Sibos 24: making genAI pay

Generative artificial (genAI) intelligence technology has already had an impact on the way businesses approach payments, according to Hari Janakiraman, Head of Industry & Innovation TB at ANZ - but has only scratched the surface of the genAI opportunity.

Ahead of Sibos 2024, OnAir with ANZ Institutional spoke to Janakiraman and James Brown, Head of Market Management TB at ANZ, about how digital payment adoption is being fast-tracked by businesses amid increasingly transformative tech advances.

Janakiraman said while “exploration” around use cases for the tech was increasing, adoption of genAI in payments had been “deliberately slow” as businesses take care with the way data required for the programs is “stored, and how that information is then used for further learning”.

“A lot of consideration needs to be given in terms of responsible use of this (AI) technology, from a perspective of privacy [and] confidentiality,” he said.

“I think it will be a process of smaller steps. But a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to find out what is the best use of this technology and how can we…  bring it to life for our customers.”

Brown said initial use cases were “making life easier” for businesses and helping them make better decisions.

“I think it's a really promising early start to the technology,” he said. “But what I'm most excited about is probably what's to come in the next few years.”

You can listen to an edited version of the conversation on podcast below.

{video}

Janakiraman said security was a fertile area for the application of genAI in the payments space, given its ability to “look at large amounts of information and identify specific abnormalities”.

Much of the genAI work currently underway aims to test how genAI can drive efficiencies in payments, he said - but that was “just the tip of the iceberg” of what the tech could do.

“GenAI can do some process automation much better than the previous generations of machine learning and AI,” he said.

Accounts payable processing was one such example where genAI could potentially help, Janakiraman said, a significant pain point which can involve up to 25 different steps for businesses to reconcile payments received and made.

“The more we speak to our customers, we realise accounts payable is a significant process for them,” he said.

“genAI is being used and explored as a technology that can automate quite a lot of that process.”

Brown said as digitisation in the payment space grew, so too did the expectations of corporate customers of banks like ANZ, that increasingly want a “seamless, digitised experience” in line with consumer products.

“Innovations such as real-time payments and AI and cloud computing are in the right place at the right time for this expectation from corporate customers for really seamless, data-driven digital experiences”, Brown said.

The modern banking landscape, he said, had evolved to the point it was no longer good enough “to just provide a great banking solution”.

“Any sort of process which was manual, or horrible, is now being replaced by digital solutions,” Brown said.

The experts also spoke about how regulation and legislation is catching up on the increasing use of Application Programs Interfaces, or APIs – and why the pace of international trade is set to follow. Listen to the podcast above to find out more.

Kerry Leiper is a contributor at ANZ Institutional Insights