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ACI Worldwide and Cognizant have completed performance testing of the BASE24-eps card processing system on Amazon Web Services. The test sustained more than double its target transaction load without any failed transactions, according to the companies.
The exercise assessed whether a card platform already used by banks could run on managed AWS services under simulated point-of-sale demand. BASE24-eps processed more than 4.6 million transactions during the full test and maintained the higher load level for 30 minutes, the companies said.
The work was carried out in a non-production environment rather than a live banking deployment. Cognizant built the target architecture, provisioned the environment and deployed the software through an AWS account operated by ACI.
The system ran on Amazon EC2 with Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The setup also used OpenTelemetry standards and Amazon CloudWatch to let operations teams monitor transaction flows, system health and throughput in real time.
The result addresses a broader question for banks weighing cloud migration for core payments systems. Card processing volumes can rise sharply around paydays, holiday shopping periods and other peak spending periods. That leaves institutions to decide whether to keep maintaining infrastructure sized for infrequent surges or move workloads to cloud environments that can be scaled differently.
For many banks, the issue is as much financial as technical. The announcement cited Accenture research estimating that nearly 70% of bank IT spending goes to maintaining existing systems and meeting regulatory requirements. It also referred to McKinsey analysis that valued the potential of cloud adoption at USD 60 billion to USD 80 billion in run-rate EBITDA by 2030 for Fortune 500 financial institutions.
Testing scope
The companies described the exercise narrowly. Rather than presenting it as proof that a bank can immediately move production card processing to the cloud, they said the test examined whether an experienced implementation partner could deploy the tested release on AWS using managed services and sustain the target load.
That distinction matters because moving payments systems into production would require more work on resilience, failover and disaster recovery, along with security hardening, additional non-functional testing and payment network certification. A multi-zone architecture would also be a standard requirement for institutions that need systems to remain available if part of the cloud environment fails.
The use of an existing payments platform is another notable element. Banks have often treated cloud migration for card processing as part of a broader replacement programme involving newly built systems, an approach that can take years and carry significant cost and operational risk. Here, the companies aimed to show that a platform already deployed at financial institutions could be moved into a cloud environment and tested there at scale.
Cognizant said installation and deployment were automated, reducing manual setup in the new environment. That approach may appeal to banks looking to shorten implementation timelines or standardise software deployment, though production use would still require a longer validation and approvals process.
Ajmal Syed, Chief Architect and Technical Fellow, ACI Worldwide, said the test was designed to address a central concern for banks considering cloud migration.
"Agility and cost are why banks look at the cloud, but they can't give up the performance their card business depends on to get there," Syed said. "This testing put BASE24-eps under sustained load on AWS, and it ran well past target without a failed transaction. A bank planning a cloud move can start with a card platform that has already been through that test."
The project also reflects the role of systems integrators and technology partners in banking cloud modernisation programmes. Rather than relying only on in-house teams, many institutions use outside firms to design architectures, automate deployments and handle testing for large infrastructure changes, especially when established payment systems are involved.
Nitin Bahl, Strategic Business Unit Head, Fintech and Payments, Cognizant, said testing evidence remains central to banks' migration decisions.
"Banks do not move payment systems on optimism. They move on evidence," Bahl said. "Our engineers built a working environment on AWS and ran sustained load through it."