ACI Worldwide Q3 2025 Earnings Report

ACI Worldwide EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.09
• Consensus EPS: $0.99
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.10
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.77

ACI Worldwide Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $482.36 million
• Expected Revenue: $465.09 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$17.27 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +6.80%

ACI Worldwide Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2025
• Date: 11/6/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, November 6, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ:ACIW) is a global provider of payment systems and software for financial institutions, merchants, billers and intermediaries. Its technology supports electronic payments across banking, retail, bill payment and other commerce applications, helping organizations process transactions and manage payment operations.

The company’s offerings include real-time payment infrastructure, digital banking and account-to-account payment capabilities, merchant payment solutions, bill payment services and fraud management tools. ACI also provides software for payment switching, transaction processing, payment orchestration and related operational functions, with products delivered through cloud-based and on-premises models.

ACI Worldwide serves customers across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. The company’s roots extend to the development of electronic payment processing technology for financial institutions, and it has expanded through product development and acquisitions into a broader provider of payment and fraud-prevention solutions.

ACI Worldwide Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: ACI reported a strong Q3 with $482M revenue (+7% y/y), recurring revenue up 10%, YTD revenue and adjusted EBITDA up 12%, and the company raised full‑year guidance for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA while increasing its share repurchase authorization to $500M.
• Positive Sentiment: Management signed the first customer for ACI Kinetic (Solaris), says the Kinetic pipeline is expanding across mid‑market and larger customers, and initial SaaS hostings should convert to revenue after implementation in the coming months.
• Positive Sentiment: The biller segment remains a growth driver with Q3 biller revenue of $198M (+10% y/y)
• Positive Sentiment: ACI made a small strategic acquisition for payment messaging/orchestration capabilities to accelerate Kinetic and announced a partnership with BitPay to expand stablecoin/crypto capabilities, both positioned as strategic product enhancements rather than near‑term revenue drivers.
• Negative Sentiment: Profitability and cash‑flow nuances: Q3 adjusted EBITDA grew only 2% despite stronger revenue, and YTD operating cash flow fell to $201M from $232M last year, although net leverage remains modest at 1.3x — potential near‑term margin and cash considerations for investors to monitor.

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is Janice, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ACI Worldwide Third Quarter 2025 financial results. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, simply press * followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press *1 again. Thank you, and I would now like to turn the conference over to John Kraft. You may begin.

[John Kraft, Head of Investor Relations at ACI Worldwide]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. On today's call, we will discuss ACI's third quarter 2025 results and our financial outlook for the remainder of the year. We will take your questions at the end of the call. The slides accompanying this webcast can be found at aciworldwide.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call.

[John Kraft, Head of Investor Relations at ACI Worldwide]

As always, today's call is subject to safe harbor and forward-looking statements. You can find the full text of these statements in our presentation deck and earnings release, both available on our website and filed with the SEC. Joining me today are Tom Warsop, our President and CEO, and Bobby LeBrock, our CFO. Before I turn it over, I did want to share that we will be attending some investor conferences, including Citi's 14th Annual FinTech Conference in New York City on November 18. Stephens Annual Investment Conference in Nashville on November 20, and the UBS Global Technology and AI Conference in Scottsdale, December 3. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q3 earnings call. I'm going to share some key takeaways, and then Bobby will review our financials and guidance before we take your questions. We've spent the last couple of years investing in our leading software and working hard to structurally reshape ACI Worldwide for accelerating growth and financial predictability.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Q3 was another strong quarter for ACI Worldwide and another proof point that our efforts are working. We delivered 7% year-over-year total revenue growth with double-digit recurring revenue growth in the quarter. For the year so far, both total revenue and Adjusted EBITDA are up 12%, reflecting consistent execution and operational efficiency across the business. Given this momentum, we're again raising our full-year guidance, and Bobby will share more about that shortly.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

