Wavetec Accelerates Its AI Strategy: Asif Bilgrami Joins as Executive Director, AI & Innovation

Wavetec, a vertically integrated customer experience technology company, is scaling AI across the hardware, software, and services it operates for banks, telecom operators, retailers, governments, and SMEs in more than 80 countries. Asif Bilgrami joins as Executive Director, AI & Innovation, to lead the next phase of that strategy.

Wavetec is entering the next phase of a platform strategy built over three decades: embedding AI across the hardware, software, and services it designs, manufactures, and supports for enterprise clients worldwide.

Asif Bilgrami has joined the company as Executive Director, AI & Innovation. He brings more than 30 years in enterprise technology, most recently leading the AI and digital transformation agenda at Systems Limited for a Fortune 500 client base, an environment where AI has to perform at enterprise scale, under real-world constraints. His appointment extends work already underway rather than launching something new: Wavetec has applied AI across its platform for several years, and is now scaling that capability under dedicated, senior leadership.

Wavetec’s core business has been building the infrastructure of customer interaction, from queue management systems to card-dispensing kiosks, cash deposit machines, and a full customer experience platform spanning hardware, software, and analytics. That platform now serves enterprise clients in more than 80 countries. Asif’s appointment formalizes the next stage of that evolution: applying AI systematically, across the full platform, rather than as a set of isolated features.

Why Now

The shift is grounded in enterprise adoption data, not sentiment.

McKinsey’s State of AI in 2025 finds that 88% of organizations report using AI in at least one business function, and 72% are using generative AI, more than double the 33% recorded a year earlier. The same research shows nearly two-thirds of organizations have not yet scaled AI across the enterprise, and only a small minority are capturing measurable value. That gap between experimentation and execution is the current competitive line for enterprise technology providers.

Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report, based on a survey of 3,235 senior leaders, projects that roughly three-quarters of organizations will be using AI agents by 2027, with agentic AI expected to have its highest impact in customer support. Deloitte also finds that more than half of companies already make at least limited use of physical AI, a figure projected to reach 80% within two years, directly relevant to the sensor-enabled, self-service hardware Wavetec has deployed at scale for years.

Wavetec sits at the intersection of two trends reshaping enterprise customer experience: software intelligence and physical service infrastructure. The strategy is to integrate both, on a single platform, faster than competitors operating in only one layer.

Platform Scale and Vertical Integration

Wavetec’s platform today spans more than 70 banks, over 25 telecom operators, and hundreds of clients across government, healthcare, and retail. Deployments include Banorte (1,250 systems), Emirates Airlines (more than 30 countries), Samsung in Spain, Al Rajhi Bank (over 600 systems), Rakuten in Japan, BBVA Peru (nearly 300 branches), UBL (over 600 systems), KCB (a 15-year partnership), Meezan Bank (over 600 systems), Swiss Post (over 130 systems), Ontario’s DMVs (nearly 100 locations), and Bank Alfalah, the market leader in cash deposit machines with over 400 systems.

Wavetec designs and manufactures its own hardware, builds the software and analytics layer that runs on it, and supports deployments directly across continents. This vertical integration is the structural basis for the current AI strategy: controlling the device, the data, and the software together allows AI to be deployed end-to-end, rather than added on top of third-party infrastructure.

That integration has driven Wavetec’s fastest-growing line of business, self-service kiosks – as customer expectations have shifted permanently toward contactless, self-directed service since the pandemic.

Self-Service: Market Trajectory and Current Position

Mordor Intelligence values the global self-service kiosk market at USD 14.52 billion in 2025, projected to reach USD 25.64 billion by 2030 at a 12.06% CAGR, with banking and financial kiosks the largest segment and Asia-Pacific the fastest-growing region. Growth is driven by contactless service demand, labour constraints, expanding digital payments, and the integration of AI into kiosk platforms – the segment Wavetec already operates in at scale.

Card-dispensing kiosks let telecom customers obtain and activate a SIM card within minutes, with identity verification and KYC built directly into the onboarding flow. This allows operators to onboard subscribers compliantly while reducing load on staffed counters. du telecom in the UAE operates more than 235 of these kiosks; further deployments serve Rakuten in Japan, Digicel across the Caribbean, and more than ten telecom operators across multiple regions. For banks, the same platform supports instant card issuance, replacing a multi-day, courier-dependent process with an in-branch transaction.

