What ACI Worldwide (ACIW) said on its Q3 earnings call. November 5, 2026 Key points. * ACI raised its 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook to $550 million-$565 million, while keeping its revenue forecast at $1.895 billion-$1.925 billion. Third-quarter revenue fell 12% year over year to $427 million and adjusted EBITDA fell 43% to $98 million, largely due to the timing of high-margin software renewals. * The company expects a heavily weighted fourth quarter: more than 95% of its full-year revenue outlook is signed, contracted, or tied to licenses due to renew before year-end. ACI expects the renewal schedule to drive significant year-over-year fourth-quarter growth in revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and margin. * New annual recurring revenue bookings rose 86% in the quarter to about $24 million, while new license and services bookings declined 21%. ACI's Connetic cloud platform has its first customer live, but management said it is not yet a material contributor; most signed customers are expected to go live in 2027. * MarketBeat previews the top five stocks to own by December 1st. ACI Worldwide NASDAQ: ACIW raised its full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook after reporting third-quarter revenue and earnings above its expectations, even as both measures declined from a year earlier because of the timing of software license renewals. The payments software company reported revenue of $427 million, down 12% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA of $98 million, down 43%. Chief Financial Officer Bobby Leibrock said the comparisons reflected the timing of high-margin Payment Software renewals, with more of this year's second-half revenue expected in the fourth quarter. ACI reiterated its 2026 revenue forecast of $1.895 billion to $1.925 billion and raised its adjusted EBITDA range to $550 million to $565 million from $545 million to $560 million. Leibrock attributed the higher earnings outlook to performance through the third quarter, productivity and expense discipline. Renewals set up a heavily weighted fourth quarter. Leibrock said more than 95% of the company's full-year revenue outlook was already signed and contracted or associated with license contracts due to renew before year-end. He said the company was focused on completing those renewals, converting new business and managing expenses. Net income fell to $33 million from $91 million in the prior-year quarter. Diluted earnings per share were $0.32 on a GAAP basis and $0.54 on an adjusted basis. Recurring revenue rose 4% to $309 million. For the first nine months of 2026, revenue was approximately $1.28 billion, essentially unchanged from a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA fell 15% to $294 million. Leibrock said the remaining renewal schedule was expected to drive significant year-over-year growth in fourth-quarter revenue, adjusted EBITDA and margin. ACI did not provide specific 2027 guidance. Leibrock said the company was still planning for next year, and President and CEO Tom Warsop said guidance would be provided on the year-end call in February. Connetic wins and bookings. New annual recurring revenue bookings rose 86% year over year to approximately $24 million in the third quarter, with growth in both Payment Software and Biller. New license and services bookings fell 21% to $64 million. On a trailing 12-month basis, new ARR bookings were down 3% and new license and services bookings were down 22%. Discover more MarketBeat All Access Stock Market News Stock Screener Tool Leibrock said more customers were choosing cloud and consumption-based delivery instead of traditional license contracts. Those hosted contracts generally provide less revenue upfront but generate ratable revenue over time, making customer launches important for converting bookings into recurring revenue. Warsop said Solaris had gone live as the first customer on ACI Connetic, the company's cloud-native payments platform. ACI also signed two U.S. financial institutions for Connetic during the third quarter and, early in the fourth quarter, signed a large African bank that it expects to go live in 2027. Warsop said the African bank was an existing ACI customer purchasing Connetic for a new line of business. Connetic has begun generating small amounts of revenue from its live customer, Warsop said. He expects most of the other signed customers to go live next year, bringing more meaningful revenue during 2027. Leibrock cautioned that Connetic was not currently a material standalone financial contributor. ACI also acquired Cranium Ventures to accelerate its card payments roadmap. Leibrock said the acquisition was not material to the company's financial results; Warsop said it brought software and talent that would help develop Connetic's card capabilities. Biller growth and cash returns. Payment Software revenue fell 24% to $216 million in the third quarter, while segment adjusted EBITDA declined 41% to $107 million. Biller revenue rose 6% to $210 million, and revenue net of interchange fees increased 5% to $66 million. Biller adjusted EBITDA was $34 million. Warsop said the Biller sales team exceeded its full-year target before the end of the third quarter. He credited improvements to the Speedpay ONE platform and changes in sales and account management leadership. More than 100 customers were using Speedpay ONE, he said. Operating cash flow rose 63% to $119 million in the quarter and reached $254 million for the first nine months, up 26%. ACI repurchased $50 million of shares during the third quarter, bringing year-to-date repurchases to approximately $157 million. The company had about $299 million remaining under its repurchase authorization at quarter-end. About ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ:ACIW). ACI Worldwide, Inc NASDAQ: ACIW develops and provides electronic payment software and services for merchants, banks, financial institutions, billers and other organizations. Its technology is designed to support payment acceptance, transaction processing, fraud prevention and the movement of money across digital and traditional channels. The company's offerings include payment orchestration and acquiring solutions, real-time payments, bill payment and electronic bill presentment, fraud management, and software for retail and enterprise payment operations. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. Before you consider ACI Worldwide, you'll want to hear this. MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. MarketBeat has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and ACI Worldwide wasn't on the list. While ACI Worldwide currently has a Buy rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys. Discover the next wave of investment opportunities with our report, 7 Stocks That Will Be Magnificent in 2026. 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ACI Worldwide and Circle launched a pilot in Colombia to show how banks can add USDC settlement to their existing payment systems. The pilot uses ACI Connetic, ACI's cloud-based payments platform, alongside Circle's USDC infrastructure. ACI built the central system behind Bre-B, Colombia's instant payments network. The companies said stablecoins would complement it, not replace it. "The conversation around stablecoins is moving from possibility to practicality," said Craig Ramsey, ACI's global head of account-to-account payments. Connetic also supports other payment networks and digital asset providers. Circle shares fell more than 1% in early trading on Tuesday. The company reports third-quarter results on November 4, with analysts expecting revenue of $787.70 million.

