Prediction: AI Copilots Will Become Critical Merchant Tools, But Not A Major Differentiator

For the past year, our engineering team at NMI has been using AI copilots to speed up development and make room for solving bigger challenges. And we’re not the only ones — across the payments space, internal teams everywhere are adopting AI tools to streamline their workflows. But until now, most of that innovation has stayed behind the scenes.

That’s about to change.

I believe this will be the year AI copilots start to move towards more mainstream use — becoming a standard, merchant-facing feature built directly into payment platforms.

These copilots will help merchants simplify everything from reporting to account management, using natural, conversational interfaces. But here’s the catch: while merchants will quickly come to rely on these tools, they won’t see them as differentiators — they’ll expect them. 

That means that payment providers who provide AI copilots to their customers will begin to pull away from the pack. At least, until everyone else offers this technology as well. When that happens, the real differentiators will come from something much more human. 

I think 2026 will mark a turning point, with payments companies competing on both ends of the service spectrum: frictionless AI-powered self-service on one side, and personalized, white-glove support on the other.

In 2025, OpenAI conducted a study of 1.5 million ChatGPT conversations to see how users were interacting with the system. They found that:

• 49% of user messages were classified as “asking,” where a user is “seeking information or clarification to inform a decision”
• The second biggest use case was “doing”— using ChatGPT to produce output or perform a task, with 40% of messages falling into this category

People are becoming more comfortable using plain language interactions to find information and perform work. So, what does this mean for payments?

Merchants everywhere are looking for simpler, smarter ways to manage payments. They want tools that deliver real value without demanding too much time or attention. Generative AI is a natural fit for that need, transforming complex, time-consuming tasks into quick conversations in plain-language. 

That’s why I believe this will be the year we start seeing AI-powered self-serve tools built directly into payments platforms. And once they arrive, they’ll quickly become the industry standard.

Use Case Example: Reporting

Generative search is so powerful because it allows people to ask questions and receive answers in the way that’s most natural to them. Instead of digging through endless reports or clicking through dashboards, the large language model (LLM) does the heavy lifting: sorting results, scanning data and pulling everything together into a clear answer. Reporting is a great example of where this kind of interaction could be a game-changer in payments, because AI will enable companies to move away from simply generating numbers, to generating clear, actionable insights. 

No merchant wants to navigate through 75 different menu items or take 89 steps to build the perfect brief. They also don’t want to spend time trying to figure out what all the data in a dense report means. But they still need deep business intelligence to make informed decisions.

Imagine if a merchant could simply click on an AI copilot built into their payments account and give it a plain-language command like “generate today’s invoices” or “tell me what I need to know about this week’s business.”

That would lead to three big improvements:

1. It would save the merchant significant time upfront
2. It would shift the task of data analysis to a tool ideally suited for the job
3. Instead of charts and tables, it would return deeper insights in a format that’s clear and easy to understand

As people get more accustomed to using LLMs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini in their daily lives, demand for this kind of plain-language assistance is going to skyrocket. In the coming years, we’ll see more payment systems start to roll out AI copilots to meet the demand, and they’ll quickly become the norm, much like we’ve already seen with AI support agents.

While I have no doubt that integrated AI assistants will become essential merchant tools, they won’t offer a lasting competitive edge. Once they begin rolling out, they’ll quickly become a baseline expectation — and most platforms will offer some version built on the same few commercial models. That means any early advantage will fade as these tools become standard across the industry.

And it doesn’t stop at copilots. As more platforms rely on AI, user experiences will start to feel increasingly similar. In that sense, AI will act as an equalizer, meaning that as those experiences converge, payment providers will need to look elsewhere for meaningful differentiation — particularly in the human-centered areas where AI still falls short.

For all its strengths, AI can’t provide thoughtful customer service, strategic guidance, or the personal touch of a dedicated account manager who truly understands a business’s needs. But merchants absolutely still need those things. In fact, as AI becomes more prevalent, the demand for real human support may only grow stronger. 

That’s why I believe we’ll see an important shift over the coming years: the more AI becomes embedded in payments platforms, the more value merchants will place on the human side of the equation. The payment providers that succeed will be the ones who deliver on both fronts — giving merchants powerful self-service tools for day-to-day tasks, while ensuring expert, one-on-one support is available the moment it’s needed.

Ultimately, differentiation will come down to giving merchants the freedom to handle almost everything on their own (and delivering exceptional one-on-one support the moment they can’t). People love taking care of things on their own, right up until they don’t. There’s always a point at which self-service fails. And when it does, any delay or friction in getting help will feel even more frustrating. So that balance of AI-powered merchant enablement combined with white-glove human support will be essential.

AI will be everywhere in payments over the coming years and if you don’t speak the language, you’ll be left behind. Merchants will soon expect AI to be part of their payment experience. It will also be an increasingly important part of how they find and engage with frontline payments providers. But there’s a critical balance to be struck. 

Adopting AI without preserving a high-quality, customer-focused support experience can be just as damaging as failing to adopt AI at all. In the coming years, providers will need to strike the right balance between automation and human connection, and how well they manage that balance could be a defining factor in their competitiveness.

Thankfully, integrating AI into merchant experiences is getting easier and more affordable. The efficiency gains it brings, from speeding up development to reducing workloads, frees up resources that can be reinvested in critical human roles like support teams, account managers and integration specialists. That means companies that get it right can benefit on both fronts, delivering better self-serve experiences through AI copilots and more exceptional human interactions, all while spending less in the process.

To learn more about how we’re enabling our partners to stay at the forefront of payments innovation, reach out to a member of our team.