twenty
five percent last year. We're expecting that to happen again
this year. Through our platform. There's lots of fraud that
(02:43):
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 five billion dollar
market cap, almost two billion in revenue. You know that
we have globally with a very healthy performance underneath about
five hundred million in aibita. You know, I joined just
under six months ago, so you know, relatively new to
(03:06):
the team here and think 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
fifty year old company that's rapidly transforming. About two years
(03:27):
ago we had a new CEO come in Tom Moresop,
and he's really jolted the company. Increased our growth about
two actra grow ten percent last year, run track to
nine to ten percent 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
(03:49):
things that I'm excited to join this team and the
transformation run.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Thanks Bobby for for joining us here. Nina here, just
wanted to actually follow up on the data that you
have from your businesusiness. We earlier talked here on the
program about the key 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?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
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 ACI. We operate in about ninety
countries globally, and our banking business is actually about seventy
five percent 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
(04:39):
or under banked 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 provide to those those folks. As you
(05:01):
think about you know this this season I mentioned, you know,
we're 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 going
twelve percent, so a really nice demand and that's across
both of our businesses here in the US or internationally
(05:23):
as well as you look across our payment software business.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, just curious, Actually do you see this growth in
and buy now pay later transactions that we've seen across
platforms is also that's showing in your business.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
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
(05:58):
single up to market levels at growing twelve percent. And
to the point of your underlying up 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 and their app or
their website, but come to a leader like ACI to
do that for them. They can give them more options
(06:19):
around pay later, use credit, use other forms of payments
as well.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
On that, Bobby, we actually had Tom Morse up on
Bloomberg Crypto just about five weeks ago, back in the
middle of October. He was here in the city to
talk a little bit about stable coins, speaking of different
types of payments, and I'm wondering how big of a
business at this point, you see that getting use of
stable coins, especially for cross border transactions. Do you see
(06:45):
it sticking?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? I think I remember. I think he said that,
you know, you and he were talking about the death
of cash is greatly exact rated right when he saw it.
And admittedly, what we were trying to you know, lean
into there was we don't see you know, any one
payment type really going away, and I think that's the
reason why there's such a need. You know, as stable
coin sees more adoption continues to ramp, you know, I
(07:10):
will know as you look underneath of that, it's it's
definitely an emerging payment type. Provides you know, 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 two hundred customers about two years ago, we
(07:33):
asked them, you know, where should we invest. You know,
it was a very customer oriented product, market fit for
our new platform ACI Kinetic, and this is a payment's hub.
It doesn't bias one payment type one rail. It can
lean across all these payment tups. It helps you orchestrate
them because the complexity of adopting stable coin. You see
a lot of banking announcements on either their own stable
(07:56):
coin or their ability for tokenized deposits. It's great optional
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.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Just wondering actually in terms of stable coin payments, is
that consumers using those on your platform? Is it business
to business? What is that looking like?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah? I think so. As you think of our multiple
platforms within our bill pay, our merchant business, we've provided
the option ouity. 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
(08:42):
banking banks are using around the world that those volumes.
We have the capability there. You know, we have the
payment infrastructure, we support stable coins, tokenized deposits of the
new payment type, the interroperability, most of the volumes I
see their need are within the crypto universe themselves. It's
(09:04):
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 stable coin. There, we don't see a lot of
transactions that you know, you know, compared to the you know,
we do billions of transactions every single day with trillions
(09:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
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 at the weekend
and all the way through. How much risk is there
from this and especially when compute customers dispute transactions following
(09:55):
a purchase.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, I think you know. The friendly fraud for you
know folks, this is a new term to This is
things like wardrobing, 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 and admitally is yeah, this is growing
(10:17):
upwards of twenty five percent. And if you think of
the average return, it was about one hundred and fifty dollars.
If I remember last year, it's up to about two
hundred dollars the average transaction that's going through these types
of friendly fraud. We have a platform, so I talked
about servicing eighty thousand merchant globally. You know, through our
product and our software there we have payment intelligence and
(10:38):
we can get up to ninety eight percent 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, 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
(11:00):
on our.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Platform, maybe we shall all take an ethics lesson. I
don't know, I hadn't heard it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I hadn't heard friendly fraud before.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Right, It's just, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You know it when you see.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
It, you know it 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 world Wide.
Nina Trentman, thank you always. Happy Holidays, Bloomberg News senior editor.
She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter. You can find it
at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing and for more
Bloomberg coverage of CFOs. Be sure to check out the
(11:34):
latest episode of the Chief Future Officers series. It features
the CFO of Standard Chartered Bank Diego Da 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 I'm Bloomberg dot
Com and of course, on YouTube.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and Tim
Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
The season is underway. The global e commerce and payments
platform company ACI Worldwide says friendly fraud is expected to
increase twenty five percent 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 titting us with more is and kind of on
that story as well as their business. In our latest
(00:36):
installment of CFO Briefing is Robert Leebrock. He is CFO
of the more than four point eight billion dollar market
cap company ACI Worldwide, the stock by the way down
about nine percent year today, and also with us here
in studio as Nina Trentman. She's Bloomberg News Senior editor.
She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter, which you can subscribe
to at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing. A new
(00:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
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
(01:38):
the infrastructure that does that across all the banks, all
top ten banks, sixty of the top one hundred banks.
