Payments Firms Accelerate Automation to Conquer Second-Half Headwinds

Companies are using AI to streamline identity and business verification and fight fraud, Trulioo Chief Technology Officer Hal Lonas writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Halftime 2025: Charting the Future of Payments.”

A seasoned pilot recognizes the need for mid-course corrections to stay on course; the primary course correction for the payments industry mid-2025 is mainly around artificial intelligence (AI), whether for fraud defenses, tech stack efficiency or compliance obligations.

Trulioo isn’t a payments company, but we partner with enterprise payments providers around the globe for identity and business verification. That gives us a unique perspective because we’re seeing the payments landscape through the eyes of hundreds of enterprise organizations that use us for millions of transactions every year.

We find that their priorities for the second half of the year are strikingly similar.

Tech stack complexity is a common headwind for payments providers, particularly as they operate across borders and take on local vendors for each different region.

They want to transform the verification process from a days-long, manual grind into a streamlined, tech-driven operation completed in minutes. The problem is especially acute for business verification. When payments companies enter new markets, they typically integrate new business verification vendors, and each integration requires scarce engineering resources to add and maintain. Then they face the challenge of verifying ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs), so they add yet another vendor to the stack. Each added vendor requires monitoring and error or outage handling, and logic to waterfall to the next vendor when they fail. Pretty soon the tech stack is unmaintainable and requires increasing investment and manual effort — precisely the problems automation is meant to solve.

Liminal highlights these problems in a 2025 business verification report. According to the report, 53% of the organizations surveyed are considering simplifying their business verification vendor stacks, with 85% who do so citing improved efficiency.

The report also shows 95% of respondents plan to adopt AI agents in business verification in the next two years. Integrated, AI-driven platforms that combine business and identity verification in the same onboarding workflow can help organizations shed the excess weight from their vendor stacks.

Deepfakes and injection attacks, along with AI-assisted third-party and synthetic identity fraud, are increasing threats.

The numbers back that up. The ABA Banking Journal reported 22% of organizations have experienced payment fraud from deepfake or executive impersonation attacks. Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services projects AI-driven fraud losses could triple from $12.3 billion in 2023 to $40 billion in 2027 in the U.S.

But a strategy that applies cutting edge AI-driven verification can defeat a fraudster’s AI, which is likely to defeat incumbent legacy technology.

Some innovative organizations are also employing business monitoring intelligence to proactively watch for changes in their partner businesses. AI can watch for seemingly minor but significant changes around the clock and help with regulatory re-verification requirements.

Keeping pace with regulatory change has become an increasingly complex challenge.

In the U.S., for example, the Corporate Transparency Act set forth a requirement that companies operating there register their beneficial owners with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Just as the regulation was set to take effect in March 2025, the U.S. government eliminated the reporting requirements for U.S.-based companies.

In neighboring Canada, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act requires entities that report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) capture UBO information when doing business with other companies.

Once again, an AI-driven platform can quickly adapt to the rapidly changing conditions and help organizations stay ahead of shifting regulations. It can automatically tailor verification workflows to meet any regulatory requirement, no matter how the winds shift. This is the new normal, and organizations that can adapt with agility will chart the course and get to their destination without delays.

Having reached midway 2025 cruise altitude, payments enterprises have an opportunity to assess their strengths and weaknesses.

AI, whether in verification or regulatory compliance, is fast becoming the trusted autopilot and can keep organizations on course for success in the second half of the year.

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