Artificial intelligence might play a role the next time you pay your utility bill.
The bill payment company Paymentus is now employing AI to smooth the online payments process for consumers, CEO Dushyant Sharma said in a Thursday interview.
Fintech companies have quickly and loudly adopted artificial intelligence in recent years to spot fraud and help with customer service, among other things.
But Sharma told Payments Dive that the rapidly advancing technology can also help when you settle up with your water or electric company.
The technology can assist customer service agents by providing key details about a customer quickly, so the agent doesn’t face a cumbersome process of looking them up, he said.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based Paymentus counts utility providers and other entities that send regular bills to consumers among its customers. The company provides a platform for which rate payers can pay those bills.
Sharma discussed the company’s role in the process along with how their services are evolving in the age of AI.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
PAYMENTS DIVE: Who are your customers?
Dushyant Sharma: We are a cloud-based, cloud native bill payment service provider processing non-discretionary household bills for companies like utilities, government entities, insurance companies, telecommunications companies, healthcare companies, mortgage companies, and property management companies. A typical government entity will be our customer, a utility will be our customer, a telephone provider will be our customer.
What kind of services do you provide?
If you receive an email saying your bill is ready, we probably sent that email. If you click on the link to see your bill, you’re seeing it on our system.
Can you talk about how you use AI in the payment process?
Dushyant Sharma
Permission granted by Paymentus
If I may take a little bit of a segue here, most of the interactions anyone has, if they’re understood, then they feel good about it. If they are not understood, it doesn’t go well. One of the things which we are trying to make sure of is that each customer of a billing company feels that their service provider understands them. So if I’m on the road and I’m calling the insurance company and saying ‘Hey, does my insurance policy cover my rental car? Do I need additional insurance?’ those interactions could take place in such a way that as soon as [the customer] starts interacting, [the customer service agent] already knows the answer is ‘yes.’ We know their policy, we can answer that question, and then while we are with them, they can say ‘We would like to make a payment as well for our policy.’ What we believe that AI will be able to do is to remove the chasm that exists between the customer and the service provider, and bring them a little bit closer to each other.
I’ve heard the term ‘agentic’ AI thrown around a lot, does this fall into that category?
Yes, because the most important aspect of agentic AI is having the customer context, that personalization. That’s what we are focused on.
What were the highlights from your earnings report last week?
We are growing rapidly, 40% growth on the top line, but also profitably. We have raised our guidance for the year.