Paysend CEO Advocates Selective AI Access to Boost Productivity

At Paysend, a payments technology firm based in London, artificial intelligence tools are not handed out freely to all employees. The company’s CEO, Ben Chisell, takes a cautious stance on the AI craze, highlighting the importance of responsible and strategic use rather than broad distribution.

Chisell, who has a background working at major companies like Amazon, eBay, and Starling Bank, shared with CNBC that Paysend’s engineering team has been able to increase its output by approximately 25 percent without expanding its size. However, he stresses that simply providing AI tools to everyone does not guarantee improved results. Instead, access is reserved for those who have demonstrated they can effectively leverage the technology.

"I know it sounds very unglamorous and unsexy as an approach given the world of tokenmaxxing and AI, but I think it’s really, really important," Chisell said. He warns that in less disciplined hands, AI can amplify negative behaviors, such as laziness or poor decision-making.

This approach contrasts with many other companies that are embracing AI by distributing it widely across their workforce. For instance, Lloyds Banking Group in London has equipped 40,000 employees with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, with nearly all users actively engaging with the tool. Similarly, Sage, a software company headquartered in Newcastle, credits its AI coding tools with saving hundreds of thousands of work hours. Grant Thornton UK has also introduced AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude to all staff as part of a £500 million investment in artificial intelligence.

Despite these widespread adoptions, a UK government report published in January found that while 75 percent of businesses using AI saw productivity improvements, 77 percent did not observe a corresponding increase in revenue. This indicates that AI’s impact on business outcomes is complex and not simply a matter of broader deployment.

Ben Chisell’s perspective is shared by other industry leaders. Lokdeep Singh, CEO of British enterprise software provider Unily, regards AI as a powerful asset best allocated to top performers. He is cautious about using AI purely as a tool for cutting costs or reducing headcount. "I personally believe you should use it to expand your ambition rather than make the team smaller," Singh explained. However, he acknowledges that economic pressures have led some companies to prioritize cost reduction.

At Paysend, Chisell insists on measuring the actual contribution of AI tools before granting ongoing access. New employees receive a trial period of one month to experiment with AI and demonstrate tangible benefits. In one case, a new search engine optimization lead initially requested access to the Claude AI platform. After a month, the employee concluded that the tool was only helpful for speeding up brief creation and proposed developing a specialized AI agent focused on content briefs instead. This tailored approach reflects the company’s emphasis on practical results over hype.

Other companies have taken different routes. CoreView, a London-based software firm led by CEO Simon Azzopardi, initially rolled out AI tools broadly among its engineers. The team used AI to analyze logs, generate documentation, and accelerate onboarding. Over time, developers began coordinating AI agents to handle various coding and quality assurance tasks, reducing project timelines from weeks to days.

Still, Azzopardi cautions that relying too heavily on AI without sufficient expertise can create an illusion of efficiency. "You feel more efficient, but you actually aren’t," he remarked. Even so, CoreView has been expanding its workforce rather than downsizing, using AI-driven gains to take on additional projects. For example, when onboarding a significant client within the UK’s National Health Service, the company only needed to add one engineer to maintain other commitments.

The broader question of how AI affects employment remains critical. Chisell believes businesses succeed when they support workers in transitioning to new roles instead of replacing them outright. He points to customer service professionals who have developed problem-solving skills that are valuable in various parts of the organization. For him, technology should complement human judgment rather than eliminate it.

"Having a human in the loop shouldn’t mean human CC’d," Chisell said. "It should mean human ownership." This philosophy underscores Paysend’s careful, targeted approach to AI adoption amid a global surge in artificial intelligence integration across industries.