ACI Worldwide, a global provider of electronic payment and banking products, and Retail Decisions (ReD), a fraud prevention company, today announced that they have entered into a definitive transaction agreement, according to a press release. Under the terms of the agreement, ACI will acquire ReD for an all-cash purchase price of $205 million and expects the transaction to close in the middle of the third quarter, 2014.

Brookwood, England-based ReD is an e-commerce and fraud prevention company serving the payments industry. The company's suite of products is intended to help customers drive up revenues while reducing fraud losses and increasing the efficiency of their fraud management teams, according to the announcement. ReD serves retailers, issuers, acquirers, processors and switch networks globally.  

ACI said in the announcement the acquisition will help it focus more on card-not-present fraud prevention as payments increasingly move online. According to market research from eMarketer in a February 2014 report, the global e-commerce market is projected to grow over 17 percent each year, representing a total value of nearly $2.4 trillion by 2017. ACI noted in the press release as the U.S. moves toward adoption of EMV standards, fraud attempts are expected to shift toward the card-not-present online segment. 

"Retailers are currently operating disparate systems for their online, mobile and point-of-sale operations," Philip Heasley, president and CEO of ACI Worldwide, said in a statement. "ACI and ReD together have an unrivaled merchant retail solution — global, omni-channel with integrated fraud management built on Universal Payments technology. This solution will not only guarantee a consistent, unified customer experience in any retailer modality, but also will be a key part of our real-time commerce, any-to-any transaction strategy. Additionally, ReD's consortium models, business intelligence offerings, modeling and risk analyst expertise will both complement and enhance our issuer risk management solutions."