InvoiceCloud and POWERCONNECT.AI Partner on AI and Payment Solutions for Utilities

InvoiceCloud and POWERCONNECT.AI have partnered to offer integrated artificial intelligence (AI) and payment solutions for utilities.

This collaboration brings together InvoiceCloud’s solution for digital bill payment services and POWERCONNECT.AI’s capabilities as an AI accelerator for the energy and utility industry, the companies said in a Thursday (Feb. 6) press release.

POWERCONNECT.AI’s partnerships within the Oracle and SAP ecosystems will allow InvoiceCloud to better support clients who use Oracle, SAP and other customer information systems, according to the release.

The partnership will also offer utilities additional integrations to make digital payments more convenient and user-friendly, AI digital assistants, multilingual self-service capabilities, and simplified training and onboarding, per the release said.

“By leveraging our AI technology alongside InvoiceCloud’s leading payment platform, we aim to transform the payment experience for both agents and customers, making bill payments easier, more intuitive, and more seamless than ever,” POWERCONNECT.AI Founder and CEO Steve Dawson said in the release. “After all, AI is only as intelligent as the data that informs it.”

“Integrating digital payments into AI-powered interactions will help create a faster, more efficient experience for today’s payers,” David Nieves, AVP, alliances at InvoiceCloud, said in the release.

Bill pay has become more digital, fueled by consumers’ adoption of mobile wallets, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and ACI Worldwide collaboration, “Digital Bill Payments: Mobile Wallets Gain Popularity, But Hurdles Remain.”

In another recent partnership in this space, FIS said in November that it teamed up with Oracle to remove paper checks from the utility billing process. FIS’ BillerIQ solution, running on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, will allow Oracle to roll out electronic bill delivery.

“The utility sector has historically used traditional payment methods,” Seamus Smith, group president of global automated finance at FIS, said at the time in a press release. “However, with smart meters and digital payment technologies like mobile banking and e-wallets, consumers now expect to pay bills digitally.”

In May 2023, Paymentus Holdings and Oracle began offering new billing and payments tools for energy and water sector utilities after fully validating the integration of the Paymentus Instant Payment Network (IPN) and electronic bill presentment and payment platform (EBPP) within the Oracle Energy and Water suite of Customer Information Systems.