Square brings conversational artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to UK
Square AI, built into the Square platform, is designed to help businesses make smarter, faster decisions using internal payments and commerce data, the company said in a news release Tuesday (February 10).
“For a long time, turning that data into real insights was the preserve of large organizations with analysts and operations teams,” Willem Avé, Square’s global head of product, said in a release.
“Square AI levels the playing field by bringing powerful analytics into the flow of business operations through a simple conversational AI assistant, allowing businesses of all sizes to combine intuition with real data without the complexity.”
The company introduced Square AI last June and added new features in October, including external weather, events, news, and review data. By integrating this data with merchant business metrics, Square said at the time that it can provide insights to help inform decisions about menus, staffing and inventory.
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Square said the UK launch of Square AI comes as new research it commissioned showed that 53% of UK small and medium-sized businesses use AI in their business, but less than a third use it regularly.
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“This low level of adoption has left many companies experimenting without seeing value or not leveraging AI at all,” the company said.
This uneven level of AI adoption across UK businesses is consistent with PYMNTS Intelligence research showing that the use of AI can vary by business type.
For example, 75% of technology companies surveyed said they were very familiar with agent AI, compared to about 1 in 3 product manufacturing companies and 38% of service companies. Additionally, 42% of technology companies are actively exploring ways to integrate agent AI into their operations, while less than 4% of product companies and none of the services companies said the same.
At the same time, small and medium-sized enterprises implementing artificial intelligence are adopting the technology to compete with larger companies, PYMNTS wrote last year.
“By automating processes, augmenting talent, and speeding decision-making, AI allows small and medium-sized businesses to bypass traditional systems and jump directly into AI-first business models that rival those offered by large incumbents,” the report said.
