Customer engagement platform Superbench and payment infrastructure provider HitPay have launched an integrated tool that combines artificial intelligence (AI), booking and payment functions for business-to-consumer service small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines.

“Getting a customer from ‘I’m interested’ to actually booking and paying is where platforms tend to lose people because the tools in between are fragmented,” Superbench co-founder Jingjing Zhong said in a statement on Tuesday.

The tool allows businesses to use AI to handle customer inquiries and connect users directly to booking and payment systems, reducing the need to manage separate communication, scheduling and transaction platforms.

The launch comes as AI adoption among Philippine businesses remains limited. A study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies found that only 14.9% of firms use AI tools, with adoption concentrated among larger companies in urban areas.

That gap matters for smaller service firms that rely on fast responses and smooth checkout flows to convert interest into completed bookings, especially when customers expect a single process rather than several handoffs.

“For a small business, that fragmentation is costly,” Mr. Zhong said. “A customer who has a great conversation and then hits a clunky checkout, or a payment method they don’t recognize, remembers the checkout, not the conversation.”

The partnership combines Superbench’s customer-facing automation tools with HitPay’s payment infrastructure.

Superbench handles business information such as pricing, promotions and answers to frequently asked questions, while HitPay processes online and in-person payments.

The companies said managing local payment networks can be difficult for small businesses because of fraud controls, card-network requirements and licensing rules across markets.

“Every AI tool a small business adopts eventually touches money, a deposit for a service, a card payment at checkout, a refund when something goes wrong,” HitPay Chief Executive Officer Aditya Haripurkar said.

“That’s the layer we’ve spent years building: catching fraud, following card-network rules, and settling funds into the right account and currency in every market,” he added.

HitPay serves more than 20,000 businesses across the Asia-Pacific region. The company is backed by investors including Tiger Global, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital and HOF Capital.

The payment company is regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank Negara Malaysia, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, and the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. — Juliana Chloe A. Gonzales