Red Hat and ACI deliver innovation in payments modernization, flexibility, and efficiency

Introduction and context

Financial institutions face constant pressure in payments processing to meet increasing consumer expectations of speed, functionality, and convenience. 

Additionally, the underlying payments infrastructure is subject to growing transaction volumes, evolving regulations, and the demand for real-time processing. The core challenge for banks is modernizing on a flexible and innovative infrastructure without disrupting critical services. 

Simple environment migrations aren’t the answer. A broader solution—ACI Connetic combined with Red Hat OpenShift—gives banks a scalable platform with the requisite payment-processing velocity and the flexibility to deploy new capabilities across public, private, and hybrid cloud instances.

Building on accomplishments and looking ahead

Banks want the benefits of cloud-native technology without being forced into a single infrastructure model. The working relationship between ACI and Red Hat has yielded several critical milestones aimed at allowing this flexibility, and has continued to equip the payments-processing industry with trusted benefits:  

• 2023: The companies announced a collaboration centered on Red Hat OpenShift to support payment modernization and cloud-deployment flexibility.
• 2024: ACI joined the Red Hat partner ecosystem to facilitate the deployment of its enterprise payments platform across cloud infrastructures.
• 2026: A significant achievement is centered on the Partner Validation of ACI Connetic on Red Hat OpenShift. Partner Validation is a formalized designation giving organizations the opportunity to confidently use joint solutions with a lot of choice.

ACI Connetic offers a cloud-native payments platform designed to support payments modernization across multicloud environments. In conjunction with Red Hat OpenShift, it provides a consistent Kubernetes-based solution supporting a practical approach, while preserving options about where and how to deploy critical workloads.

Tangible benefits and operational flexibility

The relationship between Red Hat and ACI is positioned to evolve from a technical alignment into a way to help banks achieve broader business outcomes. The primary goal is to ensure that as banks determine an optimal path forward, they have the ecosystem and technological support necessary to remain agile and competitive.

The strategy focuses on:

• Unified platform consistency: By using Red Hat OpenShift, the partnership provides a consistent platform that spans private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. This is particularly crucial for Tier 1 banks that must reconcile ambitious modernization goals with stringent regulatory and resiliency requirements.
• Pragmatic modernization: Financial institutions rarely seek wholesale "rip-and-replace" programs. The ACI and Red Hat solution focuses on pragmatic paths that let banks evolve existing environments while introducing new capabilities.
• Shift to strategic business outcomes: The collaboration aims to move conversations away from purely technical infrastructure and toward solving business-level problems:
  • Accelerating product introduction 
  • Mitigating risk during infrastructure modernization
  • Constructing platforms capable of multidecade evolution

By joining ACI’s payments expertise with Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud platform, banks get a clearer route to modernization aligned with operational, regulatory, and infrastructure requirements—as well as with business objectives.

Red Hat OpenShift and ACI Connetic address key challenges, including:

• Flexible deployment: The solution supports private, public, and hybrid cloud strategies.
• Implementation of a modern payments architecture: ACI Connetic provides a unified, cloud-native payments platform.
• Operational consistency: Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent Kubernetes-based application platform across deployment environments for critical payment operations.
• Modernization without disruption: A phased approach allows capabilities and payment flows to be introduced over time.
• Future-ready infrastructure: The foundation supports continued change as payment and technology requirements evolve. Red Hat OpenShift allows the ability to operate on a single foundation supporting innovation, growth, and emerging AI requirements. 
• Accommodating regulatory and resilience requirements: Providing greater control over infrastructure and deployment choices allows for the adaptability and compliance needed to meet specific regulatory requirements and risk strategies.

Explore further

Financial institutions are continuously seeking competitive advantage in a demanding industry, with key differentiators centered around speed, efficiency, and functionality. Infrastructural elements are what primarily allow them to realize these goals.  

Long recognizing the benefits of cloud-based technology, banks seek innovative collaboration with, and among, technology partners who can retain focus on the future and on their crucial operational processes.

The Red Hat and ACI solutions can provide a pragmatic and structured path on which these institutions can confidently proceed.

Red Hat and ACI will discuss this collaboration and further topics at the late-September 2026 Sibos event. ACI and Red Hat experts will facilitate discussions on cloud-native transformation, deployment flexibility, and open hybrid cloud strategies.

Learn more:

• Payments solutions with Red Hat financial services
• ACI Connetic: cloud-native payment solutions
• ACI and Red Hat Partnership