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Banco Inter has picked ACI Worldwide to overhaul the payment technology behind Inter Pag, its merchant-acquiring arm, in a deal that says as much about Brazil as it does about either company. Inter Pag serves more than 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses, and moving them onto ACI’s cloud-based acquiring platform is meant to let those merchants accept a broader mix of payment methods, add fraud prevention and analytics, and, crucially, lean fully into Pix, the country’s instant-payment system.
That last part is the whole point. Pix has gone from launch in 2020 to nearly 170 million users, and in the second half of 2025 it accounted for 54.7% of all payment transactions in Brazil. When more than half of a country’s payments run through one instant, near-free rail, any acquirer that cannot handle it smoothly is already behind. Inter Pag is not modernising for novelty; it is keeping up with how Brazilians really pay.
A platform built from earlier deals
The setup stitches together a few existing pieces. ACI’s acquiring platform provides the core, while back-office card management runs on technology from RS2, drawing on a partnership ACI and RS2 struck in Brazil back in 2024. For Inter, the deal is the latest chapter in a business it bought rather than built: Inter Pag is the rebranded Granito platform, originally a 2021 joint venture with Banco BMG that Inter took full control of in July 2024, paying around 110 million reais, roughly $21 million, for the remaining half.
It is worth being clear-eyed about what a vendor-selection announcement is and is not. The companies have not disclosed the deal’s value or a full timeline, and a go-live is a starting line, not proof of success. The real test is whether the migration runs cleanly and whether merchants notice the difference at the checkout.
One front in a much wider push
The ACI deal makes more sense as part of a pattern. Inter has been assembling payment capabilities on several fronts at once. On the cross-border side, a 2025 partnership with TerraPay plugs the bank into its Xend network, connecting to billions of wallets and bank accounts worldwide. And Inter has been pushing beyond Brazil entirely: the US Federal Reserve approved a state-licensed branch in January, which opened in June, giving the digital bank a foothold in its largest overseas market.
That ambition cuts both ways. Building out acquiring, cross-border rails, and a US presence at the same time is a lot for one bank to carry, and Brazil’s acquiring market is a bruising, low-margin fight among heavyweights like Cielo, Rede, Stone, and PagBank. Better technology is table stakes there, not a guaranteed edge. For ACI, meanwhile, the win fits a clear Latin America strategy, coming shortly after a tie-up with dLocal and work powering Colombia’s own instant-payment system.
So does swapping in a new acquiring platform move the needle for Inter, or just keep it in the game? For now, mostly the latter, and there is no shame in that. In a market reshaped by Pix and crowded with rivals, the cost of falling behind on payment infrastructure is far higher than the cost of upgrading it. Inter is making sure its 100,000 merchants are not the ones left waiting at the till.
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