Finastra Launches AI-Based OperatorAssist to Transform How Banks Address Payments Handling

WHY THIS MATTERS: The launch of an AI-driven resolution layer by a core infrastructure provider like Finastra marks a critical evolution in payments operations. As the global market shifts rapidly toward instant payments and the adoption of the ISO 20022 standard, banks are facing immense pressure to achieve near-perfect straight-through processing (STP). Legacy systems and manual workflows struggle to keep pace, leading to costly exception handling, which significantly degrades customer experience and inflates transaction costs. This solution addresses the core issue of operational friction by using machine learning to analyze, repair, and automate the resolution of complex payment inquiries. For financial institutions, the projected 20-30% reduction in manual investigation time translates directly into lower operational expenditure and a necessary competitive edge in a low-latency payments environment.

Finastra, a global leader in financial services software, today announced the launch of OperatorAssist, an AI-powered solution that is available to add to its payment hub user interface, designed to reduce errors, speed exception handling, and lower operational costs across the payments lifecycle.

Payment errors and inefficient exception handling remain among the most time-consuming and costly challenges in payments operations. OperatorAssist tackles these pain points by automating analysis, recommending repairs, and guiding users through resolution, reducing manual effort, improving accuracy and accelerating time to completion. Early results indicate the potential for efficiency gains upwards of 20%.

“OperatorAssist is revolutionizing how banks around the world handle payments,” said Barry Rodrigues, EVP, Payments at Finastra. “By combining AI with a cloud-native, ISO 20022-native platform, we’re removing friction from daily operations and empowering institutions with faster, smarter ways to resolve issues. Delivering speed, accuracy, and superior customer experience, this isn’t just an incremental improvement but a step-change in how payments teams work.”

OperatorAssist is testament to Finastra’s leadership as a modern payment operations provider, delivering speed, accuracy, and superior customer experience for banks worldwide. Measurable operational impact, includes:

• Faster exception handling: Reduces manual investigation time by 20-30%, saving users more than 1.5+ hours daily

• Improved accuracy and client experience: AI-driven repair recommendations reduce errors and resolution times

• Lower manual effort: Streamlines payment investigations and reporting

• Faster onboarding: Acts as a virtual expert, accelerating productivity for new users

• Simplified daily operations: Minimizes reliance on manual tracking and reporting

OperatorAssist is available to users of Global PAYplus and Payments To Go, extending Finastra’s cloud-native payments capabilities with optional additional AI functionality that improves speed, resilience, and customer outcomes.  

Gareth Lodge, Principal Analyst, Global Payments at Celent said, “The rate at which a bank can do straight-through processing is critical. Complex inquiries and exception processing can take a significant amount of capacity from bank operations, resulting in higher transaction costs and payment delivery delays, and a poorer customer experience. AI based tools that enhance the productivity of operations have potential to address these problems.”

FF NEWS TAKE: This move undeniably signals that the future of payment processing relies on AI augmentation for operational efficiency. By embedding this virtual expert directly into its payment hubs, Finastra is setting a new standard for vendors. The industry should watch for concrete metrics from initial adopters to confirm the promised 20% efficiency gains. If these numbers hold, a domino effect will follow, compelling every major bank and rival software provider to aggressively invest in AI-powered, friction-reducing tools to maintain viability in high-speed, high-volume payments