Unzer launches its first company-wide AI week

Berlin, April 20, 2025 – Unzer, a leading European payments and technology company, today announced the launch of its inaugural AI Week, with the tag line “rAIse the Bar,” running from 20-24 April 2025. With over 80% of employees already having tried Unzer's internal AI tool, the company is now making a decisive push to turn curiosity into capability.

The five-day programme, described by leadership as “an internal conference, not a lecture series” – brings together 45+ sessions, spanning keynotes, masterclasses, and hands-on workshops. Content is structured across three tracks (Foundations, Functional Deep Dives, and Leadership Perspectives) and three skill levels, from AI beginners to advanced practitioners. 

From Access to Fluency

The initiative comes as Unzer's leadership recognises a challenge familiar to many organisations: giving employees access to AI tools is only the first step. Regular, confident use is the harder part. 

You can't simply hand people a tool and expect the way they work to change automatically. Real transformation happens when teams start asking: where does this actually create value?

Niv Liran, Chief Product & Technology Officer of Unzer

Data from Unzer indicated that while adoption was strong, usage patterns weren't evolving. Employees had tried the tool, but it hadn't yet become part of how they approach their work – the difference, as Liran puts it, between having a gym membership and actually training. 

Why AI Literacy Matters for Every Role

A central theme of the week is that AI literacy is no longer optional for any function. The real differentiator is no longer who uses AI, but how. 

Adoption, research shows, is function-led rather than industry-led: roles involving writing, analysis, coding, and content creation are advancing fastest, regardless of sector. Trained employees are roughly twice as productive with AI tools as untrained colleagues, making structured learning a high-leverage investment. AI also performs best on shorter, well-defined tasks, and understanding that distinction helps employees apply it where it genuinely creates value. Perhaps most importantly, AI literacy is not a technical skill. It means understanding what these systems can and cannot do, and developing the habit of questioning their outputs critically. 

Building Confidence, Not Just Awareness

Unzer is also addressing the anxiety that AI change can create. Rather than leaving a communications vacuum for speculation to fill, the company is opening up the conversation – including honest discussions about what will change, what won't, and where the limits are. 

To support adoption at the team level, Unzer has introduced „AI Ambassadors“: employees embedded across departments who act as coaches and peer champions. The logic: transformation scales through people who understand their colleagues’ day-to-day work, not through top-down instructions. 

Niv Liran explains: “It's much easier to experiment when someone you trust, who knows your domain, is sitting next to you saying: let's try this together.”

From Pilots to Production Across Teams

AI adoption at Unzer has already moved well beyond its technical roots. Sales teams are automating reporting and preparing merchant briefings more efficiently. Compliance teams are testing structured document analysis. Operations teams are building AI-supported workflows to accelerate merchant response times. 

AI Week will showcase these examples from across the organisation, reinforcing that innovation is not the preserve of a single department. 

The 2026 Goal: AI Literacy as Standard

By the end of 2026, Unzer's ambition is for every employee to have completed structured AI enablement training and reached a shared baseline of understanding and practical skills. In Liran's framing: the same way digital literacy became a professional standard over the past two decades, AI literacy should feel equally fundamental. He adds: “AI transformation only works if people feel equipped and confident to rethink their own work, and that comes from shared understanding, not just shared tools.” 

Responsible use sits at the heart of the programme. In a regulated fintech environment, Unzer is clear that AI supports decisions, but accountability always stays with people. 

About Unzer

Unzer provides an ecosystem that enables businesses to digitalise through simple and integrated payment and software solutions. From online purchases and in-store mobile POS systems to final settlement and essential business processes, Unzer simplifies and optimises retail operations. This all-in-one approach helps merchants run their businesses more efficiently while ensuring a seamless shopping experience for their customers.

More than 90,000 merchants across Europe already use Unzer's ecosystem. The company employs around 750 people in eight offices in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Luxembourg.