IBM (NYSE: IBM) and ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW) today announced a significantly expanded strategic alliance to create an end-to-end solution for electronic payments powered by IBM's open technology. As part of the alliance, ACI will optimize a new generation of payment solutions on the IBM System z platform including IBM DB2, WebSphere, and Tivoli software and Crypto-chip technology. The optimization supports the convergence of retail and wholesale payments through the use of service oriented architecture (SOA) including IBM's Payments Framework.

ACI will further enhance its leading Money Transfer System and BASE24-eps payment solutions to take full advantage of IBM hardware, software and services. IBM will provide ACI with technical staff and laboratory support for benchmarking and performance tuning its payments software.