In a move described as one that will “help shape the future of payments,” PayNearMe announced on Wednesday that it has acquired the technology assets and hired the key employees of Marr Labs, an artificial intelligence company that develops agentic solutions to automate voice, messaging and workflows in complex, regulated environments.

PayNearMe highlighted the addition strengthens its ability to bring the advantages of agentic AI automation to its clients. Marr Labs has specialized expertise building and operating sophisticated AI systems at scale that complement PayNearMe’s existing product, engineering and AI teams.

The combination brings together Marr Labs’ experience developing and deploying AI in real-world environments with the scale and reach of PayNearMe’s established payments platform.

Founded in 2009, PayNearMe already processes more than $50 billion in payments annually, with more than 20,000 businesses using the PayXM platform to manage the payment experience for their organizations and customers.

Marr Labs was founded in 2023 and backed by Y Combinator. Its team brings decades of combined AI experience, including development of technology that powered early Siri products.

Marr Labs developed AI for demanding, highly regulated environments where reliability, compliance and user experience are critical. Its technology supported millions of customer interactions each month across leading financial services companies.

“PayNearMe has always focused on understanding and continuously improving the entire payment journey. AI provides powerful opportunities to further improve the experience delivered by our PayXM platform,” PayNearMe founder and CEO Danny Shader said in a news release.

“The Marr Labs team has proven its ability to build and deploy sophisticated AI systems at massive scale. Combining that expertise with PayNearMe’s deep understanding of our clients needs and challenges makes this combination so exciting,” Shader continued.

Marr Labs co-founder and CEO Dave Grannan added, “We’ve spent years building AI that can work reliably at scale and wanted to put that experience to work where it could have the greatest impact.

“PayNearMe has built a trusted platform serving thousands of businesses and has a deep understanding of the payment problems they need to solve. Joining PayNearMe gives our team the opportunity to bring what we’ve learned to a much broader market and help shape the future of payments,” Grannan went on to say.

The company elaborated about applying AI throughout the entire payment experience.

PayNearMe explained the potential of agentic AI lies in its ability to understand context, make decisions and act. In payments, the company said realizing that potential requires AI to be deeply embedded into the payment experience.

Integrating agents directly into the PayXM platform is central to PayNearMe’s vision for the future of AI in payments. Rather than operating as a bolt-on, AI becomes part of the payment experience itself.

“Agents provide only one part of the equation,” said Han Shu, co-founder and CTO of Marr Labs. “To take meaningful action, agents need access to the right data, business rules and workflows. And in payments, they have to operate reliably and within compliance requirements while maintaining natural conversational experience.”