Page 27 - gs251002

CoverStory

said Peter Dougherty, president of Spreedly, an open pay- was made?
ments platform company. "Having a great checkout expe- "Actually, there's been some news recently on different
rience is hard," Dougherty said during a recent interview. protocols trying to establish that chain of accountability,"
"Every new piece you add to that [for example, new pay- Dougherty said. "These are things that all merchants, the
ment options] comes with its own basket of complexities." merchant ecosystem need to get used to."

One complexity is what Dougherty referred to as a "grow- Research recently sponsored by Spreedly found executives
ing engineering tax," which is time spent maintaining at middle market retailers fear AI may worsen checkout
evolving checkout flows. A meaningful share of compa- failures, despite the fact that 83 percent of executives
nies reported dedicating 25 percent or more of engineer- polled expect that by 2027, most payments will be initiated,
ing resources to payments upkeep. "AI should be layered optimized or completed by AI.
thoughtfully to strengthen these payment systems, not
replace them entirely and introduce new risks," he said. Among the risks associated with AI-led payments those
executives cited:
That's where Spreedly can step in, maintaining connectiv- • Losing transparency about who the customer is (cited
ity to payment services providers, AI agents, etc., Dough- by 23 percent)
erty said.
• False positives leading to lost sales (20 percent)
Forestell, meanwhile, said Visa's new agent protocol "is • Losing the ability to market directly to consumers (22
focused on creating no-code functionality for merchants percent)
to securely identify agents with an intent to buy and pro-
vide a better payments and personalized experience for its Only 15 percent of executives polled said they had no
known users." concerns—a reminder that progress in AI-driven payments
must keep pace with vigilance and trust.
But what about one-off problems that aren't necessarily
tied to payments. Say, for example, I tell the AI agent to
find me a good deal on Merrill sneakers, size 10.5, but what Patti Murphy is senior editor at The Green Sheet, president of ProScribes
gets delivered is a pair size 10. Who owns that mistake? Is Ink (www.proscribes.net) and self-described payments maven of the
it Merrill, is it the merchant website where the purchase fourth estate. Her Today in Payments reports are a regular feature of the

27