Atomic Launches AI-Powered Authentication Engine for Payroll Connectivity and Other Uses

Atomic has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered authentication engine.

The new SmartAuth enables authentication adaptations in real-time, using AI and machine learning (ML) to identify required interactions and adapt, Atomic said in a Friday (May 12) press release.

This ability allows authentication process changes without requiring code updates, which traditionally took hours or days to develop and release, the provider of payroll connectivity said in the release.

“With SmartAuth, we can now offer our customers a truly seamless and hassle-free authentication experience, while reducing development time and increasing scalability,” Atomic Co-founder and CEO Jordan Wright said in the release. “In some places we’ve seen conversion rates in the range of 2-3x improvement by leveraging AI to help us provide consumers with access to their own data.”

Atomic’s SmartAuth uses AI to detect and update user input fields, dynamically course correct to maintain system connectivity and deliver an increased rate of successful authentication, according to the press release.

This new offering joins Atomic’s lineup of payroll system integrations that are used by financial institutions, FinTech firms and partners but it can have additional application as well, per the release.

“SmartAuth represents a significant breakthrough in the payroll connectivity space, enabling faster and more efficient authentication,” Atomic said in the release. “However, the potential applications of this technology extend far beyond payroll.”

With a growing portion of consumers interested in using digital technology to handle their financial affairs more effectively, financial institutions and FinTechs are stepping up to meet this demand.

In the payroll space, consumers typically log in to their payroll system and manually key in their bank account and routing number, or they set it up through their financial institution, which involves using physical forms or digital PDFs, Atomic Head of Markets Lindsay Davis told PYMNTS in an interview posted in September 2022.

“So today, it is really disjointed and disconnected, [and] the experience [is] highly prone to drop-off; you’re maybe going to do it and maybe do it later,” Davis said at the time. “But what Atomic does is it embeds [the payroll onboarding experience] within the financial application, either desktop or mobile.”