Easy Pay Direct merchants who use EPD Commerce now have access to The Professor, an AI analytics assistant that answers plain-language questions about your business data, suggests next actions, and can create subscription plans directly from chat.
The Professor lives inside EPD Commerce. You do not need to build a report, configure a query, or export a spreadsheet. You type a question, and the assistant works against your actual account data.
Table of Contents
What The Professor does and who it helps
EPD Commerce is the commerce and payment platform powered by Easy Pay Direct. The Professor is one of the tools inside that platform, and it is designed for the merchant who wants answers without hiring an analyst.
Here is what the updated version does:
- Plain-language data queries: Ask things like "What were my top five products last month?" and get an answer drawn from your live account data, not a static report.
- Next-action suggestions: After the assistant returns a result, it surfaces follow-up options. If you just pulled revenue for the last 30 days, it may ask whether you want to see the same data for the prior six months. You click, it runs.
- Subscription plan creation from chat: Tell The Professor you want to sell a $200 product with a $5 fee and charge $100 per month going forward. It builds the subscription template, shows you what it is about to create, and waits for your approval before writing anything. You confirm, it executes.
- Voice input: Type or speak your question directly into the chat. The assistant accepts both.
- The Archive: Every conversation is saved and searchable. Previously called "Chat History," The Archive gives you a retrievable log of every question you have asked and every result the assistant returned.
The subscription creation step is worth pausing on. This is the first time EPD Commerce allows an AI assistant to modify live account data, including products, plans, and subscription templates. The team built in a confirm-before-create step precisely because of that. You see the full record before anything is written to your account.
What changed in this release
The Professor is a renamed and substantially updated version of what was previously called "AI Analytics Assistant." The changes are not cosmetic.
The core updates:
- Renamed to The Professor throughout the platform.
- Pre-built prompts rebuilt to surface more useful starting points for common merchant questions.
- Subscription template creation added: describe a billing structure in plain language, review the draft, approve or decline.
- Next-action suggestions added after each AI result.
- Improved error handling when the assistant cannot generate a result, so you get a useful message instead of a blank response.
- Back navigation redesigned: a back button replaces the old "+" control so moving between prompts and the main section is cleaner.
- The Archive replaces "Chat History" as the label for saved conversations.
- Voice input integrated directly into the text box.
The underlying database permissions were also tightened as part of this release. The AI assistant has no read access to payment method columns and only the specific insert access needed to create subscription templates and plans. Every record created through The Professor carries a tag indicating it was AI-generated, which means your team can always distinguish AI-created records from manually created ones.
How Easy Pay Direct merchants access this
The Professor is not a standalone product. It lives inside EPD Commerce, and EPD Commerce runs on Easy Pay Direct's payment rails. Merchants who process with Easy Pay Direct are the merchants who get access to EPD Commerce's full feature set, including The Professor.
EPD Commerce is currently in pre-launch. Beta invites go out in August, with a public launch in October. If you are already processing with Easy Pay Direct, you are in the right place when access opens.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Professor inside EPD Commerce?
The Professor is an AI analytics assistant inside EPD Commerce that lets merchants query their business data using plain-language questions. It returns answers from live account data, suggests follow-up actions, and can create subscription plans directly from a chat conversation.
How do Easy Pay Direct merchants get access to The Professor?
The Professor lives inside EPD Commerce, the commerce and payment platform powered by Easy Pay Direct. Merchants who process with Easy Pay Direct get access to EPD Commerce features, including The Professor, as part of that relationship. EPD Commerce beta access opens in August, with a full public launch in October.
Can The Professor actually create subscriptions, or does it only read data?
The Professor can create subscription templates and plans from a plain-language description. You tell it the pricing structure you want, it drafts the template, shows you exactly what it will create, and waits for your confirmation before writing anything to your account. It does not execute without your approval.
Is there an audit trail for records The Professor creates?
Yes. Every product, plan, subscription template, order, or transaction created through The Professor is tagged at the database level as AI-generated. Your team can distinguish AI-created records from manually created ones at any time.
What happens if The Professor cannot answer a question?
This release includes improved error handling for cases where the assistant cannot generate a result. Instead of returning a blank response, The Professor surfaces a useful message explaining what went wrong and, where possible, suggests an alternative approach.
Is my payment data visible to The Professor?
No. The AI assistant operates with restricted database permissions. It has no read access to payment method columns. The permissions were designed specifically to limit what the assistant can see and do, with a focus on keeping sensitive payment data outside its scope.
If you are not yet processing with Easy Pay Direct and want access to EPD Commerce when it opens, start at easypaydirect.com.
Already a merchant? Your access to EPD Commerce comes through your existing relationship. Watch for beta invites in August.