Picture yourself meandering through an online store, and before you know it that friendly digital assistant of yours has already assessed fees, selected the smartest payment option and completed the deal – all without you having to lift a finger.
Max Levchin, the CEO of Affirm is showing us that vision,” he told an audience at the Reuters Momentum AI Finance Conference in New York today (Nov. 6), explaining that (this “agentic”moment for shopping and payment is) not just hype-it isn’t very far off.
AI agents will soon do much more than just chat, Levchin says – they’ll shop and pay for you on your behalf; alert you to financial products that make sense or hidden fees or sneaky interest traps; many of the traps millions of people never see.
Or, as he put it: “I think we get to a future where pretty much all these big public platforms are run by A.I., because that’s the cheapest thing to operate the platform at scale.”
Affirm plays in the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) world – a make-now-justify-later shopping spree that mushroomed to nearly $82.4 billion in online spending last year.
Now it believes its tech is made for this next shift: chatbots, browser extensions, digital wallets - everything getting smarter and more invisibly integrated, nudging toward transparency.
This is significant because, if friendly AI can start to flag bad deals or high fees – possibly saving some people from racking up serious costs associate with those fees – companies whose models depend on those fee models might take notice.
It’s not just fintech that is getting shook. And the retail heavyweights are joining in, too.
Other retailers, too, are increasing e-commerce investments: Walmart announced it will roll out AI-equipped “super-agent” workers for its stores to catalyze online sales with a goal of 50% online versus in-store sales in five years.
The message is unmistakable: shopping, payments and finance are colliding - and the rules of the game are being rewritten.
Here’s what I’m thinking: If you’re a consumer, this is exciting perhaps smarter, simpler options and less hidden cost.
Conversely, business models that are based on complexity, confusion or lack of transparency may be at existential risk.
For small merchants or platforms, the issue will be adapting quickly so your site’s AI assistant doesn’t steer a buyer off his path because your information is outdated.
Of course, there are caveats. How precise will those agents be? Who owns the bot’s decisions? Will these regulatory guardrails take shape as AI dominance over payment choices?
These questions remain in the air. My gut tells me that we’re witnessing a shift that’s going to be ugly at first but if you play it right, the winners stand to reshape entire industries.