Also across three thousand customers here in the US, they
need bill pay technologies. If you paid your US tax bill,
you've probably used our platform your insurance bill. And then
a big you know this weekend actually is when you
(01:58):
talk about friendly fraud and uptick. We're seeing there. We
service eighty thousand 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 the reliability, the fraud detection that you need across
(02:20):
those As you think about what we can do across
those platforms, it is it is perfect to come in,
you know, on the Wednesday here before Thanksgiving here in
the US. Like I said, it's a big peak season.
As we look at the transactions at this time of
the year, you know, they were up more than twenty
five percent last year. We're expecting that to happen again
this year. Through our platform. There's lots of fraud that
(02:43):
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 five billion dollar
market cap, almost two billion in revenue. You know that
we have globally with a very healthy performance underneath about
five hundred million in aibita. You know, I joined just
under six months ago, so you know, relatively new to
(03:06):
the team here and think 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
fifty year old company that's rapidly transforming. About two years
(03:27):
ago we had a new CEO come in Tom Moresop,
and he's really jolted the company. Increased our growth about
two actra grow ten percent last year, run track to
nine to ten percent 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
(03:49):
things that I'm excited to join this team and the
transformation run.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Thanks Bobby for for joining us here. Nina here, just
wanted to actually follow up on the data that you
have from your businesusiness. We earlier talked here on the
program about the key 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?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
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 ACI. We operate in about ninety
countries globally, and our banking business is actually about seventy
five percent 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
(04:39):
or under banked 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 provide to those those folks. As you
(05:01):
think about you know this this season I mentioned, you know,
we're 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 going
twelve percent, so a really nice demand and that's across
both of our businesses here in the US or internationally
(05:23):
as well as you look across our payment software business.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah, just curious, Actually do you see this growth in
and buy now pay later transactions that we've seen across
platforms is also that's showing in your business.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
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
(05:58):
single up to market levels at growing twelve percent. And
to the point of your underlying up 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 and their app or
their website, but come to a leader like ACI to
do that for them. They can give them more options
(06:19):
around pay later, use credit, use other forms of payments
as well.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
On that, Bobby, we actually had Tom Morse up on
Bloomberg Crypto just about five weeks ago, back in the
middle of October. He was here in the city to
talk a little bit about stable coins, speaking of different
types of payments, and I'm wondering how big of a
business at this point, you see that getting use of
stable coins, especially for cross border transactions. Do you see
(06:45):
it sticking?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah? I think I remember. I think he said that,
you know, you and he were talking about the death
of cash is greatly exact rated right when he saw it.
And admittedly, what we were trying to you know, lean
into there was we don't see you know, any one
payment type really going away, and I think that's the
reason why there's such a need. You know, as stable
coin sees more adoption continues to ramp, you know, I
(07:10):
will know as you look underneath of that, it's it's
definitely an emerging payment type. Provides you know, 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 two hundred customers about two years ago, we
(07:33):
asked them, you know, where should we invest. You know,
it was a very customer oriented product, market fit for
our new platform ACI Kinetic, and this is a payment's hub.
It doesn't bias one payment type one rail. It can
lean across all these payment tups. It helps you orchestrate
them because the complexity of adopting stable coin. You see
a lot of banking announcements on either their own stable
(07:56):
coin or their ability for tokenized deposits. It's great optional
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.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Just wondering actually in terms of stable coin payments, is
that consumers using those on your platform? Is it business
to business? What is that looking like?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah? I think so. As you think of our multiple
platforms within our bill pay, our merchant business, we've provided
the option ouity. 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
(08:42):
banking banks are using around the world that those volumes.
We have the capability there. You know, we have the
payment infrastructure, we support stable coins, tokenized deposits of the
new payment type, the interroperability, most of the volumes I
see their need are within the crypto universe themselves. It's
(09:04):
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 stable coin. There, we don't see a lot of
transactions that you know, you know, compared to the you know,
we do billions of transactions every single day with trillions
(09:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
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 at the weekend
and all the way through. How much risk is there
from this and especially when compute customers dispute transactions following
(09:55):
a purchase.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, I think you know. The friendly fraud for you
know folks, this is a new term to This is
things like wardrobing, 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 and admitally is yeah, this is growing
(10:17):
upwards of twenty five percent. And if you think of
the average return, it was about one hundred and fifty dollars.
If I remember last year, it's up to about two
hundred dollars the average transaction that's going through these types
of friendly fraud. We have a platform, so I talked
about servicing eighty thousand merchant globally. You know, through our
product and our software there we have payment intelligence and
(10:38):
we can get up to ninety eight percent 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, 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
(11:00):
on our.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Platform, maybe we shall all take an ethics lesson. I
don't know, I hadn't heard it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I hadn't heard friendly fraud before.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Right, It's just, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You know it when you see.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
It, you know it 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 world Wide.
Nina Trentman, thank you always. Happy Holidays, Bloomberg News senior editor.
She writes the CFO Briefing newsletter. You can find it
at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing and for more
Bloomberg coverage of CFOs. Be sure to check out the
(11:34):
latest episode of the Chief Future Officers series. It features
the CFO of Standard Chartered Bank Diego Da 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 I'm Bloomberg dot
Com and of course, on YouTube.
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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