Unlocking the future of enterprise payment technology.

In the few years that artificial intelligence has been top of mind for enterprise technology leaders, rapid change has come to nearly every aspect of financial services. According to a 2025 KPMG survey, 86% of banks believe AI will be a competitive advantage; 82% are already increasing budget allocation to AI.

Payments, especially, is an area in which AI has the potential to make financial services more accessible and secure, from fraud detection to customer service. For financial institutions, embracing AI is key to gaining a competitive advantage — while those who hesitate to take action risk being left behind. 

Here are some of the most important use cases of AI in payments today.

End-to-end improvement

Artificial intelligence excels at two important things: it recognizes patterns and works with text (and, increasingly, speech) well enough to meaningfully alter the way enterprises are automating their payments-related processes.

In fraud detection, AI enables organizations to analyze transaction patterns in real time, making it much easier to surface anomalies. In back-office operations, AI is automating time-consuming tasks such as reconciliation and message correction, giving human operators more opportunity to focus on strategic, high-value work. Customer experience tools can now provide personalized payment servicing through predictive support and real-time issue resolution. From a leadership perspective, AI's ability to extract deep insights from payments data can support smarter business decisions, shaping everything from pricing strategies to liquidity management.

AI is also offering the opportunity to reimagine and improve every step of the payments value chain, from the earliest initiation stages through regulatory reporting. Consider a situation in which an analyst employee of a payments processor encounters an unfamiliar payment error code. An AI-powered payments navigator can act as a dedicated, expert assistant and provide an explanation of the error code, remedial steps and even preventative recommendations. Because this capability draws upon massive stores of technical documentation and platform-specific knowledge, teams can resolve concerns more efficiently and with greater confidence.

Intelligent routing makes it possible for AI to analyze historical payment patterns to select the optimal clearing channels for transactions. The technology can instantly translate plain-language instructions into precise syntax, reducing processing time from days to a matter of minutes. Even payment repair is improved, with AI able to connect to internal systems and, when paired with human oversight, execute repair steps automatically for failed transactions, thereby increasing speed and accuracy.

Implementing payments AI now

AI tools are, of course, still developing. But enterprise organizations shouldn’t mistake the fact that this story is still in its early chapters as a reason to wait jumping into this transformation.

Acting early delivers value, as banks that make targeted investments now can see tangible results and outpace the competition. However, before implementing revolutionary technologies right away, the immediate need is for organizations to undertake a careful analysis of their needs and capabilities. The initial step is to identify use cases that can serve as catalysts for revenue generation.

Keep in mind, too, that integrating AI does not mean abandoning legacy systems. Many modern AI solutions are designed to work on top of current environments, securely accessing data and executing tasks. This means the journey can begin with targeted, prioritized use cases that expand with time as the organization builds out its capabilities and governance.

 

A turning point

Just as it is landing in every other sector of financial services, AI presents a turning point for payments. It offers financial institutions the means to make payments more efficient, secure and focused on customer needs.

For financial institutions, the imperative is to act now. By identifying promising use cases, starting with focused projects and planning for scalable growth, organizations can begin to unlock the immense value of AI. More than just an exercise in adopting new technology, this is a journey about reimagining what’s possible and building a future where commerce empowers everyone to thrive.