“ AI IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY AND AT THIS STAGE IT ’ S VERY MUCH ABOUT LEARNING AND TESTING HYPOTHESES [...] HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IS ESSENTIAL TO ACHIEVING THAT ”
— Richard Ambrose , CEO , Azimo
the realisation of automation ’ s full potential has barely started . “ As far as the consumer experience is concerned , automation has come a long way : customers can make a transaction easily and enjoy fast delivery times as a result of automated routing , matching , compliance checks and reconciliations ,” Ambrose states . “ However , there remain many large financial institutions where manual processes are still dominant . If they can ’ t or won ’ t replatform , they risk becoming hopelessly uncompetitive against the digital payments companies who can be faster , cheaper and more customer-focused through putting automation first .”
In the post-COVID-19 world , where everyone is searching for surety at a time of unprecedented uncertainty , digital payments have the ability to provide much-needed reassurance . “ Paydays are so very important right now ,” states Menager . “ In this regard , there ’ s a lot of automation opportunity on bill payments : everything from payment to cash management . People are seeing what ’ s already been done and already consider payments to be ‘ transformed ’ already , but I think it ' s early days and there are still a lot of areas for further development .” Whatever transformation is left , he concludes , will crucially need to accommodate both the effects of COVID and the increasingly borderless structure of global payments . “ Payments in Europe are pretty uniform , but the standards in Asia , the US and Latin America are very different . Any automation strategy needs to be flexible enough to be rebuilt or rethought depending on the given geographic area of operation .”
43 fintechmagazine . com