Real-time payments provider ACI Worldwide announced new digital payments options for U.S. federal taxpayers, but not for state filings. ACI is the first platform to offer tax payments through Venmo.

Why should we care?
While ACI may be the first platform to offer these payment options, its partnerships with PayPal and Venmo may symbolize growing pressure for U.S. tax filing systems to integrate with the mobile-forward world of fintech. According to ACI’s internal research, 90% of IRS electronic payments made through its platform are completed online or on a mobile browser. ACI also saw IRS payments through mobile increase by 85% between 2021 to 2022. The company further identified this move as a beneficial one for the U.S. government. “By providing these convenient payment options, we are enabling taxpayers to send payments through the methods that suit them best and reducing the need for the IRS to process paper-based payments, which is more time consuming and costly,” said Sanjay Gupta, Head of Biller Segment at ACI. If ACI’s feature grows the platform’s client base, then we should expect tax filing giants like Intuit to follow suit. A final frontier remains regardless of payment method, though: overhauling the byzantine U.S. tax return landscape.