Plaid’s payments head explains how payment methods might shift as artificial intelligence begins choosing how to pay.

As agentic commerce gains wider use, the payments industry is pondering how artificial intelligence may herald a change in payment methods.

Bots won’t be bothered by traditional payment frictions that torment humans, such as confusing checkout flows, account creation forms, password setup or poor user interfaces.

An agent will focus on payment parameters the human consumer has provided, such as maximizing discounts or card-issuer rewards, and select the payment method it views as offering attributes that align with those guidelines, said Brian Dammeir, head of payments and financial management at Plaid.

The San Francisco-based financial data aggregator transfers consumer account information between banks and fintechs.

As a result, it’s likely that banks, card issuers, merchants and the card networks will see shifts relative to how people pay today, he said. Dammeir discussed Plaid’s payments business and agentic transactions during an Oct. 19 interview on the sidelines of the Money20/20 financial technology conference in Las Vegas.

BRIAN DAMMEIR: I think the main thing folks opine on, or think about, and we think a lot about this, is in an agentic world will there be different consumer preferences around payments? If, at the end of the day, you’re permissioning something to an agent, and the agent's incentive is to take the most efficient, or most effective, route to pay for the consumer they’re acting on behalf of, you could certainly see a world in which, for example, bank payments are adopted more broadly, and you could see the mix of payment methods changing in this world.

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