Introducing the AI Visibility Index: Fintech Payments

Only 10 brands own 75% of AI visibility. Are you one of them or one of the invisible?

Welcome to the new battleground for brand discovery: AI Search.

This isn’t your old-school SEO. The rules have changed. Your website, backlinks, and content strategy still matter, but only if they help you get seen by AI. That’s why we created the AI Visibility Index, a new way to measure whether your brand is showing up in the places that matter most now.

What is the AI Visibility Index?

The AI Visibility Index is a benchmark for brand discoverability within AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

We track how often a brand appears in AI-generated results across more than 100 fintech payment-related prompts over a 90-day period. But this isn’t just about volume. It’s built on a composite score called the Z-Score, which combines AI visibility, brand sentiment, media authority, technical performance, and content diversity into one clean metric​.

Here’s why that matters.

As large language models reshape how users search, trust, and buy, visibility within these environments is becoming a prerequisite for brand growth.

Understanding the Methodology

The AI Visibility Index was developed through comprehensive research, leveraging:

Normalization and Benchmarking: Scores are normalized across competitors to offer a clear, comparable view of brand performance. As large language models reshape how users search, trust, and buy, visibility within these environments is becoming a prerequisite for brand growth.

Proprietary Z-Score Framework: An advanced, weighted scoring model incorporating AI visibility, source mentions, brand sentiment, position rankings in AI answers, technical analysis, organic traffic, share of voice, authority, search volume, media presence, backlink quality, and company growth + heat scores.

Daily Monitoring Across 3 LLMs: We track brand mentions eight times daily across leading generative AI platforms—ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Real-world User Prompts: Over 100 industry-specific queries that reflect genuine user behavior and needs.

Data Sources: We used a combination of data sources including: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google Overviews, Crunchbase, Muck Rack, SEMRush, Breeze AI, Google Trends, HubSpot, Peec AI, and our very own AI Share of Voice (SOV) tool.

The Five Power Signals Behind AI Visibility

After analyzing 60 payment processors, we identified five key indicators that determine if a brand shows up or gets skipped.

1. Diverse Content Source Citations
Brands mentioned across a wide range of trusted platforms like Wikipedia, NerdWallet, and Investopedia performed significantly better. Content spread across multiple credible sites leads to higher AI inclusion.

2. Owned Content Footprint
Stripe wasn’t just mentioned. Its documentation was used as source material. When your own site becomes the answer, you win. Most brands had no citations from their own content at all.

3. Technical Optimization
Well-structured, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading websites were far more likely to be referenced by AI models. Visibility is increasingly shaped by how your site is built, not just what it says.

4. High-Impact Media Coverage
AI cares more about authority and structure than volume. NerdWallet, with fewer articles, had more citations than Forbes. Evergreen formatting and relevance outperform sheer frequency​.

5. Positive Brand Sentiment
Growth-stage companies earned the highest sentiment scores. They benefit from being seen as innovative and customer-centric, compared to legacy brands that face higher scrutiny​.

What the Data Reveals: A Fintech Reality Check

Here’s the wake-up call. Two-thirds of brands studied had zero visibility on AI platforms.

The Top 30 Ranked Brands represents 93% of the AI Visibility control in the Fintech Payment Processing sector across ChatGPT and Gemini over 92%+ each and Perplexity at 88%. Results vary however across various market segments and company sizes. Only 10 companies controlled more than 75 percent of all AI Share of Voice in the fintech category. Stripe, PayPal, and Square appeared in more than half of all AI-generated answers.

AI Share of Voice Over 75% of AI Share of Voice (SOV) for this industry is owned by just 10 brands, ranging from 12.4% SOV to 2.1% SOV, with three large companies >10%. However, the SOV was not directly correlated to the AI Visibility ratings or brands with the highest Z-Score.

Correlation between technical scores and unique content types that are cited as sources from the LLMs. The higher the technical scores, the more likely the LLMs will index, trust and cite different types of branded content on a company’s website.

Enterprise and Growth-Stage controlled the 89% of the brand cited sources used by the LLMs. Despite the lack of top-tier media coverage over the last 90 days, the Growth-stage companies excelled in their content, tech optimization scores, organic traffic and brand sentiment.

Why This Index Matters For Fintech, Right Now

AI search is shaping how customers discover, evaluate, and trust payment solutions. Traditional SEO is no longer the only visibility strategy that matters. Fintech payment brands must understand the signals that influence AI platforms; including content quality, technical performance, and media presence.

This report identifies those signals and introduces the Z Score, Avenue Z’s proprietary benchmark for AI-driven discoverability.

Organic search traffic is projected to decline sharply as more users rely on AI platforms for answers​. That changes everything:

• Your SEO can no longer stop at traditional rankings.
• Your brand needs to be optimized for AI discoverability.
• Your content must be structured for AI systems, not just human readers.
• Your brand story needs to appear as the answer, not just an option.

This is not a prediction. It’s already happening.

What You Can Do Right Now

Audit your current AI visibility.
Ask yourself if your brand appears in LLMs. If not, start figuring out why.

Invest in technical optimization.
Improve speed, structure, mobile performance, and schema markup. These are the new requirements for visibility.

Publish high-authority, diverse content.
From reports and product documentation to thought leadership, the content needs to be rich and distributed across multiple formats.

Get mentioned by the right sources.
Target high-authority and niche media outlets. Relevance and credibility matter more than size.

Monitor and manage your brand sentiment.
Positive perception is a trust signal that AI platforms are beginning to factor in. AI visibility in fintech payments is highly concentrated. A small number of brands control the majority of visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. In fact, just 10 companies captured more than 10 percent of total AI visibility, while the median visibility rate across the 60 brands analyzed was only 1 to 2 percent.

The strongest-performing brands share common traits. They are consistently cited across a mix of authoritative and proprietary sources, maintain technically optimized websites, and publish content that AI platforms can easily parse and surface. In contrast, brands lacking in source diversity or technical readiness struggle to gain any meaningful AI presence.

About Avenue Z

Avenue Z is the leading marketing and communications agency helping brands compete in AI brand visibility and conversion. With decades of expertise in content, search, media, and communications, we help companies increase visibility and influence across platforms like ChatGPT, TikTok, and The Wall Street Journal. Our AI Optimization solution integrates strategic communications, PR, content, and performance media into a single framework designed for how people search today.

Download the full report to see where your brand stands and how to increase your visibility in AI search.