Global Payments Is Running AI Across Four Layers of Its Payment Stack Simultaneously

Global Payments disclosed three distinct AI-powered capabilities on its Q2 2026 earnings call on August 5, spread across hardware, software, and emerging commerce infrastructure.

According to the company, the three disclosures cover different layers of the payment stack. At the hardware layer, Global Payments introduced a new Genius handheld device built for Edge AI, running an AI model locally on the device itself rather than routing processing to the cloud. 

Global Payments said local processing is designed to reduce latency in restaurant environments. The handheld also supports AI-powered voice ordering, allowing servers to speak with customers while the point-of-sale system builds an order in the background. Global Payments said the system is designed to operate in noisy restaurant environments.

At the software layer, Global Payments introduced the Genius AI Reporting Tool, described on the call as an Agentic Assistant.

The tool allows business operators to ask natural language questions across their own operational data and receive answers grounded in their actual reporting history. Rather than navigating dashboards or building custom queries, users describe what they want to understand and the system surfaces the relevant trends, patterns, and insights proactively, according to the company.

"We are accelerating the adoption of AI across our products and operations while also establishing a strong foundation to lead in the emerging era of Agentic commerce," said CEO Cameron Bready.

Revenue Boost, Global Payments' payment optimization solution, is generating an additional 50 basis point improvement in approval rates through AI-powered decisioning, according to the company. 

Separately, the company's patent-pending authentication optimization solution is using agentic capabilities to improve authorization performance for 3D Secure transactions, applying AI agent logic to the authentication workflow that governs card-not-present payments in e-commerce, according to the company.

Global Payments also disclosed several agentic commerce pilots.. Bready confirmed that Global Payments has multiple agentic commerce pilots in flight with leading AI platforms and some of the world's largest global retailers. 

The company is building a platform-agnostic modular set of capabilities designed to allow merchants to participate in agentic commerce regardless of which AI platform, agent, or payment method their customers ultimately use. 

The AI disclosures arrive inside a quarter where Genius bookings grew 25% sequentially, new customer yields for Genius clients rose 75% year over year, and new Genius locations grew more than 50% year over year. Global Payments reported Q2 2026 adjusted net revenue of $3.16 billion, with adjusted EPS of $3.46, up 12%.