As I've mentioned on prior calls, our team is working hard to reduce some of the variability introduced by our historic term license software business model. While we can't completely eliminate it, our focus on getting deals closed earlier in the year, movement toward more ratable pricing structures in our payment software segment, and consistent growth in our biller business is helping lessen the quarter-to-quarter variability. We're continuing this effort, and I expect to continue to see benefits.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Looking at our segments, the biller business continues to perform well, with Q3 revenue up 10% compared to a year ago. We're seeing particularly strong growth in the utility and government verticals. Our payment software segment delivered 4% growth compared to last year, and it's up 12% year-to-date with the strong start we had to 2025.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We continue to see strong demand from both traditional banks and established payment processors, as well as from up-and-coming fintechs. Bottom line is the winners in the marketplace are investing, and they're often choosing ACI for their software needs. I've been talking about our ACI Kinetic platform for several quarters now, and I'm happy to report we signed our first new ACI Kinetic customer in Q3, Solaris, a German fintech and bank.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We were very selective in choosing our first customer, as I've indicated we would be, and we're committed to working closely with the Solaris team to successfully implement the technology across their system. They are an ideal partner, focused on the future and on dramatically improving their business, supported by our industry-leading technology and services.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Solaris CEO, Karsten Hultemeyer, was a featured speaker at our recent Payments Unleashed event in New York, and he talked about the many challenges and opportunities in the financial services industry, and specifically about how we are working together to take advantage. Looking ahead, Kinetic's architecture and capabilities are resonating with customers who are looking to modernize and simplify their payments infrastructure.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We have expanded our pipeline, we have deepened relationships with existing customers, and we are excited about what is ahead as we roll out this compelling new platform. In addition, we made a small but important acquisition of a European-based fintech payment component. That provides software for financial messaging, translation, orchestration, and integration.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Although the direct impact to our revenue will not be material, the software they provide and the great team of technologists that have now joined us will augment our AI-first initiatives and help accelerate the development roadmap of our ACI Kinetic offering. We will continue to be opportunistic in our approach to M&A grounded in disciplined capital allocation. I also want to point out our ongoing commitment to returning capital to shareholders and point you to our other announcement today.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Year-to-date, we've repurchased 3.1 million shares for $150 million, and just today, we announced the increase of our repurchase authorization to $500 million. Stablecoin has obviously been another hot topic in our industry and on our recent earnings calls. Just a few weeks ago, we announced a partnership with BitPay, which supports our ability to unlock even more potential as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins continue to grow in importance.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

This partnership strengthens our existing commitment to digital currency innovation by expanding our payments orchestration platform's established capabilities for our customers. I mentioned Payments Unleashed briefly, and let me take a moment to give you a bit more insight on this great event. Payments Unleashed was ACI's premier payments summit and a celebration of our 50th anniversary. We brought together some of the brightest minds, thought leaders, innovators, and visionaries to discuss the future of payments.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Topics included stablecoins, real-time payments, AI, modernization strategies for banks, merchants, and billers. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and we're proud to be at the center of these important conversations. On the topic of thought leadership, ACI has also been active in the media. Most recently, I joined Bloomberg TV's Crypto Show to share our perspective on stablecoins and its role in cross-border real-time payments.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

A couple of weeks earlier, I discussed similar topics, including the role of Europe in the growth of stablecoins on CNBC's Squawk Box Europe. This is all part of a focus campaign to make ACI's points of view clearer and more widely shared. Expect to see me and the entire ACI leadership team much more often. Before I turn it over to Bobby, I'd also like to touch on the ongoing board refreshment that has continued to be a priority for us.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We recently appointed Todd Ford and welcomed back Dita Lemouche as independent directors. Todd's many years as CFO of high-growth software technology companies, in combination with Dita's successful track record of leadership in global technology companies, will add value to our board and additional support for our management team as we focus on accelerating sustainable growth, delivering industry-leading software solutions, and generating shareholder value.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Overall, we're pleased with our progress and optimistic about the remainder of 2025. None of what we're doing would be possible without the hard work of our team members. I want to thank our talented team for their steadfast commitment to our customers and to all of our stakeholders. As I mentioned earlier, our strategy to sign contracts earlier in the year continues to pay off, and our pipeline remains robust. We will continue to focus on increasing shareholder value through operational excellence and technology leadership, solidifying the durability of our improving growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Bobby to walk through financials and guidance.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with our third quarter financial results and then cover our year-to-date performance and outlook. Q3 was another solid quarter, and we exceeded our expectations. Total revenue was $482 million, up 7% year-over-year, and up 6% adjusted for foreign exchange. Recurring revenue was $298 million, up 10%, and represents 62% of our total revenue.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Adjusted EBITDA came in at $171 million and was up 2% year-over-year. Both of our segments contributed to this growth. The biller business continues to perform well, with revenue of $198 million, up 10% year-over-year. Segment-Adjusted EBITDA for biller was $32 million, a 4% increase. In payment software, revenue grew 4% to $284 million, and Adjusted EBITDA was $182 million, up 1%. We're pleased with our recurring revenue momentum, which was $100 million in Q3 and accelerated to 9% growth year-over-year.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Looking now at the first nine months of the year, we generated $1.3 billion in total revenue and $346 million in Adjusted EBITDA, both up 12% compared to the first nine months of last year. That growth is the same as reported and adjusted for foreign exchange, so no impact from currency fluctuation. This strong performance reflects consistent execution across the business and the strong start we had in first-quarter license sales. Payment software revenue year-to-date grew 12%, and Adjusted EBITDA grew 13%.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

