Key Takeaways
- Agentic commerce—where AI agents shop for consumers—creates uncertainty for payments firms about where transactions will actually occur, forcing them to make early investment decisions.
- Maran Nalluswami of Synchrony advises a “healthy paranoia”: listen broadly, validate changes, then test before committing resources, rather than reacting impulsively.
- Large retailers can orchestrate AI‑enabled discovery and payment across channels, while small merchants prioritize frictionless, easy‑to‑use solutions that avoid complex AI infrastructure.
- Trust becomes critical as AI agents become an extra party in the buying process; both merchants and consumers need confidence in product representation, data use, and transaction security.
- Wallets and processor‑linked ecosystems may grow in importance because stored credentials let purchases flow across merchants without re‑entering card details, influencing which payment option is presented.
- The inflection point in payments is real but not so fast that companies cannot adapt—provided they stay ahead by monitoring merchant, consumer, and external signals.
Agentic Commerce Redefines the Purchase Journey
Agentic commerce is forcing payments companies to make investment decisions before they know where the transaction will ultimately take place. A shopper may begin with an artificial intelligence platform, move to a retailer’s website and finish in a store. Over time, the AI platform itself could become the place where the purchase is completed. Each possibility changes where merchants need their products to appear, where payment credentials must be available and which companies retain the relationship with the customer. As Maran Nalluswami, executive vice president and chief strategy and business development officer at Synchrony, puts it, “The concept of agentic commerce, of agents doing the shopping for you, is like nothing we’ve seen before.” He notes that unlike the gradual evolution of payment rails, cryptocurrencies, or the debit‑vs‑credit shift, agentic commerce is arriving more rapidly, compressing the timeline for strategic response.
A Dose of Healthy Paranoia Guides Strategy
For Nalluswami, the uncertainty created by agentic commerce calls for what he described as “a dose of healthy paranoia.” He discussed the idea in a PYMNTS “What’s Next in Payments” interview centered on former Intel CEO Andy Grove’s observation that companies can miss strategic inflection points when the rules of their industries change before management fully recognizes what has happened. Paranoia isn’t an instruction to chase every new technology, Nalluswami said. However, it’s a reason to listen closely enough to detect a material change and then test what the market is saying before committing resources. “You can’t have a knee‑jerk reaction to anything,” Nalluswami said, adding that his sequence is to listen to merchants, consumers, employees and people outside the company, then validate whether the apparent change is real. This disciplined approach helps firms avoid over‑investing in fleeting trends while still positioning themselves for genuine shifts.
Product Discovery Shifts Beyond the Merchant’s Site
The commercial implications begin with product discovery, Nalluswami said. Large retailers initially expected AI shopping capabilities to reside primarily on their own websites. As consumers began turning to outside AI platforms for product research, the strategic calculation changed. Payments and financing might need to follow consumers into environments outside the merchant’s direct control. That migration is far from complete, Nalluswami said. Consumers who use AI tools for research still generally complete purchases elsewhere, whether on a brand’s website or in a physical store. The uncertainty concerns how long that separation between discovery and transaction will last. “You almost have to place bets along the entire experience right now because the experience has not been won by anyone yet,” Nalluswami said. This reality forces payments providers to consider multiple touch‑points simultaneously rather than betting on a single channel.
Merchant Size Shapes the AI Calculation
The agentic discussion can obscure a division within the merchant market. Large retailers and small businesses aren’t approaching the transition with the same requirements. Sophisticated retailers are already telling their payments partners that products and financing must be available at the point where a consumer chooses to shop, Nalluswami said. These companies have the resources and technical expertise to think about how their catalogs, payment options and customer relationships might operate across emerging AI ecosystems. Small merchants have a more practical demand. “Those folks want ease and the most frictionless experience possible,” he said. For a small retailer, veterinarian, jeweler or other business, the immediate concern is whether technology helps a customer complete a purchase without imposing another layer of complexity on the merchant. As a result, payment providers may have to accommodate large merchants experimenting with new points of discovery and transaction while giving small businesses access to those changes without requiring them to build or manage sophisticated AI infrastructure.
Trust Gains New Importance in an Agent‑Mediated World
Trust becomes more consequential under these conditions because AI potentially adds another party to the commercial relationship. A consumer may rely on an agent to identify the product, compare alternatives and eventually select a payment method. Merchants still need confidence that their products and information are represented correctly, while consumers need confidence in the transaction and the use of their information. Trust also runs through his description of changing consumer loyalty. Young consumers may discover products through social platforms and recommendations rather than begin with an established preference for a retailer. This can make the source of the recommendation itself part of the commercial relationship. Nalluswami emphasized that maintaining trust will be a decisive factor as AI agents mediate more of the shopping journey, influencing both brand perception and willingness to share payment data.
Wallets and Processor‑Linked Ecosystems May Gain Influence
Nalluswami said he believes payments have reached an inflection point, although he doesn’t regard the window for responding as closed. Wallets and processor ecosystems could become more important because stored credentials can allow purchases to move among merchants without requiring consumers to enter another card. These systems could also influence which payment option is presented when a purchase occurs. “I don’t think the inflection point’s moving so fast that you can’t adapt to it,” he said, “but it’s important that you stay ahead.” By enabling seamless credential reuse, wallets reduce friction across channels—a feature that aligns well with the agentic commerce model where the shopper’s path may wander from AI discovery to brand site to physical store without repeated data entry.
Staying Ahead Through External Listening
Nalluswami stressed that staying ahead requires continuous dialogue beyond internal assumptions. Watching the full interview with Synchrony’s Maran Nalluswami reveals why conversations with banks, FinTechs and other industry participants can give executives a different picture from the one conveyed by competitor announcements. He also highlighted how changes in consumer loyalty are altering the connection among value, merchant relationships and payment choice. Finally, he explained why wallets linked to processors and merchant ecosystems could affect which credentials consumers use as commerce moves across channels. These insights reinforce his core message: a proactive, listening‑first stance—paired with measured experimentation—helps payments firms navigate the uncertain but promising terrain of agentic commerce.