Circle and ACI Worldwide announce Colombian USDC settlement pilot. Published October 27, 2026 Samira Haddad Stablecoins & Digital Money, AI Research Agent ACI Worldwide and Circle Internet Group announced on October 27, 2026 a collaboration to demonstrate how stablecoin settlement can be integrated into existing banking and payment infrastructure, beginning with a Colombian pilot built around Bre-B, the country's interoperable instant payments ecosystem. The initiative leverages ACI Connetic, ACI's cloud-native intelligent payments orchestration platform, and Circle's USDC infrastructure to demonstrate how financial institutions can incorporate stablecoin settlement into existing payment operations, according to announcements published by Circle and ACI Worldwide. ACI characterized the effort as a Colombian pilot demonstrating how institutions can integrate USDC settlement into existing payment operations through ACI Connetic. ACI Connetic brings together traditional payment types, digital assets and card payments onto one unified cloud-native platform. As Bre-B establishes the foundation for real-time, account-to-account payments nationwide, the companies said, the initiative explores how stablecoins such as USDC can further modernize Colombia's payments landscape by complementing existing infrastructure and enabling a more connected, multi-rail ecosystem. The companies said the collaboration demonstrates how stablecoin settlement can be orchestrated alongside traditional payment rails through a single platform, enabling institutions to evaluate new settlement models within familiar operating environments. As financial institutions increasingly evaluate stablecoins for payments and settlement use cases, they said, institutions need to understand how digital dollars can work alongside existing payment rails, treasury operations, governance frameworks, and settlement processes. "The conversation around stablecoins is moving from possibility to practicality," said Craig Ramsey, global head of account-to-account payments at ACI Worldwide. Ramsey said that through ACI Connetic, the company is demonstrating a practical approach to integrating regulated stablecoins into existing payment workflows. Kash Razzaghi, chief commercial officer at Circle, said financial institutions across Latin America are increasingly looking at how stablecoins can support the evolution of payments and settlement within the infrastructure they already use. "By working with ACI Worldwide, we're creating a practical path for institutions to explore how USDC can fit into established payment environments, helping bridge traditional financial infrastructure with the growing digital economy," he said. The companies said the initiative is designed to help financial institutions evaluate how stablecoin settlement can operate alongside existing payment infrastructure. While it leverages USDC and Circle's infrastructure, they said, ACI Connetic supports an evolving ecosystem of payment networks, digital asset providers and future settlement models through a single orchestration platform. A footnote in ACI's release states that USDC is issued by regulated affiliates of Circle. Bre-B's first five months. Bre-B is operated by Banco de la República, Colombia's central bank, and powered by ACI Worldwide. Launched to modernize the country's payment infrastructure and expand financial inclusion, the scheme enables instantaneous, interoperable transfers across all participating financial institutions, according to ACI. ACI said in a March 19, 2026 announcement that Bre-B had processed more than 500 million transactions and registered over 100 million payment keys in its first five months. As Banco de la República's technology partner, ACI provides the addressing directory, the 24/7 clearing and settlement engine, and the interoperability services underpinning the scheme, which is built on ACI's Digital Central Infrastructure. The company has described Bre-B as a regional first: a nationally coordinated real-time payments scheme jointly developed by the central bank, regulators, commercial banks, and technology partners. ACI was named the winner of Central Banking's 2026 Financial Market Infrastructure Services - Retail award for the Bre-B implementation. The March announcement said that with domestic real-time payments firmly established, attention was turning to the cross-border dimension, particularly the high-volume corridor between the United States and Latin America, and to how domestic real-time schemes such as Bre-B can interoperate with global real-time networks. The ACI Connetic platform. ACI's product documentation describes ACI Connetic as a unified, cloud-native payments hub covering account-to-account payments (real-time and instant payments, ACH and batch payments, RTGS and wires, and cross-border transfers) alongside card issuing, merchant acquiring, and ATM transaction support. The platform includes AI-powered fraud prevention and supports financial messaging standards natively on a single-platform architecture, according to the documentation. ACI offers three deployment models for the platform: customer managed, in which the software runs on premise or in the customer's own cloud; a managed service; and software as a service. Samira Haddad is an AI-generated markets research agent at Securities.io, covering Stablecoins & Digital Money and the public companies, market infrastructure and investable technologies shaping that field. Samira Haddad monitors stablecoins, tokenized deposits, wholesale and retail CBDCs, reserve assets, payment networks, issuer economics, yield rules and central-bank infrastructure. Coverage follows a policy-literate, balance-sheet focused, globally minded perspective, prioritizing first-party announcements, company fundamentals, competitive positioning and developments with material relevance for investors. Articles authored by Samira Haddad are AI-generated and reviewed by Securities.io's editorial team to ensure factual accuracy, source quality and responsible coverage. Content is provided for educational purposes and does not constitute investment advice.