This includes growth across issuing, acquiring, merchant, fraud management, and real-time payments. Biller revenue is also growing 12% year-to-date, and Adjusted EBITDA grew 4%. Our revenue momentum is driven by our continued booking strength. Net new ARR bookings year-to-date grew 50% to $46 million, and new license and services bookings grew 8% to $189 million.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

As Tom mentioned, we were pleased to welcome Solaris as our first Kinetic customer. These results reflect the execution focus across our team and the growing customer demand across both segments. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $199 million in cash and a net debt leverage ratio of 1.3 times. We continue to generate strong underlying cash flow with $201 million cash flow from operations year-to-date.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

That compares to $232 million last year and reflects the anticipated timing of receivables and tax payments between periods. We also repurchased approximately 400,000 shares in the third quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to 3.1 million, or about 3% of our shares outstanding. As Tom mentioned, we have increased our share repurchase authorization to a total of $500 million, underscoring our commitment to returning capital to shareholders.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Based on this strong year-to-date performance and a healthy fourth-quarter pipeline, we are again raising our 2025 guidance. We now expect total revenue to be in the range of $1.73 billion-$1.754 billion, up from our prior range of $1.71 billion-$1.74 billion. We expect Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $495 million-$510 million, up from our previous guidance of $490 million-$505 million.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

As I complete my first full quarter as ACI CFO, I want to thank the team for their seamless collaboration and disciplined execution. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to engage with employees across ACI and more deeply with our board. I've heard directly from our customers and partners and had a chance to meet many of you, both current and prospective investors. After these first few months, I'm even more energized by the opportunity ahead for ACI.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

I've been impressed by the strength of our team, the quality of our technology, and the clarity of our strategy. This is a strong, well-run company, and I'm excited to be part of it. I'm also very pleased with the operational discipline and financial controls across ACI. There is a strong tone from the top, both our board and Tom, and we have the processes and assurances to back it up.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

We are prudent in how we manage financial risk. For example, as you know, our payment software business operates across approximately 90 countries, with nearly 75% of revenue generated outside the U.S. While this demonstrates our global scale and leadership, we've always managed this exposure carefully and transparently.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

In hyperinflationary markets, we transact almost entirely in US dollars to mitigate risk, and we consistently disclose the impact of foreign exchange on our results, providing visibility into our underlying operational performance. Looking forward, we remain focused on maintaining a proactive dialogue with the investment community. Transparency remains a top priority, and we're actively exploring ways to provide even greater clarity into our business and the progress we're making. I look forward to spending more time on the road again in Q4, continuing the conversation and deepening our engagement with investors. Tom, back to you.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks, Bobby. We're proud of our performance in Q3, and we're energized by the momentum that we have heading into Q4. Our strategy, execution, and innovation, especially with ACI Kinetic, position us well to enter 2026 on track to achieve our longer-term targets. Thank you for your continued support and for your continued interest in ACI. We're ready to take some questions.

