Allpay Says AI Transformation Boosts Productivity, Software Releases

U.K. payments company allpay is using artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud intelligence to position it well for future growth.

After adopting an AI coding assistant and migrating its systems to the cloud through Microsoft Azure, the FinTech provider saw a 10% boost in coding productivity and a 25% increase in production releases in just nine months — surpassing its total output from the previous year.

“At the same time as getting codes out the door faster, GitHub Copilot is helping us to raise the quality of code, testing and applications,” Nick Woolley, IT director at allpay, said in a blog post.

Allpay, which has processed payments since 1994, made these changes as part of its wider digital transformation strategy after the company realized its legacy data center infrastructure could not support its growth plans.

The migration to the cloud brought scalability, compliance and U.K. data residency, all critical for a regulated firm, according to allpay.

Allpay uses GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant integrated directly into developers’ workflows, to boost their productivity.

“GitHub Copilot is great because it recommends things you potentially haven’t thought about,” said Adam Wheater, principal development chapter lead. “The people who are using it are definitely seeing benefit from it.”

The AI tool has improved productivity not only by speeding up coding tasks — such as generating stored procedures in minutes instead of hours — but also by enhancing code quality and reducing defects.

“The amount of time we are spending on rework and defect fixing has dropped,” Woolley added. “We’re getting fewer incidents.”

AI is rewriting the rules of financial services through four emerging themes, including reimagining back-office infrastructure and data readiness, according to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Payment Execs on Agentic AI: ‘The Back Office Will Never Be the Same.’”

The other three themes are agentic AI already having an impact in payments and financial services, its capacity for scaling and automating processes and experimentation driving customer-centric innovation.

Read more: Payment Execs on Agentic AI: ‘The Back Office Will Never Be the Same’

Modernizing Processes With AI

The shift has also improved the developer experience, especially for junior staff.

“Whereas previously people would have got stuck or had to go find help by asking another developer or an online search, now we just ask GitHub Copilot,” Wheater said. “It’s like pair programming.”

GitHub Copilot’s ability to explain legacy code has become particularly valuable.

The AI coding assistant “helps people touching legacy code understand it better, especially when the people who originally wrote the code have moved on,” Wheater said.

The integration with Azure tooling has also enabled more robust DevOps practices. “We’ve set up automated delivery pipelines with unit tests on them and we’ve made a big push with infrastructure as code,” Woolley said.

As a rural U.K. employer, allpay sees its cutting-edge tech stack as a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining developers.

“We’re always looking for accelerators or anything that gives us a leg up when it comes to recruitment. Providing a modern working environment and using a cutting-edge toolset helps,” Woolley said.

Beyond productivity, GitHub Copilot has encouraged more frequent and standardized code reviews.

“GitHub Copilot frees up time for frequent code reviews, ensuring standardization and significantly improving code quality,” said Adrian Michalowski, cloud architect at allpay.

Developers are also using their freed-up time to experiment with new AI capabilities, including building a solution that uses Azure AI Services to review pull requests.

“We’ve now got another layer of AI flagging issues and checking quality as well as the human checks,” Wheater said.

By optimizing workflows and embracing AI, allpay is contributing to a broader digital economy narrative where intelligent automation is central to innovation, cost-efficiency and speed.

“GitHub Copilot is another tool in our armory which supports us to get incremental changes out faster so we can deliver value to the business faster,” Woolley said.

The company continues to explore ways to extend the benefits of AI and cloud. “We’re trying to use all the tooling available to us to deliver a better service internally and to our customers,” Woolley added.

Allpay’s experiences dovetail with PYMNTS data that shows most CFOs say their companies have seen a good return on their investment in AI. In fact, the executives say they’ve also seen expanded use cases.