J.P. Morgan Payments Automates, Saves 13 Billion Keystrokes
The payments industry often measures progress in milliseconds, with real-time rails and instant settlement dominating the conversation. However, for many businesses, the biggest source of friction is everything surrounding the payment itself. For J.P. Morgan Payments, that friction still arrives in envelopes.
In 2025, the bank processed roughly 480 million checks and payment documents through its lockbox network. Behind every payment was a mix of invoices, remittance slips, handwritten notes, folded documents, staples, and countless formatting variations that traditionally required human intervention.
Automating the Paper Behind Payments
Before automation, processing that volume meant employees performed roughly 13 billion manual keystrokes every year. To address this, J.P. Morgan Payments focused on eliminating the work created by checks, which still account for about 25% to 26% of outgoing and incoming B2B payments in the U.S.
The bank rebuilt its lockbox platform in 2020 with AI embedded into its core workflows. Once payment documents are scanned, computer vision and machine learning extract payment information, validate business rules, and review documents automatically.
More recently, large language models have been added to support increasingly complex exception handling. J.P. Morgan Payments’ tech systems can now process more than 4,000 envelope and document permutations, while the AI processing platform now achieves over 99.999% accuracy in document data extraction and business rule validation.
Robotic Automation
In 2025, the bank extended that automation into the physical world, deploying robotics at its lockbox facility that open envelopes, extract checks and invoices, unfold documents, organize paperwork, and prepare everything for AI processing. According to Michelle Conklin, Head of Receivables and Public Sector at J.P. Morgan Payments, “By investing in robotic and AI technology to improve our lockbox operations, we are automating the most labor-intensive tasks of the process, freeing our team to focus on more complex, higher-value decision-making.”
The robots were initially deployed at a single site for testing. Following a successful first deployment, they are being further refined and will return later this summer as part of the bank’s phased deployment approach.
Related: Markets rally as earnings season heats up
Checks remain a meaningful part of the U.S. payments ecosystem, particularly in B2B receivables. The real operational challenge is the manual work required to convert paper into usable financial data. For treasury and finance teams, settlement is only one step in the process.
Making Legacy Payment Workflows Machine-Readable
Payments still need to be matched to invoices, reconciled against receivables, and reflected accurately in accounting systems before they become operationally useful. As Conklin noted, “Moving dollars is only half the story.” The other half is ensuring payment data is accurate and actionable the moment funds arrive, helping businesses reduce days sales outstanding (DSO), improve working capital, and accelerate reconciliation.
The processing economics are changing now. AI has reached a point where it can interpret thousands of document variations, extract meaning from unstructured data, and automate work that previously required human intervention. Going forward, some of the biggest productivity gains across financial services may come from making legacy payment workflows machine-readable, such as making industry value more efficient.
When payments become information problems, the real challenge lies in converting paper into usable financial data. This is where J.P. Morgan Payments’ automation efforts are making a significant impact, freeing up staff to focus on more complex tasks and improving the overall efficiency of the payment process.
As the payments industry continues to evolve, it is likely that more businesses will adopt similar automation strategies to streamline their payment workflows and reduce manual errors. By leveraging AI and robotic technology, companies like J.P. Morgan Payments are paving the way for a more efficient and accurate payment process.
They are improving the payment process.