Cash deposit machines address a persistent constraint in emerging markets: cash handling. They let corporations, retailers, and SMEs deposit and digitize cash 24/7 without a teller, converting physical currency into digital liquidity and extending formal banking access to small businesses. In cash-dominant markets, this functions as financial infrastructure rather than a convenience feature.

Each deployment – kiosks, CDMs, queue systems, digital signage – generates continuous operational and transactional data. That data is the foundation for the AI & Innovation division’s work.

Scaling AI Across the Platform

Wavetec has applied AI for several years in queue forecasting, analytics, and the intelligence layer running across its customer experience platform. What changes now is scale and organizational structure: a dedicated AI & Innovation division, several AI specialists already hired, and continued hiring supported by prior investment in infrastructure and capacity.

The division’s work spans three areas:

First, applying AI to existing deployments: predictive routing, real-time KYC checks, fraud and anomaly detection, demand forecasting, and personalized customer journeys across every kiosk, CDM, queue system, and signage deployment.

Second, building a new intelligence layer across the platform that converts operational data into decisions and decisions into automated action.

Third, developing AI agents for use by enterprise clients and, increasingly, the SMEs that depend on them, automating internal processes for large organizations and extending customer-service capability to small businesses that previously could not afford it.

Independent forecasts place the global AI agents’ market at roughly USD 8 billion in 2025, rising to nearly USD 12 billion in 2026 at a CAGR above 45%. Gartner projects that 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% a year earlier. Deloitte identifies customer support as the function where agentic AI is expected to have the greatest impact: the core of Wavetec’s business.

Asif’s appointment pairs AI leadership with Wavetec’s existing manufacturing depth, global footprint, and customer experience expertise: the combination the strategy requires.

Leadership Perspective

“I have spent over three decades in technology, and I have rarely seen a foundation as well-suited to the AI era as Wavetec’s. The combination of global enterprise clients, proprietary hardware, and a mature data layer is exactly what serious AI needs to create value rather than noise. The opportunity here is not to add AI features, it is to reimagine customer experience from the ground up, for institutions and for the small businesses they serve. That is what I came here to build.”

– Asif Bilgrami, Executive Director, AI & Innovation, Wavetec

“Wavetec has always been a company that builds; the hardware, the software, the relationships, the support. Bringing Asif on board is us deciding to build the future of this industry rather than wait for it. We are investing in talent, in infrastructure, and in a clear ten-year vision: to be the global leader in AI-powered customer experience, with the customer at the heart of every decision.”

– Ahmed Fraz Malik, CEO, Wavetec

“From an international standpoint, this is how we keep growing. We serve our clients from eleven offices across the United States, Mexico, Peru, Spain, the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Pakistan, China, and now Japan. Our customers, banks, telecoms, governments, retailers, are all asking the same question: how do we use AI to serve our own customers better? With this new division, we can answer that question with our own technology, deployed globally, supported locally. That is a powerful position to be in, and it is exactly where we intend to lead.”

– Tobias Bessone, Deputy CEO, Wavetec

Strategic Position

McKinsey and Deloitte both find that enterprise AI value accrues to organizations that rewire workflows and build on an established data foundation, rather than those running isolated pilots.

Wavetec’s position rests on assets already in place: enterprise relationships across more than 80 countries, proprietary hardware generating data in live production environments, in-house software and analytics, and direct manufacturing and support infrastructure. The AI & Innovation division, now under Asif Bilgrami’s leadership, is the organizational structure for converting those assets into AI-enabled products at scale.

Wavetec’s positioning is that of an AI-enabled enterprise technology company: a platform business applying AI across its existing hardware and software estate, not a standalone AI vendor. The strategic priority for the coming years is to extend that platform to serve large enterprises and, for the first time at this scale, the SMEs that depend on them.

 

Wavetec is a vertically integrated customer experience technology company headquartered in Dubai, with offices across eleven countries. The company designs, manufactures, and supports queue management systems, self-service and card-dispensing kiosks, cash deposit machines, digital signage, and a full suite of customer experience software and analytics – serving over 70 banks, 25-plus telecom operators, and hundreds of governments, healthcare, and retail clients worldwide. Wavetec is an NCR and Meta partner.