US electronic payment services company First Data has signed a multi-year global enterprise agreement with ACI Worldwide, an international provider of electronic payments software. Under the terms of the extended contract, First Data will merge ACI’s services with its offerings in a bid to develop new products and drive infrastructural efficiencies.

Currently, First Data uses ACI's payment products, including BASE24-eps, BASE24 and ACI Proactive Risk Manager, to offer a range of payment processing and fraud management services around the world.

Recently, First Data has released First Data TransArmor, a payment security service available to merchants located in the US through its network of resale partners. The application is set to protect consumer payment card data against identity theft. Leveraging the RSA SafeProxy architecture, the TransArmor solution encrypts and transports cardholder data to First Data and replaces it with a token as part of the transaction authorization process.