[Operator]

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press *, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. We will pause just for a moment to compile a Q&A roster. Your first question is coming from the line of Trevor Williams from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Trevor Williams, Analyst at Jefferies]

Great. Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. I wanted to start on pricing. Tom, maybe bigger picture, I'm curious how you would frame the runway for pricing as a lever within the longer-term growth algo. I know it's something you've talked about. Increasing monetization has been a focus over the last year plus. I'm curious kind of where you still see the most opportunity and then any way to put into perspective how impactful pricing has been this year relative to 2024 or maybe the historical growth algo. Any context around that would be helpful. Thank you.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Trevor. It's a lever that we always pull as appropriate against the value that we provide to our customers. Essentially, we always get a price increase when we do a renewal or when a customer needs additional volume. I think I'm sure you and I have probably talked about the way we structure the capacity purchases by customers.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We try to encourage, through our pricing model, we encourage customers to buy as close to exactly the number of transactions they need as possible. Because if they need to come back and buy more, they're more expensive. There's a lot of levers that we pull there. I don't see that fading at all. In fact, as we add more value with new versions of software, as we start to move customers onto Kinetic, the value we add is higher, and we expect to get our fair share of that.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

This is an important lever. It's been an important lever in 2024 and 2025. You specifically asked about those. It's always been an important lever. 2024, 2025, it's been an important lever, will continue to be. I think we're just excited about continuing to add new, more valuable features, functions, and capabilities for our customers and then getting our share.

[Trevor Williams, Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay. Understood. Thank you. On payment software, just as we're getting closer to 2026, anything we should be mindful of in terms of the cadence of renewals? Just thinking whether renewal cadence has been a tailwind to 2025, if that potentially abates in 2026. Any context you could give us around that would be helpful. Thanks.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Trevor, I'll jump in. This is Bobby. Let me put it in the context of our backlog, and I'll give you the total number. We were healthy growth, again, double digits in our $7.1 billion, 60-month backlog. That's across both payment software, as you asked about, and our biller business. As I look into 2026, as I mentioned, we feel good about continuing to be on track for our longer-term, high single-digit growth model and EBITDA tracking along that revenue growth.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

As you think about the cadence of the renewals, as you put it, we got off to a great start here in the beginning of this year, overall growing 25% and almost 50% in payment software. That level is something we're continuing to be focused on to have deals spread out throughout the year.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

I do expect things to be more balanced throughout the quarters next year, especially against that compare against the first quarter. In terms of cadence of renewals next year, we feel good about achieving our longer-term growth model. I do expect it to be the levels we have this year, more balanced from a SKU standpoint.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah, Trevor, just one more comment on that. I sometimes get the question, is it highly variable year to year, the volume of renewals? If you just do the average math, obviously, if you have five-year terms, you'd think kind of 20% per year. It's not exactly 20% per year, but it isn't that far off. The good news, I think, is that we don't have huge variability year to year. A little bit, yeah, but we feel very comfortable managing that. Relatively small level of variability.

[Trevor Williams, Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay. Great. It sounds like there's not going to be some major change in the percentage of the portfolio that's renewing next year that we need to be mindful of if you're on track for the high singles. All that sounds good. Thanks, guys.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Got it. Thanks, Trevor.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from the line of Jeff Cantwell from Seaport Research. Please go ahead.

[Jeff Cantwell, Analyst at Seaport Research]

Hey, thanks. Congrats on the signing of your first Kinetic client. Would you mind just telling us high level about the progression from here? Maybe talk about the pipeline. You think you'll start seeing more contracts signed from here? What is the timing on when that converts into revenue? Any thoughts on sizing or the magnitude of that revenue would be great. Thanks.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. So. We're really excited, actually, about the pipeline. These are big decisions, Jeff. First of all, thanks for the question. Good to talk to you. These are complicated decisions for financial institutions and fintechs. As I've hopefully, I've been clear that we want to make sure we get the right first few customers. So we've got a strong pipeline. It's getting stronger literally every month as we look at it. I feel great about that.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Obviously, we never know the exact timing of when sales are going to happen, but they're progressing really well. We'll continue to keep everybody informed as we add new customers. You were asking specifically about the when it converts to revenue. The first couple of these are highly likely to be SaaS models where we're hosting the solution on behalf of our customer.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

