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Executive Interview: Michael Grillo of ACI Worldwide

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By: Mike Giambattista, CLMP |

Posted on February 15, 2019

Michael Grillo runs the marketing efforts at ACI Worldwide’s Merchant Solutions area.  The fact that ACI Worldwide is so large is a well-known fact in loyalty marketing circles.  What may be less well-known is the extent to which they power the backbone of the entire payments ecosystem.  They are, quite literally, everywhere.

I met Michael at the recent NRF Big Show event in New York City.  As you’ll see, he is an affable and very smart individual with a lot on his plate.  Our conversation at NRF was wide-ranging and touched some very interesting developments in our space – one of which is the challenges associated with the emerging BOPIS trend and the technologies needed to effectively pull it off at scale.

(For the uninitiated, BOPIS is a recently-coined acronym that stands for "Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store".  It's ok – I had to ask too.)

Think about it for a moment.  It takes a lot more data coordination to merge an online & offline transaction – and do so in real time – than it does to process a purchase in either channel alone.  And then there’s the fraud consideration.

Michael and I talked about those challenges and some of the technological wizardry that ACI has developed to stem BOPIS fraud before it becomes a trend in itself.

Mike Giambattista is Editor in Chief at The Wise Marketer and is a Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional (CLMP).