How Google is accelerating Worldline's push into AI

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New forms of artificial intelligence have raised that stakes in an already fierce battle between legacy payment companies and fintechs, placing pressure on IT teams to shorten development time.  

To address this, Worldline, which is based in France and operates in more than 40 countries including the U.S., has entered a strategic partnership with Google Cloud. The collaboration is designed to speed the next phase of Worldline's two-year-old "Go to Cloud" automation strategy, which includes spotting new uses for artificial intelligence. 

"Tech development needs to be faster," said Marc-Henri Desportes, deputy CEO of Worldline. 

Companies with their roots in transaction processing have invested heavily in strategies to remain relevant as their skills become an incrementally smaller part of a broader digital commerce strategy at merchants. Technology firms such as Stripe, PayPal and Block have taken advantage of that trend to gain ground through a mix of digital financial products designed for both merchants and consumers. 

Worldline will access Google Cloud's data analytics and AI to improve insights from Worldline's existing data to build new payment products, merchant services, streamline customer engagement and boost the use of low-carbon technology to expedite green strategies for clients.

Depending on the scenario, a year-long project time can be cut by 6 months by using cloud-hosted technology alongside AI and machine learning, contends Anthony Cirot, vice president of the EMEA South (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) for Google Cloud.  

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There are several use cases where AI can provide benefits such as fraud detection, enhanced identity management and user authentication, Cirot said, adding that Google and Wordlline are exploring potential generative AI use cases, Cirot said. 

"At our heart, we're a data company," Cirot said. "When it comes to working with data companies, much of the conversation is about how to get insights out of data, which then becomes a machine learning and AI conversation."

New forms of machine learning, such as generative AI, are emerging as a potential tool for financial services firms to add more precision to product development and client engagement. Gen AI analyzes data to produce original content. Payment companies are using gen AI to help customer service staff communicate with customers, to aid fraud detection and to help programmers analyze data faster. There are also AI uses for internal staff, such as speeding research or helping employees write reports. 

"Innovative payment service providers are already deploying machine learning on a mass scale," said Ron van Wezel, a strategic advisor for Datos Insights, adding that machine learning can help security risk and transaction routing, while gen AI can aid help desk support through AI copilots, customer education and job efficiency. 

"You can't survive as a processor without deploying AI and integrating it into each of your development plans." van Wezel said. 

The technology could contribute to helping Wordline work faster, Worldline said.  

"Payment companies must accelerate tech development to address merchant challenges such as meeting consumer demands for convenience and seamless omnichannel experiences," said Desportes, adding that fraud, compliance and balancing the need to operate globally while maintaining local service are also concerns. 

There is also a need to contain the cost of technology development, integrate with older technology partners and improve analysis, Desportes said. "These efforts are crucial for supporting merchants in a rapidly changing landscape of consumer preferences and regulatory requirements," Desportes said.

Worldline, which is recovering from a stock slide in 2023 and a downsizing earlier this year, gets a potential boost by serving as a Google payment provider, supporting cross-border transactions and customer service. Google benefits from adding a major international payment company as it battles Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to provide AI to banks and financial institutions. 

Worldline's competitors are also looking to benefit from gen AI. Fiserv, which acquired payment company First Data in 2019, has said gen AI and large language models can aid code writing, audit reports, reconciliation, Know Your Customer compliance, and dozens of other tasks. Ingenico, a French payment company that merged with Worldline in 2020, is accelerating its use of AI to analyze consumer purchase behaviors to inform marketing, service and other functions. Worldline sold Ingenico in 2022 to a group of private equity funds. 

Among other payment companies, Stripe uses gen AI to aid product development while providing payments for OpenAI, a Microsoft-backed lab that develops ChatGPT. PayPal is betting on AI-powered services to drive its recovery. And Klarna is deploying gen AI to nearly all of its internal staff and is basing hiring on the technology's impact. 

While payment companies have used AI-powered modeling for tasks such as fraud prevention for at least a decade, broader uses of AI for merchant services and payment processing are emerging, according to Lily Varon, a principal analyst at Forrester. 

"One of the neatest examples is transforming data formatting in the flow of an authorization for higher success rates, or using AI to let merchants use natural language to query data sets, compare metrics, and create reports," Varon said. "But it takes data science mastery, and it takes troves of payments data, better user research in product design and development to make informed choices about where and how to deploy AI effectively."