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Digital wallets are no longer just a consumer trend, date, time, location and preferred cuisine – and AI Mode
either. A survey of merchants by the website Pymnts. will streamline this process.
com found 82 percent plan to increase their use of digital
wallets. Consumer expectations for frictionless payments "Searching across multiple reservation platforms and
are pushing businesses to mirror those habits in their websites, it will find real-time availability for restaurants
interactions with other businesses. The reward is reduced that meet your specific needs – and then present you with
administrative costs and real-time spending insights, a curated list of restaurants with available reservation
Pymnts noted. slots to choose from. AI Mode does the legwork and links
you directly to the booking page, so you can easily take
Virtual cards—temporary, digital versions of credit the last step and finalize your reservation.
cards with unique numbers and expiration dates linked
to existing credit card accounts—accounted for an "You're in control of what context you share with Google
estimated $19 trillion in global transaction value in 2024 and can adjust your personalization settings in your
and are expected to total $60 trillion by 2030, according to Google Account at any time."
Grandview research. B2B payments led the virtual card
market with the largest revenue share, 70.3 percent in 2024. Visa and Mastercard on the case

Agentic commerce flips the switch Visa and Mastercard are on the case as well. In April,
Mastercard launched its agentic payments program,
Until now, individuals and their financial institutions have Mastercard Agent Pay, collaborating to scale agentic
been in the driver's seat when it comes to where purchases commerce with Microsoft, other leading AI platforms,
are made and which payment methods are used. Agentic IBM, Braintree and Checkout.com.
AI flips that switch and creates entirely new use cases for
artificial intelligence. As McKinsey & Co. explained in a The program introduced Mastercard Agentic Tokens,
new report, The end of inertia: agentic AI's disruption of retail which build upon proven tokenization capabilities that
and SME banking, agentic AI shifts AI from being a reactive today power global commerce solutions like mobile
helper to a proactive agent for shopping, payments and contactless payments, secure card-on-file and Mastercard
investing. Payment Passkeys, as well as programmable payments
like recurring expenses and subscriptions.
"These developments are expected to shake up the
economic foundations of finance, affecting billions in "Mastercard is transforming the way the world pays for
revenue and posing a threat to business models and the better by anticipating consumer needs on the horizon,"
revenue at banks, small and midsize enterprises, credit said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard's chief product officer. "The
card companies and others," McKinsey wrote. launch of Mastercard Agent Pay marks our initial steps
in redefining commerce in the AI era, including new
"It's a big disintermediation play," Crone said. Today, when merchant interfaces to distinguish trust agents from bad
a consumer goes to a merchant's website, the merchant has actors using agentic technology.
"complete control," getting credit for "eyeballs" that view
specific products, he explained. "Recognizing the seismic implications of this evolution,
we are keen to collaborate with industry players to
"Agentic agents will screen scrape merchant sites, initiate advance the standards for agentic payments. This lays the
the shopping journey, package baskets across merchants, foundation for scale and builds trust in agentic commerce."
and steer tender – all before the merchant sees the
customer," said Crone, adding that it reduces the merchant Also in April, Visa took steps to bring trust and security
to "being a warehouse providing fulfillment." to AI-driven commerce with Visa Intelligent Commerce,
which it described as a "groundbreaking new initiative
The economic risk is potentially huge. Crone Consulting that opens Visa's payment network to the developers
LLC projects 8 to 13 percent gross merchandize value and engineers building the foundational AI engines
erosion, or $84 to $126 million per $1 billion in ecommerce transforming commerce." Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft,
sales. "Merchants who embed agentic rails inside their Mistral AI, Open AI, Samsung and Stripe are just some of
own apps—closed loop, prepaid, private-label credit or the companies working with Visa on this.
stablecoin wallets—can flip 8-13 percent into a rev share,"
Crone said. "Soon people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase
and manage on their behalf," Jack Forestell, Visa's chief
Google saw this coming and introduced AI Mode for product and strategy officer, said in a statement. "These
online shopping this year. "AI is making Google Search agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by
radically more helpful, so you can ask any question on users, but by banks and sellers as well."
your mind and get things done," Google wrote in an
August blog post. "For example, you can now ask about Visa Intelligent Commerce offers:
getting a dinner reservation with friends that includes • AI-ready cards, with card details replaced with
multiple constraints and preferences – like party size, digital credentials

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