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Artificial intelligence emerged last year as a trending technology in payments, and now differences are starting to emerge in how businesses are viewing and deploying the technology, with small businesses showing the most enthusiasm, a new report from the big Atlanta-based processor Global Payments Inc. shows.
In fact, some 94% of SMBs surveyed for the report are already testing, deploying, or now using AI to support biometrics, while two-thirds of them are using the technology in tap-and-pay or tap-to-phone transactions, according to “Staying Out Front: How Payments Are Driving Differentiation,” released early Monday. The report reports research in such areas as fraud, embedded payments, and payment orchestration, as well as artificial intelligence.
The research, which involved discussions with some 600 payments executives, as well as input from payments experts, shows small businesses are drawn to AI technology by its ability to confer efficiencies typically available only to large enterprises.
Still, while small businesses appear far more likely to embrace AI, 13% said they don’t “fully understand the technology,” while many expressed concern about AI’s reliability, compared to 6% of larger sellers.
Most respondents told the survey they see potential for AI in improving digital wallets, where the technology is paving the way for what the report calls “super wallets.” This technology enables voice commands to such functions as money transfers and e-commerce transactions. That paves the way for so-called virtual AI assistants and embedded chatbots, the report says.
Again, smaller businesses are more active in this application, with 82% indicating they are piloting or offering digital wallets of any kind, while just 25% of enterprise businesses are doing likewise. At the same time, the report says enterprise businesses are saying they will, at least for the time being, stay away from using AI for embedded payments, payment orchestration, or unified commerce. The research “revealed that [enterprise companies] are two times more likely to be concerned about data privacy compared with small and midsized companies,” the report says.
