At a Mumbai fintech conference, payment firms said checkout is getting smarter, and AI tools may soon buy things for shoppers. Here is what that could mean.
Payment companies say paying is no longer just about moving money. At the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, executives from PayPal, Adyen, Paytm Payments Services and Hitachi Payment Services said the next step is software that does the buying. They also said it is not ready yet.
For years, the goal in India was getting people to pay digitally. Card terminals, QR codes and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) largely did that. Now the panel argued that a payment can also help a merchant recognize a customer, stop a fraudster, offer credit or win back a buyer who drifted away.
Gary Yang of Adyen said up to 50% of consumers, based on the company's research, will refuse to buy if their preferred payment method is not offered. Preferences differ by country: UPI in India, digital wallets and buy-now-pay-later services elsewhere. A store going live in India without UPI, he said, will not make much progress.
Amir Valliani of PayPal said merchants want their provider to handle the mess of rules, fraud and local payment types so they can focus on customers. Anuj Khosla of Hitachi said shops also want all sales in one view, whether paid by cash, card or UPI.
The biggest change ahead is what the panel called agentic commerce. That means AI tools that do more than search. They complete purchases for you. Valliani said it could be the biggest change in payments since mobile. But he said that today AI can help you find things, not buy them. It must first connect identity, payments, risk and store inventory.
Yang listed three hurdles. Product listings must be readable by AI. Taxes, shipping and discounts must work the same way at checkout. And the payment itself must go through. He called it "super early days." Buying volumes are minimal, yet about 70% of people already use AI to research purchases.
The panel gave no dates for when AI buying will arrive. Sudhir Sehgal of Paytm raised the open question of whether consumers will trust a machine with their money. He also said passkeys and biometrics, such as fingerprints, are already making payments smoother.
Offer the payment methods your customers prefer now, and think about how much spending power you would hand to an AI tool later.
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