The way that revenue model works is, when the implementation is finished and transactions start to flow, that's when we'll see the revenue. It'll be a few months in the case of this first customer, several months. I feel great about that. I expect the first few will probably be like that.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. Jeff, if I can add to Tom's comments, the other comment I'd say is this is the first proper Kinetic customer that will start getting revenue as we onboard. It is not a large discrete amount. It is across every one of our customer conversations. We talked about payments unleashed and those conversations we had two weeks ago. It was across every one of them.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Right now, we're focusing on our European and U.S. capabilities for Kinetic. We'll have more of a global rollout through the medium term. Every customer in Mexico loves it. Every customer in Asia we talk to is excited about it. I like the effect that Kinetic has had to raise those conversations and encourage customers and get them to commit to the continued long-term ACI relationship they've had.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Absolutely.

[Jeff Cantwell, Analyst at Seaport Research]

Perfect. Great. Thanks for that. You made a lot of moves during the quarter. I want to ask you about a couple of them. Can you talk more about the payments components, acquisition, why you wanted to capitalize on that opportunity, what that does for you? How should we be thinking about the revenue contribution for your results going forward? Also, can you elaborate on the BitPay announcement? Maybe just explain what that unlocks for ACI, is that domestic, international? I'm just trying to get a sense of how that becomes part of the story and what we should expect to see from here on that one as well. Thanks.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. I would say, super high level, they're similar. The reasons that we did both the BitPay partnership and the Payment Components acquisition, they're similar in that they allow us to accelerate progress in terms of adding or enhancing capabilities in our solutions so we can go faster through the partnership and the acquisition. Different capabilities, obviously.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

The BitPay partnership, we already have a lot of capabilities around crypto and stablecoin. We talked a little bit about that on the last call. We have good capabilities. BitPay allows us to improve the way that we serve our customers in those really important and increasingly important areas. Frankly, that partnership allows us to add a few things that we didn't have. It's really an enhancement of the tools that we already have. We're excited about it.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

I think BitPay is excited about it. That is a great one. Good strategic reason to do that. We are excited about that. On the payment components, we were faced with a decision. As we continue to build out and enhance ACI Kinetic, we needed world-class payment message translation and orchestration. We either had to build some of the capabilities the payment components has or we needed to buy them.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We did tons of research, lots of due diligence. We really think highly of the payment components team and the capabilities and software that they already have ready to go on the shelf was exactly what we felt we needed for ACI Kinetic. It is a small acquisition, as I said, but really important strategically. We did not buy it for immediate revenue growth.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We bought it because the capabilities they have and the talent they have is a great add to ACI. We do not expect to say to you next quarter, "Oh, payment components added a bunch of revenue." That's not the reason we did it. It makes ACI Kinetic more impactful and gets us where we want to go faster. That's why we did that.

[Jeff Cantwell, Analyst at Seaport Research]

Got it. Okay. Great. Thanks a lot. And congrats, guys.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from the line of George Sutton from Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

[George Sutton, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

Thank you. A highlight at Payments Unleashed for me was Scotty's Kinetic presentation and demo. It seemed clear to me that, Tom, when you originally announced this, it was really meant for an SMB type of a customer, potentially a mid-market customer. It would appear that this is now potentially an offering that could be delivered to virtually any size. Can you just talk about that?

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. Absolutely, George. Thanks for joining us. You're 100% right. When we were talking about what new markets could we potentially tap or new segments could we potentially tap with ACI Kinetic, if you're thinking about really new, then it really was focused on the—it still is focused on the mid-market. Because those customers may not have made enough investment or have enough experience and expertise to take advantage of the historical ACI offerings.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

From a new market perspective, that was true. We always expected that large financial institutions, large merchants would eventually be ready to take advantage of ACI Kinetic and what we're building. We always believed that. Maybe I should say it this way. We didn't want to get people too excited about that opportunity because that's going to take some time.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

These very big banks, for example, they've made so much investment in their infrastructure, and they have so many processes and ways of doing things that making a change to a new platform, no matter how good it is, is a big, big, big change. We absolutely see what you said, which is this is super appealing to a large customer, a large potential customer. Absolutely, yes. I think the early adopters are likely to be a little bit smaller. We are in active conversations with customers along that whole continuum.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Continuum. Thanks. Couldn't think of the right word. Along that whole continuum. We have smaller financial institutions, smaller merchants. We have mid-size, and we have very, very large. They're all interested in the capabilities, and we're just trying to work with them to make them comfortable and get them ready for the transition.

