Step-by-step walkthroughs of Clever AI in the Merchant Portal: what it reads, what you can ask it, how to connect your store, and how to act on the insights it surfaces.
Clever AI is the payment intelligence layer built into the Merchant Portal. You ask questions in plain language, and it answers from your live payment, customer, and store data. It also generates insights on its own, without you asking.The difference from a reporting tool is timing. Analytics explain what already happened, after settlement. Clever AI reads what is happening now, across every transaction, and tells you what your next move should be while you can still influence the outcome. See Platform Overview for where it sits alongside the rest of the platform.These tutorials cover the whole surface in the order you are likely to use it: understanding what Clever AI reads, opening it, asking your first question, connecting your store, then reading, acting on, and following up on an insight.
Clever AI is in Beta. Sanity-check figures before you act on them, and use the flag control described in Rate an answer or flag a problem to report anything that looks wrong.
Clever AI is purpose-built for payments. It is built on transaction behaviour, cashback mechanics, and Milestone Rewards performance, not on generic web data, which is why it can answer questions about your own settlement and loyalty figures that a general-purpose AI tool cannot.Behind the single question box, Clever AI runs 12 specialised agents. Hello Clever publishes four of them by name:
Planner Agent
Customer Intelligence Agent
Payment Intelligence Agent
Cashback Campaign Agent
You never pick an agent. You ask one question, and Clever AI works out which agents to involve. That is why the same box can both explain a trend and hand you a pre-filled cashback campaign.
Historical and real-time transaction volume, customer purchase and repeat-visit patterns, cashback redemption activity, and channel performance.
Connected stores
Order, product, and customer data from a store you connect through a data connector. Read-only.
Files you attach
A report, invoice, or screenshot you attach to a question, analysed alongside your live data.
External context
Web traffic, consumer activity, macroeconomic data, weather patterns, industry outlook, and other alternative data sources.
That last group is why an insight sometimes references something outside your own numbers, such as a demand spike that tracks a regional storm warning or a card decline rate that tracks a banking outage.
Click the Ask me anything… bar at the top of any portal page, or press the keyboard shortcut shown next to it. The bar is available from every screen, so you never have to navigate away to ask something.
2
Or open it from the sidebar
Select Clever AI under Growth Tools in the left sidebar. The badge on the item shows how many new insights are waiting for you.
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Let the Insights panel load
When the page opens, the Insights panel on the right takes a moment to pull together your latest recommendations. You will see a short loading animation while it works.
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Land on the ask screen
Once loaded, you get a question box on the left under Ask me about your payments, customers, and more, and your Insights feed on the right.
Anything Clever AI can reach in your live data is fair game. These examples show the range:
Theme
Example questions
Reconciliation
Why don’t my revenue and my bank balance match? What was my net revenue per order last week?
Cash flow
Forecast my cash flow from paid orders.
Channels and methods
Break down my Shopify sales by payment method. Which payment method drives the most repeat purchases?
Customers
Which of my highest-value customers have gone quiet? How do first-time buyers behave in their first two weeks?
Early warnings
Are refunds surging anywhere? Which products are running low on stock?
Campaigns
How is my current cashback campaign performing against the one before it?
To model a change rather than explain one, use the Forecaster instead. It projects the outcome of a pricing, incentive, or loyalty change against your live data before you commit budget to it.
By default Clever AI answers from the payment and customer data already in your Hello Clever account. Connect a store to widen that scope.Connecting a store is what closes the gap between what sold and what settled. Shopify and WooCommerce tell you what sold. Hello Clever knows what actually landed in your bank. With both connected, Clever AI can reconcile the two and explain the difference, rather than answering from half the picture.
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Open Data connectors
Select + Data connectors next to the input box.
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Toggle a connected source on or off
Under Connected, flip a source on to include it in your question, or off to exclude it. Sources are listed by the friendly name you gave them, for example a store name.
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Add a new connector
Pick a platform from the Add new data connector list. Shopify, WooCommerce, and API Connection are available now. Google Drive and Dropbox are marked Coming soon.Setting up a store connector takes a few steps on the platform side. Follow the Shopify connector or WooCommerce connector guide, then come back here.
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Confirm it applies to your question
Each selected source appears as a chip above the input box. Select the x on a chip to remove that source before you ask.
After you connect a new store, Clever AI can take up to 24 hours to finish the initial data sync. Answers about that store will be incomplete until it does.
Everything in the Insights feed on the right was generated automatically. You did not have to ask for it. See Actionable Insights for the kinds of insights Clever AI produces and how it generates them.Every insight follows the same shape: a signal it detected, the context that makes the signal matter, a recommended action, and a button that starts that action.
Part
Example
Signal
Transaction volume at your Sydney CBD location is 45% higher than a typical Monday afternoon.
Context
Local consumer activity signals suggest a high-intent segment of new customers is active in the area.
Recommended action
Activate a 5% flash cashback for the next 60 minutes to capture immediate conversions.
Action button
Create time-based cashback campaign
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Read the headline
The bold title is the takeaway, for example Boost Sales: Reactivate 73 Dormant Customers, 85.90% Revenue at Risk.
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Read the explanation
The paragraph underneath explains why Clever AI raised the insight and estimates the impact of acting on it.
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Act on it in one click
Insights with a black button underneath are not just observations. Select the button, for example + Create Cashback Campaign, to jump straight into setting up the recommended action with the relevant detail pre-filled. See Cashback Campaigns for the rest of that flow.
Insights are time-sensitive by design. A churn signal or a demand spike is worth acting on in the window Clever AI flags it in, so work the feed regularly rather than saving it for a weekly review.
The insight is quoted at the top of your question box, so Clever AI knows exactly what you are asking about. Type your follow-up below it, for example how to execute. Select the x on the quote to drop the context.
3
Use the suggested follow-ups
When an answer finishes, a Keen to dig deeper? section suggests natural next questions, for example Show me the conversion rate by payment method. Select one to continue the conversation.
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Find past answers in the feed
Your questions and their answers are logged in the Insights panel with the assistant’s name and a timestamp, so you can scroll back through them later.
Select thumbs-up on an insight card or completed answer if it was useful, or thumbs-down if it is not relevant to your business right now. Clever AI adjusts what it surfaces next based on this.
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Flag something inaccurate
If the numbers look wrong, select the flag icon on the insight card. This sends it to the Hello Clever team for review.
Clever AI answers and insights are generated from your own transaction, customer, and connected store data. They are recommendations, not guarantees, and should be combined with your own business judgement.
Accounts with limited transaction history get fewer and less specific answers until more data has been captured.
Clever AI reads only the sources toggled on for a question. If an answer looks short of data, check your Data connectors selection first.
Connectors are read-only. Clever AI analyses a connected store, it never writes back to it.
Clever AI recommends an action and pre-fills it. It does not launch campaigns for you, so nothing goes live until you confirm it.
Clever AI is built on anonymised transaction data, inside a platform certified to PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC 2. See AML/CTF and AI practices for how Hello Clever handles this data, and How we handle data for the broader picture.