Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer the future, but the present. AI is the technology that powers the verbal commands you give Siri. It operates driverless cars and can beat you in online games. It may sound intrusive, or even creepy, but companies are investing in AI to learn your behaviors – and monetize those behaviors.
So what exactly is AI? Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines – especially computer systems – to make decisions like a person. These processes include learning, reasoning, and self-correction. Particular applications of AI include expert systems, speech recognition and machine vision.
AI is commonly used in smartphones, reservation systems, medical diagnosis and, of course, finance. It makes possible greater efficiencies, faster processing, and almost complete accuracy, and is affecting nearly every industry, including the payments ecosystem.
It seems only natural that AI would move into payments. It has the potential to streamline the payment chain, reduce fraud, improve customer service and optimize risk assessment—all reasons venture financing is flowing into AI.
According to a CB Insights annual AI funding report, funding in AI start-ups increased from just under $600 million in 2012 to $5.021 billion in 2016. And in 2016 alone, over 200 companies raised $1.5 billion of equity funding in the first half of the year. This tremendous growth is spurred by the promise for radical change that AI brings to most industries.
There are many types of AI, but for payments – particularly the high-risk merchant processing industry – the most important types include Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Verbal and Vision Recognition, and AI bots.
A perfect example of a nimble company using AIto grow their business is Walmart. With 11,700 stores and 140 million weekly shoppers, Walmart has used machine learning to build a digital relationship with in-store customers, becoming the second largest online retailer.
Tian Tian Ventures (TTV) is changing the landscape of the current payment industry by being the first in the market to adopt and integrate AI inits e-payment solution as it plans to launch its own e-payment gateway, TT-Pay.