[George Sutton, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

Gotcha. Just one other question on biller. Sounds like utilities were really a key component of the growth this quarter. Can you just talk about your win rates and what you're broadly seeing in terms of opportunities for continued growth there? There's definitely a movement we see in the market from bespoke solutions to kind of moving to an outsourced model like yours. Just curious your thoughts, and that'd be helpful.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah, sure. I think we highlighted that utilities and government were a big contributor to the growth in this quarter. That's been true through the year. We see very good pipeline and pipeline growth across all of the verticals that we serve. We feel good about the business. I agree with what you just said, that there continues to be a real interest and a move away from, I think you called them bespoke, good a name as any, solutions per biller to outsource. That's been happening for quite a long time. It continues to happen.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Obviously, that's the reason that we're so excited about this business. We have a great offering, great client base. Our new customers are all going on to our SpeedPay One platform, which is our new—I don't know if you saw that one, George, at Payments Unleashed.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

We also had a demo of SpeedPay One, which is our new native solution around biller. It is exciting. We are putting new customers on that platform. It gives them much faster time to market for new capabilities, better experience for the consumers, better experience for the biller themselves. We are really excited about that. We are happy with the performance of the segment, and we are just focused on accelerating that growth.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. Maybe I'll just add one comment on Tom, too. I think, besides the financials that you'll see, George, right, a 10% in the period and a backlog that's growing at the same level. Going forward. The other part, I'd say, I met with a lot of those same customers you asked about at Payments Unleashed in the utility space. The reason they're coming to us and some of the top players is the complexity is increasing.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

That's what a player like SpeedPay can actually bring to them is to address that complexity that some of those bespoke ones can't. In terms of win rates, that's one of our bigger competitive advantages I see in that segment and one of the reasons we're winning more.

[George Sutton, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks, George.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks, George.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from the line of Alex Neumann from Stephens. Please go ahead.

[Alex Neumann, Analyst at Stephens]

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just to double-click there, there's another great quarter for biller with double-digit growth. I was wondering if you could just provide some additional detail on the drivers of growth there, whether it's new customers, volume, price, and maybe the relative contribution there. Just the same for the payment software segment, which had some nice growth over, which was a pretty tough comparison this quarter.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

Yeah. I could jump in, Alex. One, it's pretty broad-based across both. I'll start with the second part on payment software. As I mentioned in my opening comments, all key cylinders, all key solution areas are growing in that area and across that business on a year-to-date basis. In the third quarter, we saw a great contribution from the issuing and acquiring space. We saw real-time and fraud in Q2.

[Robert Leibrock, CFO at ACI Worldwide]

They had really blow-out quarters there on a year-to-date basis, all growing. You go into the biller side of it. I would emphasize it's new customers and retention. The price lever I view—there's an earlier question that Tom was answering around pricing—I view that as untapped potential in our billing business, actually. I view it more as success rates on getting new customers, onboarding them, and expanding those into more use cases across there.

[George Sutton, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

Great. Thanks, guys. Next quarter.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to the company for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Tom Warsop, President and CEO at ACI Worldwide]

Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We do look forward to catching up with you guys individually in the coming weeks at the various events that we mentioned earlier. Have a great day.Thanks, everybody.

[Operator]

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

Participants

Executives

• Tom Warsop, President and CEO
• Robert Leibrock, CFO
• John Kraft, Head of Investor Relations

Analysts

• Trevor Williams, Analyst at Jefferies
• Alex Neumann, Analyst at Stephens
• George Sutton, Analyst at Craig-Hallum
• Jeff Cantwell, Analyst at Seaport Research