[Money20/20 – IXOPAY interview] AI agents are coming to checkout

AI agents are starting to pay on consumers’ behalf, and many payment teams aren’t ready. At Money20/20 USA, we spoke with Marco Conte and Kent Cheung about what merchants need from their payment infrastructure now that agentic commerce adds a new player to an already crowded payments chain.

Conte calls it fluid commerce: what merchants run today won’t be what they run tomorrow. Two years ago, AI agents making payments didn’t exist. Within two to three years, he expects them to account for most transactions. In a market moving that fast, the answer is choice. One merchant might pair in-house builds with a tokenisation vault, another might want full orchestration, and a third might need only a data intelligence layer. Each should be able to change that mix over time.

Ten dependencies down to one

Large teams can manage their own integrations, Cheung said, until they expand. Every new PSP or payment method adds complexity, and the warning signs are operational: bandwidth cannibalisation, capacity constraints, and the upkeep of many separate integrations starting to drag on the business. Global merchants commonly work with multiple PSPs, with card data scattered across them, which leaves customers tied to whichever provider holds their credentials. Conte’s fix is a single tokenisation vault for all payment methods. He acknowledged that centralising creates a potential point of failure, but argued that one well-managed dependency beats ten.

Tokens that carry intent

Agentic commerce also expands what tokenisation does. Beyond protecting data at rest and, to a degree, in flight, Cheung said tokens can capture the shopping agent’s identity alongside the user’s intent and consent. That creates an authorisation trail that matters when disputes arise.

The bigger picture is still taking shape. Adoption will hinge on whether merchants can add agent-initiated transactions without multiplying integrations and operational strain, and questions around fraud and liability remain largely open. But the groundwork can start now: consolidate fragmented card data, be clear about what’s truly core, avoid storing credentials without a strong reason, and choose architectures that can change as fast as the market does. As agents take a larger share of transactions, the merchants who kept their options open will be the ones best placed to adapt.

About IXOPAY

IXOPAY is the enterprise-grade global payment infrastructure platform built for the era of agentic commerce, equipping merchants and businesses with AI-driven intelligence, orchestration, advanced tokenization, and the tools to power every step of their payments journey. Learn more at https://www.ixopay.com/.