South Africa: PaySpace launches AI Assist, an AI assistant to secure payroll data

Only 46% of employees trust generative artificial intelligence at work, a declining proportion, and 56% say they make more mistakes due to its use, according to a 2025 KPMG survey reported in a press release distributed via Africa Newsroom (APO). South African payroll platform PaySpace, operated by Deel Local Payroll, has developed AI Assist, an assistant designed to answer payroll questions without these pitfalls. AI Assist gives employees personalized answers regarding their payslips - taxes, deductions, overtime - and helps payroll teams via PaySpace's knowledge base. "Trust, accuracy, and control are required," explains Warren van Wyk, director at Deel Local Payroll. The tool, which is native to the platform and complies with ISO and SOC standards, restricts access to authorized data: "No one can query AI Assist about a third party's salary without authorization," he specifies. Each session runs on a temporary Microsoft Azure cloud instance, and the model is never trained on customer data. This architecture reduces the time spent on recurring employee questions and limits the exposure of sensitive salary data, a regulatory challenge in South Africa under the POPIA law. Deel Local Payroll, an independent subsidiary of the Deel group since 2024, markets PaySpace across the continent. This cautious approach contrasts with the race for generative AI in enterprise software, whose errors remain documented by KPMG. By excluding model training on customer data, PaySpace aims to reconcile productivity and compliance, a sensitive trade-off where payroll, local taxation, and data protection remain heterogeneous from one African country to another.